Why don't phones have dual micro SD card slots?

[dharak1]

I've been wondering for a while now why there are no phones with 2 SD card slots. There are Dual SIM phones with SD slots so why not replace one SIM slot withan SD one? You could get much more storage with that.

[shynung]

Micro SD cards' storage capacities are growing every year. I've seen a prototype somewhere that has 128 GB capacity. No reason to have two when one's already big, no?

[dharak1]

Well with the beginning of 4K movies coming around even with 128Gb of storage it wouldn't be enough for some people like me. I could have a phone with 128 internal and two 128Gb cards and It still wouldn't be enough. I'm sure you can buy 128Gb cards right now I've seen a few around I'm just waiting for 256Gb cards. There's already a 512Gb full size SD card.

[Moss]

Well with the beginning of 4K movies coming around even with 128Gb of storage it wouldn't be enough for some people like me.

Why on Earth are you shooting 4K on a phone?

[dharak1]

Just actual movies and media in 4K. I can shoot 4K video at 30FPS or something but I don't use it.

[Lukaszenko]

There's only so much space in a cell phone. Some phones even opt to have NO micro-SD card slots, I imagine because it takes up a lot of room compared to built-in memory. You have to fit in the memory chip, the housing, the slot, who knows what else, and you have to shift everything else around to make it all fit.

I'm guessing it's simply very low on the list of important things in a cell phone. What do people look for? Performance, battery life, thickness. It just doesn't seem like a full-sized hard-drive's memory at the expense of everything else would sell.

[Nuke]

simple, they want you to download things and charge it to your data plan.

[cantab]

Also because slots mean having to put notches and covers in the phone where you'd like a single solid piece of material. I expect manufacturers like Apple would far rather not have to even put a SIM slot in.

[magnemoe]

Also because slots mean having to put notches and covers in the phone where you'd like a single solid piece of material. I expect manufacturers like Apple would far rather not have to even put a SIM slot in.

I think the sim card is pretty dated, nobody uses it to store even contact information, that is outside of emergency and you get an replacement phone in the field.

It could have been replaced by something like an QR code.

On the other hand, Sony has watertight phones with SD cards so its not an serious problem.

Think the reason for Apple to drop the SD card was more to get a way to price differentiate the phones then they just had one model.

They neither has SD cards on ipad where the size is not an issue and the extra storage space is very expensive, add that if you want more space you need an new phone.

For two cards i think most people would simply use it as two drives on a computer, you buy an new and larger drive and keep the old.

Phone comes with 16 GB, its filled up and you buy 32 and have 48.

[Nibb31]

I don't see why you would need two SD cards. Just upgrade to a bigger one and recycle the old one in another device or as a USB stick.

The current shift is toward cloud data and streaming. At home, you can connect to your NAS (and use it as your own cloud when you're on the go), and of course you can always attach a big old USB drive with an OTG cable.

[Sean Mirrsen]

The reason why manufacturers don't install extra storage card slots is pretty obvious, especially if they produce the same model of device in a series of progressively more expensive models that differ only in onboard storage. Just extra expense for them and less profit off the more expensive models with more onboard memory.

But as for the reasons to have two, I have one pretty big reason, and that is using your phone as an intermediary for transferring stuff from a "main" card to an "archive" card. If you run out of space on one card, and want to offload something to another card, you have to either make many individual operations with the often much much more limited internal storage on the phone, or use a proper laptop or tablet. About the only solution to that is using an OTG cable with an external storage device (the miniature MicroSD adapters that pretty much fit into a USB port completely are neat), but that requires you to have both of those things. Admittedly, even for a "pretty big" reason it's not very big, given low actual necessity for it, and existence of relatively cheap options, but still.

Somebody should make dedicated external microSD or SD card adapters for these things. Skip the OTG cable and just plug it directly into the microUSB or miniUSB port on the phone.

[Nibb31]

Somebody should make dedicated external microSD or SD card adapters for these things. Skip the OTG cable and just plug it directly into the microUSB or miniUSB port on the phone.

You mean something like this ?

http://www.amazon.com/Unitek-Connector-smartphone-function-Notebook/dp/B00NL43JAU/ref=sr_1_10?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417124852&sr=1-10&keywords=OTG+sd+card

http://www.amazon.com/Leef-microSD-microUSB-Connector-Android/dp/B00J2D7R20/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1417124979&sr=1-4&keywords=OTG+sd+card

[dharak1]

The problem is I just can't get a bigger card. They don't exist. 128Gb is the largest you can buy. I only have a 64 right now but it's very close to full. I would gladly sacrifice a removable back and a few hundred mAh for another card slot and a bit more internal storage.

[Kryten]

The problem is I just can't get a bigger card. They don't exist. 128Gb is the largest you can buy. I only have a 64 right now but it's very close to full. I would gladly sacrifice a removable back and a few hundred mAh for another card slot and a bit more internal storage.

