Anand and Brian Weigh in at the Battery and MicroSD Debate

tybert7 said:
so, just pointing out the obvious here but, if you had 128 GB internal storage (non swappable), you'd be better off than you are now with swappable storage.
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Sure. And the Galaxy S3 was not available with 128 GB NAND. Neither is the S4. Neither is the iPhone 5s. In fact, I'm not aware of a single flagship phone with that option. And if/when one finally appears, it will no doubt be priced $200+ over its 32 GB counterpart. The microSD cost me $40.

I'm not quite understanding your point. Is the implication that if "all" (5%) of us nerds who keep demanding microSD would only shut up, manufacturers would start giving us more internal storage to compensate? Highly doubt it.
 
MrCrispy said:
Anand is a well known Apple shill and of course he supports whatever aligns with Apple offerings.
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In the typical [H] user's eye, anyone who at any time recommends any Apple product, for any reason, is an Apple shill. Considering Apple makes some good products worth recommending, it's impossible not to be labelled an Apple shill.

MrCrispy said:
That's *never* going to happen. And therefore, removable storage is essential. I want access to my music, videos and data files at all times, whether I have cloud and internet access or not.
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How many SD cards do you need to carry to be able to have access all your data at any time?

MrCrispy said:
This is not a hard concept. But everyone has done a good job brainwashing people into thinking giving them less and charging more is somehow good ?!
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You aren't being given less. In the absence of an SD slot, the interval volume is being occupied by some other component. Ordinarily, that's the battery: a much more costly use of interval volume.
 
wonderfield said:
In the typical [H] user's eye, anyone who at any time recommends any Apple product, for any reason, is an Apple shill. Considering Apple makes some good products worth recommending, it's impossible not to be labelled an Apple shill.
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That's not what he said. He said that Anand is a well-known Apple shill. And that's pretty accurate. I don't think Anand would even attempt to deny that he is a huge, huge fan of Apple, and that opinion clearly comes across in his reviews. How could it not? Who is capable of true objectivity?

He also practically publishes Intel ad copy verbatim. Intel was so certain that Haswell spelled instant doom for ARM and Anand was right there printing that stuff all over his site. It was faster than a GT 650 but the only evidence he had was Intel's test setup.

And yes, I do know that AnandTech is officially sponsored by AMD and runs AMD-sponsored content in the AMD-sponsored section. Maybe some of that is because he has an absolute man-crush on Raja Koduri. Or more likely, just that he needs to run a business. That doesn't change the fact that Anand clearly has his favorites and it comes across in the reviews.

This is just how the whole world works, and always has. That's why it's important to not take any of these online reviews (and benchmarks) too seriously. They're just some random dudes on the internet who are sharing their opinions. And most of them don't know much about benchmarking.
 
jwcalla said:
That's not what he said.
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No, that is what I said. That's my observation of the "typical [H] user".

jwcalla said:
I don't think Anand would even attempt to deny that he is a huge, huge fan of Apple, and that opinion clearly comes across in his reviews. How could it not? Who is capable of true objectivity?
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No one. But being a fan of something does not make one a shill of something. The word "shill" and the word "fan" are in no way analogous.

jwcalla said:
That doesn't change the fact that Anand clearly has his favorites and it comes across in the reviews.
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Yes, it does. But what does that have to do with shilling?

jwcalla said:
And most of them don't know much about benchmarking.
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Your assertion here is that Anand doesn't know too much about benchmarking? If that isn't what you're claiming, of what relevance is the statement here?
 
I really don't care much about the replaceble battery as by the time it dies I'll have a new phone.

But I WANT SD support on all phones. Anand says it adds to the cost and takes space, but if you can fit a sim slot, you can fit a SD slot.

Why on earth do I want 128gb of fast expensive memory? I would be more than happy with 8gb for android and 64 GB SD for music, videos and apps. So using SD could actually cost less.
 
