Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The phone memory money grab

One of the great things about android phones is the external sd card slot. My Samsung Galaxy Exhibit came with 2GB of flash memory. For under $30 I could put in a high speed 32GB micro SD card for storing photos and audio.

The Nexus 4, however, doesn't have an SD card slot. Instead, you can pay $50 extra to get 8 GB more storage. This seems like a page from Apple's book, where for a mere $100 you can get an extra 16GB of memory. And of course, there is no upgrading either of these. So if you later decide you need a few more GB, you are AWOL. A lovely case of planned obsolescence

Luckily, Samsung still allows you to plug in SD cards. Sure, they'll sell you a phone with 16GB more memory for $50-$100 more. But, they'll also let you plug in $10 16GB microsd if you later decide you need a little more room for your audiobooks. Hmm... Maybe that is one of the reasons they are now dominating the market.

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