Have you considered that needing more than 128Gb on a mobile device is insane? What do you have on there, the complete Hitchcock filmography in 4k?

[Kulebron]

In 2013, I filled half of 128GB card on my camera by not cleaning new images at all. Was carrying it everywhere, shooting profusely. I was doing this at almost professional level (Professionals make about 2-5 times more images.) Still it's insane.

I can't imagine filling up more on a phone. Unless you photograph every single Capuccino you drink.

I think a couple of external HDDs are a good and reliable solution. Offload stuff onto them. By the way, SD cards deteriorate. Some of my many vids of early 2013 are broken already.

Edited November 27, 2014 by Kulebron

[dharak1]

~40 HD movies at around 3.5 Gb average. 140Gb of movies alone. If I have no service I can't stream them and the cost would be absurd even if I could because there is no WIFI in the mountains. If I had a 128Gb card it would almost not be enough. 160Gb is probably enough for now but farther into the future it may not be. This is without any 4k movies at all.

[CptRichardson]

In other words, you want an ARA. http://www.projectara.com/

[dharak1]

An ARA would help. I would prefer a whole phone though. A prebuilt phone with 2 SD card slots and on screen buttons would be workable for something like my phone. You could replace whatever is in the area with the buttons with SD card slots.

[Nibb31]

~40 HD movies at around 3.5 Gb average. 140Gb of movies alone. If I have no service I can't stream them and the cost would be absurd even if I could because there is no WIFI in the mountains. If I had a 128Gb card it would almost not be enough. 160Gb is probably enough for now but farther into the future it may not be. This is without any 4k movies at all.

Sounds like you're using it wrong. A phone is not for mass storage. It can get lost, SD cards are more expensive than hard drives, they can get corrupted (trust me, it happens) and 128GB is an awful lot of data to lose in one go.

Why would you really need to carry around 40 HD movies on your phone? If you watched 2 movies a day, that would still be 20 days worth of video. Do you really spend that much time out in the woods without being able to sync with a PC ? The only reason to have them always with you is if you need to rewatch them regularly when you're on the go, which is ridiculous. How many times do you watch the same movie in a month or two?

All you need is to bring the movies that you plan to watch, or enough entertainment to survive while you're away. The collection can stay on the hard drive at home.

And as we already said, if you really need to travel with your entire movie collection, you can always bring a 2TB external USB drive. It will also be much cheaper than an SD-card, and more versatile (you can plug it into the USB on a TV). Or get one of the OTG devices I linked to up there.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Nibb31

[Sean Mirrsen]

I think a better question is, why do you need 40 HD movies, on a phone? If you need entertainment on the go and have storage troubles, maybe it's wiser to pull at the other end of the equation, and get movies in 480p?

[Lukaszenko]

I sometimes put many movies on my device because you never really know what you're going to watch when, and you don't want to spend hours planning for it. In this case, the more the better. I do an analogous thing when I pack for a trip: I just kind of throw a little bit of all my clothes in the luggage so I don't have to think about it too much and something will always work.

But 40 HD movies does sound like taking this too far. It's the equivalent of taking your whole wardrobe with you for a weekend trip. I agree it would be NICE to be able to do this, but in reality it's just not practical and necessary enough to warrant the expense. For most of us, at least.

[Red Iron Crown]

Volume inside a smartphone is a highly valuable commodity, every cubic mm used for a feature is a tradeoff with another feature or increases the size of the phone. Dual MicroSD slots is such an edge case that it just isn't worth implementing. Heck, my last three phones have had MicroSD slots that never saw a card inserted, though I don't keep much in the way of media on my phones.

[jwenting]

Have you considered that needing more than 128Gb on a mobile device is insane? What do you have on there, the complete Hitchcock filmography in 4k?

well said. HD movies with a mobile phone? He must be insane to think that lens and sensor can ever make anything that benefits from that.

[Nibb31]

well said. HD movies with a mobile phone?

Many phones have HD 1080p screens nowadays, so it's not that ridiculous to want to watch your HD movies on one, and downscaling your library to watch them on a mobile is a tedious process. Also, some people might want to connect their device to a 1080p TV while they're on the go.

It's not the size of the movies that's insane, it's the number of movies that he wants to carry with him all the time.

He must be insane to think that lens and sensor can ever make anything that benefits from that.

The onboard camera has nothing to do with the resolution of movies. Also, a couple of phones can now record 4K video (which is ridiculous IMO). It's not technically far-fetched because 4K resolution (3 840 × 2 160 pixels) is equivalent to an 8 megapixel sensor, which is what the flagship phones are equipped with. I'm not saying that it will be high-quality or that it has any purpose (1080p is more than enough), but the sensors are perfectly capable of doing 4K.

Edited November 28, 2014 by Nibb31

[Nuke]

i dont understand the reasoning behind making small screens so high res. what the point if you have to squint to see any of that detail?