Android phone manufacturers made a big mistake taking the expanded SD card space and the removable battery out of their new phones. That was a huge competitive advantage.
Agreed. I have the Note 4, last of the Samsung removable battery and expandable memory. I absolutely love it.
I am hoping it hangs on until they come to their senses.
I guess most people are too technically challenged to change an iPhone battery, but I found it quite simple, and the battery itself about 25 bucks.
I have a four mini with 32 gig SD card 1500 songs and they are not on a cloud
Completely agree, I have a two year old phone, I would have replaced it this year if I had an option with removable battery and SD card. Since there wasn’t, I bought a new battery and bigger SD card, it is now as good as new.
Maybe that’s why they are taking the option away.
The SD card space was a sales disadvantage in the Enterprise as it was a huge security risk for IT to accepting Android phones for any Bring Your Own Device or even for Android sales direct for use to the Enterprise level IT departments. IT was too easy to steal the cards out of the phones. . . and therefore all of the data on the cards. Google saw that and to open the doors to the Enterprise, removed it. Similarly, batteries were a enterprise sales impediment. . . as well as a security problem. Remove the battery and the Enterprise owners of the phone couldn't track the location of their property. So. . . Gone.
I think a more important driver of dropping sales was the revelation that Android phones cannot be completely erased at the end of the owner's use of them. . . and essentially must be destroyed instead of handed down or sold to another user. Essentially secret data was left on the phones including passwords, credit card data, and other personal information including photographs that might be sensitive were found on Android phones that were supposedly reset to factory blank conditions. Even experienced technical people could not properly erase their phones of this sensitive data. That essentially destroyed any resale value of an Android phone for anyone who might be concerned about their privacy.
Add the growing level of malware attacks that were hitting only Android and you were getting what some pundits were calling a "perfect storm" for Anrdroid when combined with the fact that many manufacturers were not pushing out the patches necessary for fixing the vulnerabilities in their equipment because they had no economic incentive to do it, even when Google published them in a timely manner.
Consumers aren't stupid. They'll go where it's safer.