I am in the process of looking between repairing my phone or switching to a new one. And the no brainer evolution to the OnePlus 7 Pro I have is a Pixel phone. Pixel Phones are definitely not perfect, I know that the battery would fall faster than other phones but hey, that’s ok, google chip in it, possibility to go GrapheneOs, all good.
But the A versions only having 128 GB, and needing to pay 100 extra Euro on the Normal and Pro phone for 256GB is ridiculous, and not allowing me to add a SD card for that! Is insane I restarted my phone in December fresh from zero, and in the last 9 months I used 163 GB of memory. 48GB of it is my music on Deezer, for which I pay to be able to download “HIFI” files which I am not willing to trade for using less space on my phone, I work in a place with no 4G, I’ve got a few playlist I switch between. The rest is 25 GB of Pictures, 7GB of games. 44GB of apps.
Now the answer to this is “Well now with your Pixel phone you can use the Google Cloud, Google Docs blablabla”. Something insights by Google offering 3 month of Google one and 3 month of YouTube premium when you buy a Pixel phone. So much cloud that’s soo cool! And you can just redownload things when you need it. Well I don’t want to redownload my musics everyday when I listen to them, I don’t want to trade and limit what I would call normal use. I know not everyone will resonate with this, but the carbon impact on bandwidth used from cloud in 4G is important.
Normalise SD cards, Normalise not using the Cloud as a solution for everything
Update 2 Days later
Hey, writting here because this post has brought a lot of people to talk about storage of data on phone, which is quite nice. I am writting here just because a lot of comments are repeating certain points and It wouldn’t be useful answering to all of them if after their will be more comments saying the same thing.
I am not saying Cloud = Bad. It’s great we have a place out there where we can Store Data in case anything happens. I simply wish either brand gave us more choice on data capacity, seeing a Pixel 7a only at 128 gb ain’t cool, let me make a choice. Seing a Pixel & with 128gb or having to pay an extra 100€ for 256gb when a sd card is 30€ is not cool.
A personal server is in my plans, and it’s one of the projects I’m the most impatient to have.
I understand that I have a different use of phones then the average, I simply want to be able to adapt the tools I use to my different use.
I have taken the step to take a look at the storage in my phone by curiosity and to look with a different eye my consomption of Storage, and have deleted 3gb of games, and 3gb of apps that where useless. I’ve also started looking into my photos and took out 3gb of photos I had which where useless. And I think there is more photos I’ll delete, I am not done on that of course
My signal discussion are important to me, I am in a Long Distance Relationship, and discussions I have with my SO on Signal are the major part of my relationship, and I cherish them. I have set up signal so that it makes when charging at night a copy of my discussions, and when I have Sincthing, it loads the conv to a HDD Drive on my PC. That being said, in the floders I found bugged temp file from saves that did not end, for a total of 20 gb of Signal discussions (oof lol) which where deleted too. How ridiculus was it? Well in Storage>Files the weight of total files dropped from 20,68gb to 0,68gb
Anyway, I am now at 132gb :D! I’m not writting this because I am feeling attacked or to defend myself, just as a small update and because these are reocuring comment that’s all, i’m still anwering here and there if you arrive a bit latter to the post, it’s impressive from lemmy I feel to still be receiving comments and have a discussion that continues 2 day after a post. Usually on Reddit posts would die in 6 hours, and their where no dick’s in the chat. I’ve read every single message, and answers other people did
Normalise SD cards
I never stopped. Any phone I buy must have an SD slot. Problem solved.
Same here, I don’t understand people buying phones without SD card and than complaining about it.
They sent a message to manufacturer that they don’t want SD cart slot and of course in the next year evel less phones will have it.
I totally feel you OP. I have a 500+ GB music collection I refuse to give up for streaming apps (which don’t have all that music anyway). But I also acknowledge the vast majority of people install a couple apps, take a couple pics and videos, and that’s about it, so I get why 128 is the default.
My solution was to cough up money for a DAP (specifically the Fiio M11S). I know it’s outside the budget of most people and definitely a super niche purchase, but boy do I feel relieved knowing I can plug my 1 TB SD card in in it and have all my music whenever I want to (plus other neat features like an actual audio jack and no audio resampling). And it also means I’m no longer restricted in my phone choices which is wonderful.
Maybe it’s something for you to consider over a NAS or other local server solutions that require more upkeep.
SD cards are irreplaceable to me because my phone does its backups into it. If my phone dies, I still can pull it out and have everything I need. And I’m not going to give my personal data to someone elses computer in a datacenter.
You might like something called Syncthing. It’s a FOSS data replication thing that doesn’t store stuff on other people’s servers but if you have a computer or some other place you want to throw files, it can keep things synchronised with your phone, without any cloud storage crap .
I highly recommend syncthing
Irs free.
You gotta set it up on all devices that sync anything but its very set and forget
@Kyoyeou It’s okay to have 128 GB on a phone. At least for me. I got away even with 16 GB until last year, and I could still easily get away with 32 GB if I try hard enough.