I don't care much about the micro SD. With usb OTG, I can throw movies/tv shows on a 32gb thumb drive and not clutter up the internal storage. The only time I need that is when I'm traveling, so dealing with a small cord or plug hanging out of the bottom isn't a big deal.

Also don't much care about the easily swappable battery, I would however like for the batteries to at least be replaceable. Lithium batteries start to suffer after 12-16 months, especially since with android we have to charge every day, eating up the available charging cycles. Wouldn't bother me if it was a 15 minute chore to open the phone up, at least make it possible and not glue the damn battery in.

One more thing, stop trying to make it 1mm thinner, my N5 would be a much better phone if it had 2800-3000 mah instead of 2300. It would probably be marginally thicker, most people would never recognize it, but you wouldn't have to worry about conserving quite as much away from the charger.
 
dave99 said:
I don't care much about the micro SD. With usb OTG, I can throw movies/tv shows on a 32gb thumb drive and not clutter up the internal storage. The only time I need that is when I'm traveling, so dealing with a small cord or plug hanging out of the bottom isn't a big deal.

Also don't much care about the easily swappable battery, I would however like for the batteries to at least be replaceable. Lithium batteries start to suffer after 12-16 months, especially since with android we have to charge every day, eating up the available charging cycles. Wouldn't bother me if it was a 15 minute chore to open the phone up, at least make it possible and not glue the damn battery in.

One more thing, stop trying to make it 1mm thinner, my N5 would be a much better phone if it had 2800-3000 mah instead of 2300. It would probably be marginally thicker, most people would never recognize it, but you wouldn't have to worry about conserving quite as much away from the charger.
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OMG... options! NO! I JUST WANT MICROSD!!!

Seriously, there's so many ways around the not having enough memory and battery life issues. But, no, let's be stubborn and declare our love for Samsung...

Hell, do want my friend does. Get a flip phone and an 8" windows 8.1 tablet...
 
I agree with a lot of what the anand piece says - despite every phone other than my Nexus 5 having a removable battery, I have never ONCE swapped the battery for another. With prices of these external charging devices so low (just picked up a 10k mAh external charging battery for $20), I just can't see the reason to get into a tizzy over it, at least if you plan on replacing your phone every two years or so.

All-else equal, would I prefer a removable battery? Absolutely. Do I really care about that extra millimeter or two that the manufacturer saves? Not really. Am I going to lose my shit over what is all ultimately just a business decision that a group at one of these companies made about a piece of consumer electronics? Nope. Plenty more shit in life for me to get cranky about.

The SD stuff I couldn't care less about. It's another 'nice to have' that won't impact my purchasing decision.
 
jwcalla said:
That's not what he said. He said that Anand is a well-known Apple shill. And that's pretty accurate. I don't think Anand would even attempt to deny that he is a huge, huge fan of Apple, and that opinion clearly comes across in his reviews.

He also practically publishes Intel ad copy verbatim. Intel was so certain that Haswell spelled instant doom for ARM and Anand was right there printing that stuff all over his site.
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If he really was an Apple shill wouldn't he have been writing about how Haswell *didn't* spell doom for ARM and extolling the benefits of ARM over Haswell?
 
The shill stuff is really REALLY overdone. It feels like something from the tin foil hat brigade. Anand may be a huge fan of apple, but regardless, I think their reviews are the most objective ones you can find online. They are very thoughtful with how they address their benchmarking and tend to be quite measured in their reviews. Take the qualitative stuff with a pinch of salt, always, but at least the quantitative stuff is pretty good.
 
Their are ways around everything but half the argument anand made was for simplicity, since when is a bunch of work around simplicity?

I can do everything you can do with your sealed battery no SD expansion phone on a phone with both those options if I want. Which means I have more options.
 
rudy said:
Their are ways around everything but half the argument anand made was for simplicity, since when is a bunch of work around simplicity?

