Summary
- MicroSD cards were once ubiquitous in the flagship Android phone space.
- Over time, a number of factors came together to usher in the end of the microSD’s mobile reign.
- Here are five factors that played a key role in this particular development.
Nearly across the board, the once-ubiquitous microSD card slot has vanished from the premium smartphone environment. Previously a staple of the Android handset experience, this small and unassuming slot once allowed for limitless, modular, and affordable aftermarket storage space expansion.
While not every hardware maker historically supported the microSD standard on their mobile gadgets (I’m looking at you, Apple and Google), you could always count on strong support from the likes of HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony, Samsung, and a number of other OEMs. Then, one day, microSD compatibility inexplicably went the way of the dodo.
While a reasonably solid selection of mid-range phones continue to bear the torch of effortless storage expansion to this day, the only major Android phone brand that still ships a microSD card slot on a flagship device is Sony with its Xperia line.
With this in mind, here are five factors that played a decisive role in ushering in today’s post-microSD card slot smartphone world.
Speed
Internal storage is faster
Objectively speaking, the modern UFS-based flash storage used within premium smartphones is faster than what generic external microSD cards are capable of providing. For reference, a standard microSD card is most similar in speed to the eMMC storage technology found on less expensive mobile gadgets, which is quite a bit slower than even previous-generation versions of UFS.
Now, there does exist a newer microSD Express standard, notably adopted by Nintendo in its recently-released Switch 2 video game console, that brings with it near SSD-like speeds with its use of PCIe and NVMe interface technologies and its additional set of pins.
However, microSD Express is more expensive to implement into a device than its vanilla predecessor is, and there are far fewer microSD Express card configurations available on the market to choose from. With Express, SD cards have received the read and write speed boost that they’ve desperately needed for some time now — but don’t expect the next Galaxy S or Pixel to play nice with them.
Greed
The endless pursuit of profits
The reason why I don’t expect next-generation flagship smartphones to embrace the speedy microSD Express standard boils down to corporate greed. There’s little incentive for handset makers to provide users with a quick and easy upgrade path in the form of external storage expansion. Aside from Samsung, which happens to manufacture first-party microSD and microSD Express cards of its own, the likes of Google et al. only stand to lose profits to Lexar, SanDisk, and other established storage brands.
Apple, conversely, has known this reality from the very beginning, and other phone makers have finally caught on: if you can upsell your customers with expensive internal storage upgrades at the initial time of purchase, you stand to benefit monetarily.
Alternatives
Larger internal storage SKUs, streaming, and the prevalence of cloud storage
Even with microSD flying in the face of corporate incentive structures, many Android phone makers had traditionally offered microSD slots on their high-end smartphones out of lack of viable alternatives. Until recently, internal phone capacities were much smaller than they’ve become in the past three-to-five years, and so microSD was a quick and easy tool for softening the blow of storage claustrophobia.
Elsewhere, both cloud storage and multimedia streaming services have expanded significantly in popularity, reach, and acceptance within the consumer tech space. This has depressed the demand for locally-available storage, as most of us listen to music, binge-watch TV, and retrieve document files from a remote server somewhere far off and geographically distant.
Security
Your data is safer (possibly)
On the one hand, removing the microSD card slot effectively removes an attack vector that could be leveraged by bad actors. For example, if someone were to steal your phone, they wouldn’t be able to simply remove a physical microSD card if one isn’t available to be removed in the first place. This is one of the main arguments in favor of the removal of physical SIM card slots, and the same logic applies with the microSD standard.
On the other hand, cloud storage solutions are far from a perfect alternative from a security standpoint, and there are very real concerns out there over how sensitive user data is stored and retrieved, and whether it might be accessible to interceptors, corporate employees, and government agencies alike.
Build
One less moving part to worry about
In the ever-ending quest to consolidate the physical build of our mobile tech gadgets, removing the microSD card slot is one of the many sirens that are hard to ignore. The removal of the SD slot from a phone reduces the risk of mechanical failure by eliminating a moving part from the picture. It also makes it easier to seal a unit from water and dust ingress, and it leaves more internal space within the device’s chassis for other components.
We’re still a ways off from, say, removing the USB-C port from the smartphone picture, but I reckon it’s only a matter of time until it occurs. After all, we’ve already waved goodbye to the likes of the 3.5mm headphone jack, the IR blaster, removable batteries, LED status indicator lights, and more all in the name of simplicity and product consolidation. If even the venerable microSD card slot isn’t safe from disregard, then perhaps nothing is.
USB-C
The unlikely return of microSD
Speaking of USB-C, its emergence, in a roundabout way, has re-introduced the ability to connect external storage products like microSD cards to our modern smartphones, entirely sidestepping the need for dedicated internal slots. Yes, plugging a USB-C hub, dock, or dongle isn’t as elegant as having a slot or tray built into the phone itself, but this becomes less of a problem when you take into account modern solutions like this Aiffro P10 Magnetic Portable SSD, which streamlines connectivity via clever use of magnets.
With the up-and-coming nature of smartphone desktop modes in the Android space, I invision a micro SD card Renaissance in the form of plugging a phone into a dock, which then plugs into an external monitor, thereby providing additional storage and power to the unit. In this same way, any number of SD cards, USB thumb drives, SSDs, and even HDDs will be able to live on in the mobile phone era, with docking being its facilitator.
