Absolutely hate having no sd card and other grievances

[Hating lack of SD ca]

I got this phone in August and I absolutely love the galaxys capability and easy customization ive been using this exact line of phone since they were in the single digits. But it seems like the features i enjoyed most are going to the wayside. I relied so heavily on my SD card because I know how much cloud servers can damage the enviroment since you're basically storing everything on someone else's device that runs 24/7. Now these phones won't even allow you to feasibly own and manage the images you take without a third party(buying their cloud storage). Plus they added ads you can't turn off notifications for and even more unnecessary apps you can't delete. I think this is especially egregious since storage has to be rationed. I should be able to own the intellectual content I store on my phone without third parties getting involved for someone trying to sell me something. 

[GoanGeek]

I love google one storage as I don't have to bother if my phone is lost or If I change my phone as all my stuff is back within minutes.

I feel cloud is the future.

I haven't seen ads as such on my device as mine is direct from Samsung.

Most carriers are notorious for adding stuff and apps though.

Life is about choices and you should be able to back up to your pc if you don't like cloud storage.

[walkerx]

If you have Amazon Prime you have free unlimited cloud storage for photos. Videos is limited.
O365 gives you 1TB of storage but don't use Galaxy Gallery to sync photos as if you delete from phone they go from cloud. Use OneDrive to backup.
If you use Lightroom you can get 1TB storage plans along with the software.
Google One becomes pricy for storage. For the cost for decent storage use O365 single or better family for 6TB storage.
If you have a PC and happy yo keep on 24/7 install Emby, get a lifetime licence and setup to upload your photos from phone to your own server. You can even have it so only uploads when at home meaning you Dan reduce power on time of pc.
You could also setup a shared folder on pc and install fx explorer on phone for free and use that to transfer photos to your pc.

[Joeeye]

If all you're doing is storing files, then there's no reason why you can't buy yourself a USB C SD Card reader. People always overlook the obvious solution. Personally I don't care about the SD Card option, compared to the phones internal storage, it's terribly slow. If I need more space on my phone, I buy a larger storage model or simply do some house cleaning.

[PaulC59]

I think Apple started this practice to try and force people to buy cloud storage and they did things with iTunes etc to stop you transferring purchased music etc to new devices, I.e tricks to force you to pay for additional stuff. I like the option of an SD card as it gives you some control over your device and content and an SD cards is way cheaper in the £100s than buying a model with more built in storage. SD cards can be formatted to become part of your phones built in storage which can be useful if you have too many apps and run out of storage so can be a cheap upgrade. Don't get me wrong, cloud storage is really useful and saves a lot of agro but it should be a choice and not a requirement. I use Onedrive for cloud storage as I have 1tb with my office subscription but you have to be on standby in case they change their policies or subscriptions etc as they have control over your data. Look at the price of a high speed 750gb SD card then look at the price difference between a S23 256gb model vs the 1tb model to get an idea of how much extra your paying

[Blessed4life]

Hi, I used to be disappointed with the removal of the sd card storage until I was told about the Micro Type C card reader, since purchasing this gadget I've totally forgotten about the removal of the sd card slot, just purchase a 256GB Micro sd card also & your good to go.
Check this out! https://amzn.eu/d/6M5kXIw

[Joeeye]

SD Cards don't compare to the flash inside the phone these days. If you're backing up or dealing with 100s GB worth of data, those cards could take upwards of days vs internal flash speeds. Not even the most expensive SD cards come close. And if you are seriously using up 256GB of data purely on apps on a phone, I'm pretty sure 90% of it goes unused. The only reason I typically hear for the arguments of having it is bragging rights. Besides as I mentioned before, if you must have SD Card usage on your phone, there's always the USB C option. If you don't accept that, then it's probably not as important as people make it out to be.

[Carlvig]

I got myself an external ssd with usb C 3.2 to overcome this issue and couldn't be happier, far more reliable and much faster transfer rates than sd cards plus the added bonus of portability. Happy to see the back of sd cards.

[PaulC59]

Yes most devices internal storage is a little faster than an SD card but if your at capacity on a device then an SD card will not only speed up the device, it will extend the life of your device (One of the reasons SD slots are disappearing). For Videos, Photos and low demand apps SD cards are more than adequate. Regarding backups, that is determined more by your connection speed to your backup location rather than your device speed which will most likely be considerably slower than both your device and an SD card. I can't speak to how much storage individuals should need or use? That is determined by what they need a device for and how they use their own device e.g if you store a lot of hi res photos, videos and in app data that can eat storage quickly but you want quick and easy access etc it's up to the individual. There is one main reason SD slots are removed and that is manufacturer's don't make any money from an SD slot but they can charge you a small fortune for more internal storage, cloud subscriptions and cause you to need to upgrade sooner etc and also get the added benefit to control your personal data. There are always pros and cons with every variation but it's pretty much up to the individual how they use their devices but I do get irritated when manufacturers remove functionality from devices which takes control away from the owner. I have previously used SD cards in phones sometimes as external storage and sometimes formatted as extended internal storage and have never noticed a difference in speed and performance of the device. IMHO manufacturers will give you many reasons why SD cards are a bad idea to convince you to hand over large bundles of cash for their alternatives. You will find this kind of functionality tend to gets removed from high end phones as the customers are willing to pay the huge premium prices, whereas in lower end devices customers are more savvy so most will keep the functionality so as not to lose the savvy customers

[Joeeye]

I don't consider 20 fold increases in speed "a little". You're making light of a storage medium capable of much higher performance. SD cards would literally struggle to keep up the demands of quality 4k 60 fps videos, let alone 8k 30. Those are the real culprits to space usage and practical uses of the flash inside phones today and they don't even touch on how much faster the flash can perform. Also a full device does not slow down and just "speed up" with the addition of an SD Card. These aren't windows devices. I have a Note 10+ 5G with 1TB storage, 512GB flash and 512GB SD Card. If I remove the SD Card, it doesn't give me better performance automagically (the flash is pretty much full around 99%). The storage is literally like archiving, android has few apps that will consume all that space unless the user intentionally is loading it up with as many apps as possible.

Hypothetically speaking, if you're dealing with those Hi Res photos and videos you describe, it's pretty foolish to not consider a MUCH faster medium than SD Cards. It's clear you don't use these things or know the performance differences. If it were me, I'd either use a PC to do said work as would be both way more productive and frankly, cost effective. With all that said, you still ignore the fact that USB C is always an option, but stubborn believers in aging legacy hardware fail to let go. PCs have gone through many times such as these through hardware change over generations from the use of ISA Card slots, to PCI to AGP and PCI-E for GPUs. From P-ATA to S-ATA to M.2s and NvME or SIMMs to DIMMs to DDR1 through 5. Technology changes, as do standards. SD Cards are in the past (but not totally unavailable to you). Get with the times, technology has always moved at a fast pace.