I can do everything you can do with your sealed battery no SD expansion phone on a phone with both those options if I want. Which means I have more options.
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Nope, there are workarounds, don't you know workarounds are better?!
 
wonderfield said:
How many SD cards do you need to carry to be able to have access all your data at any time?
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It could be many cards, or just 1 16/32/64GB card. Your point is?


wonderfield said:
You aren't being given less. In the absence of an SD slot, the interval volume is being occupied by some other component. Ordinarily, that's the battery: a much more costly use of interval volume.
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Nonsense. The S3/S4 are just as thin/durable as any of the phones without a sd-card/removable battery, and in fcat have a larger battery. You gain nothing and lose 2 very important things.
 
well we gain "nothing" except for a more stable OS, larger and better ecosystem, and the ability to use the phone for more than 8 hours without it going dead

other things that are simply bonus? facetime across devices, apple maps has apparently passed google maps (I need to use it to find out I'm just so used to google maps), syncing all my music across devices (the amount of times I tried to put my local music on android in the four years I used android devices was exactly once before realizing what a pain in the ass it was and my stereo couldn't really figure out what to do with all the music and the music playing apps sucked), and just knowing that wherever I go my iPhone is going to be supported and understood by whatever I plug it into or whomever I hand it to 10/10 times.

The one time I had more than one battery was also exactly once when someone gave it to me with and HD2 I bought second hand. I never charged the battery because who the hell wants to carry a battery around that's damn near half the size of the phone?! I'd rather just carry a charge cable. I didn't go out in the desert that often...and that's about the only time I can foresee needing another battery. I can't even think of ten solid minutes I'm away from an outlet, car charging port, or my laptop/PC.

I did buy a 16gb sdcard. but it cost me $100 dollars. I love these price comparisons trying to make the claim that external cards are so cheap compared to internal memory. aside from their dogshit slow performance no matter how fast a card one buys they used to be astronomical in price. Now I can't really use it in anything because who cares? I'd give it to my dad but he doesn't need anything other than the 32gb or whatever he has in his S3. And if he had it in there he wouldn't know how to send pictures and shit to it. He doesn't know how to pull it out and put it into his laptop. Android for the longest time didn't even know what to do with an external card itself, LOL, how's that for an operating system! unlike most here I actually have developed for android...love how people talk so much shit to me on these boards and then happily use one of my kernel patches or commits... anyway so I personally know what kludges we had to use to get an external card working on devices like the captivate. this whole issue of how poorly android handled external cards was a huge barrier to getting official cyanogenmod support for devices that had external card slots.

these issues are just something to bitch about and nothing more. the usage scenarios are so minuscule that plenty of flagship devices don't even bother including them. it's not an apple vs. android thing. compared to htc and moto offerings samsung build quality is total shit. but they got you guys by the balls because you'll lap up any cheap POS as long as it offers a removable battery and an sdcard slot. and then you want to bitch and moan about other people being sheeple...
 
Why do I like removable batteries and microSD slots? It's all about the money.

My T-Mobile family plan contract is almost done and even if they still offered contracts I don't have any incentive to re-sign when they offer Bridge to Value discounts. There's no good reason for me to believe I need a new phone every two years either, especially if all I need to do to keep one going is change the battery (as well as have the option of slapping in an extended battery like ZeroLemon).

Internal memory is currently horribly overpriced and is completely at the mercy of whatever chips the phone manufacturer decides to use. I'm not paying $100 for another 16GB, or even $50, only for it to be tied into a device permanently with no ability to take it with me for my next device when I do decide it's time to move on. I don't find that there is any practical performance difference either when it comes to media usage as long as you get reputable products and not knockoffs/no-name junk.
 
if it's all about the money then consider this:

when I bought my 16gb sdcard it was $100 on a black friday sale. now it's worth maybe $10
it's not even worth it to *me* to reuse it because I can get a brand new 32gb or 64gb for under $30.

so it sits in my camera...unused because the primary is larger. it gets used when I need to install an OS. that's its utility for me.

my iPhone, on the other hand, cost me about $400 bucks or something like that because T-mobile retentions knocked a couple hundred off it. If I wanted to sell my 32gb 5s what's it currently worth? $650?