What is not okay is to make such phones and not provide an SD card slot on it.
Fully agree with that, I am not saying at all that 128gb, 64gb, 32gb are bad, but the lack of choices is
Mid tier phones have sd card support, 3.5mm jack replaceable battery.
You only have to know where to look.
Ok, now which ones have all three, plus a metal frame?
Or a decent camera.
Sony, except the replaceable battery part
Okay, the others are more common but
@Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com wrote:
removable battery
Are you saying that such phones are still manufactured in 2023? like, with the ability to only remove the back case? I gotta find these in the stores where I live.
I’ve realised I quite like my note9 with a headphone jack and sd card. I’ve decided I need to fix the battery and display. Use that for reading, audiobooks, and browsing. And then get a modern phone iphone/android flagship for calls and messaging.
25gb of pictures… I mean… So you need all of that stored locally so it’s accessible wherever you need it while you’re in the middle of nowhere in the woods or a desert?
44gb of non games apps? 🤔
You realise you might be a power user that just bought the wrong device?
There’s no excuse for a lack of expandable storage, theres no excuse for a lack of a 3.5mm port. Phones have been stagnant for the last 3/4 years.
I am totally fine with 64 GB if I have a fucking SD card slot!!!
Reward Sony, they have low, mid, and high end phones that still have SD cards and headphone jacks.
While I respect them for their hardware, they need to up their software game. They’ve been left in the dust on update lifespan by Samsung and Google. I’m also miffed that they don’t have much care for specification accuracy (or at least didn’t when I got my US Xperia III).
As much as I’d love to, they’re simply too expensive, by far. Amd I’ve had several Sony’s compact models before that have each left me with a malfunctioning screen after about a year.
Disagree
Any mobile device (that is not stationary).is a risk of being lost or stolen, which means if you have important data on it - it’s at risk
Cloud services offers backup for such data, so large storage is not needed.
You can and should have both.
What also adds to the burden? A/B partitioning. Which means you have another 20gb or so, being used by a partition you can’t even access. Not to mention, you don’t actually get 128gb, more like 112.
A lot of comments in this thread defending OEMs from customer’s benefits, which is disheartening to me, but I’m sure joyous for shareholders. I see comments saying you should buy premium phones that have SD cards, but there aren’t many options. The only one is a $1400 Xperia I V. I would love nothing more to have the SD card on only the “ultra” variants, if costs are too much of an issue for those who don’t use the feature, but there’s not much “ultra” in the “Ultra” variant besides an extra camera or two.
For those who are baffled by what we hoard on our devices, why does it matter? Do we ask what you do on your phone when there doesn’t seem to be anything on them? “I barely use 50GB on my device” and “128GB is more than enough for me” seem to be the prevailing notion here, and it’s frustrating since your demographic is already highly represented on the market. It’s similar to those who wish there wasn’t a selfie cam because they never used it, ignoring all the video calls millions use on a daily basis.
But maybe an answer might stop the “curiosity” of the sparse data hoarders, and they might understand our plight. On my 1TB SD Card, I currently have:
220GB Audiobooks 18GB Music 34GB Pictures 330GB Videos, Movies, and TV Shows 10GB Work and Project Files 12GB Podcasts 14GB Games
As someone who is frequently in low-signal areas, especially while driving, streaming is not an option. My media has entertained me during flights, public transit commutes, working out, jury duty, and the DMV. I also don’t want to transfer my media in and out of my device (I do back up my data wirelessly to my own server), nor do I want to bring an adapter when the technology is already embedded inside.
So OP, I feel you, and I’m hoping SD cards comeback.
It’s the same with people asking me why I don’t buy bluetooth headsets and insist on having wired headphones. I don’t want to buy something extra when I already have a pair of VERY GOOD headphones and audio signal is always better on wire - even with lossless audio on bluetooth (which is not yet supported by (m)any devices).
Imagine if we had this - physically tiny - and established standard how we could let the user add extra storage space to their small electronic devices.
I don’t know, maybe SanDisk could develop something like this, some Micro format storage device. That’s not a bad name, is it? Something with Micro, and SanDisk? Yeah, someone should create that!
A Floppy disk?
You are an extreme outlier. Most people don’t have that much stuff on their phone.
I agree it would be nice if phones started at 256gb, but honestly the average person won’t come close to that in 2 years, even if they don’t know about Google photos.
Not that extreme. Recording alone on a newer phone uses 1GB in 8 minutes and that’s not even 4k.
Then you have games. One of the most popular games in the world is Genshin Impact and its been downloaded 50,000,000+ times from Google play. It also currently needs 20GB of space.
Sure, most people don’t need over 128GB, but ones that do are far from extreme outliers. Personally I travel a lot and don’t usually have consistent data when I do, so I keep a couple hundred gigs of TV shows and movies on my phone to watch, along with games.
