I agree. The battery and micro SD changes are major mistakes in my opinion, at least when it comes to my personal requirements. Obviously Samsung thinks otherwise, and considering what is at stake they must have given it a lot of focused thought and found it okay (and it has worked well for iPhones), but for my own usage this is a step back. I currently have two Samsung S5s (and an iPhone ...the second S5 and the iPhone are for work), and for the Samsungs I normally change batteries between them almost daily. This is largely due to always being at meetings, yet having busy usage of the primary S5 ...and whenever the battery gets low all I need to do is switch it with that of the other S5. This is more convenient than carrying one of those charge-bank thingimajigs.
Same thing for removable storage. I have never really trusted the cloud for personal data, but now it seems I don't have much of a choice going forward.
Anyways, Samsung must have thought it out and came to the conclusion that removable batteries and storage are not important. Maybe they are not to most people, and there are ways around them. But to me it is a step backward.
Agree about the SD card and the battery. The battery is my pet peeve though. Why go backward? When I questioned why mine isn’t removable, I was told no new model Motorola phones have removable batteries now. Grrrrr