next year it'll still be worth $500 at a minimum. even if I paid full retail for it I still wouldn't be losing much if anything when I want to upgrade. android phones, however, often drop in value by half or more within 6 months and never retain value longer than a year. it's better to buy a new phone then it is to buy a quality battery. And if you buy a cheap, Chinese replacement battery you're just better off continuing to use the OEM battery at 80% capacity. They don't go dead...they just lose capacity at a predictable rate.

removable batteries are *cheaper* to manufacture, not better, and that's why OEMs like them
not quite sure why *people* like them...I certainly never see people carrying around a pouch of batteries.
 
mope54 said:
if it's all about the money then consider this:

when I bought my 16gb sdcard it was $100 on a black friday sale. now it's worth maybe $10
it's not even worth it to *me* to reuse it because I can get a brand new 32gb or 64gb for under $30.

so it sits in my camera...unused because the primary is larger. it gets used when I need to install an OS. that's its utility for me.

my iPhone, on the other hand, cost me about $400 bucks or something like that because T-mobile retentions knocked a couple hundred off it. If I wanted to sell my 32gb 5s what's it currently worth? $650?

next year it'll still be worth $500 at a minimum. even if I paid full retail for it I still wouldn't be losing much if anything when I want to upgrade. android phones, however, often drop in value by half or more within 6 months and never retain value longer than a year. it's better to buy a new phone then it is to buy a quality battery. And if you buy a cheap, Chinese replacement battery you're just better off continuing to use the OEM battery at 80% capacity. They don't go dead...they just lose capacity at a predictable rate.

removable batteries are *cheaper* to manufacture, not better, and that's why OEMs like them
not quite sure why *people* like them...I certainly never see people carrying around a pouch of batteries.
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Now you are just making crap up, have you every actually seen the battery in a sealed battery phone? Even anand said in his article its cheaper to seal them because they might be able to leave components out.
 
If you want an iPhone then fine that's up to you, but I'm not going to spend money to get something that will provide what is, to me, a worse user experience due to a tiny screen, a locked OS, and having to deal with iTunes just to maintain a better resale value.

Maybe I will have to take back "it's all about the money" if people are going to take it to a literal T, but what I meant was that value is always a primary concern, and device longevity is a huge part of that.
 
rudy said:
Now you are just making crap up, have you every actually seen the battery in a sealed battery phone? Even anand said in his article its cheaper to seal them because they might be able to leave components out.
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he's talking about overall cost of the device not the manufacturing cost of a battery :roll eyes:

you really have a hard-on against Apple and HTC if you want to argue that their custom designed, sealed batteries are crappier and less expensive to R&D and implement than replaceable batteries and all those knock-offs that everyone here saying how they will buy multiple batteries obtain.

Trombe said:
If you want an iPhone then fine that's up to you, but I'm not going to spend money to get something that will provide what is, to me, a worse user experience due to a tiny screen, a locked OS, and having to deal with iTunes just to maintain a better resale value..
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I went back to an iPhone because I wanted something that would tie into my macbook better. After I got my retina I barely use anything else...barely even game anymore. The main game I play, D3, plays natively and adequately on my retina.

I also was running out of time. I do so much tinkering with android that I didn't have much time for the things I make money doing. I was just always tinkering...not necessarily because I had to in order to get it working but because I could and to a lesser extent the custom ROM community needed things that I have experience fixing. I basically forced myself to quit tinkering with my phone and just use it as a phone which the iPhone above all else does exceptionally well. That's one of the things that gets missed in these discussions...for all the wonderful options android supposedly provides one of it's main warts is that it doesn't always function very well as a phone.

My points above were really to illustrate why sdcard and removable battery should be at the bottom of a looooooong priority list if they should even be considered at all. I simply don't walk into a store and flip every phone over to see if it has a removable battery and I doubt nearly all of the purchasing public cares either. By and large the only reason most users will have a removable battery on their cheap android phone is because the carrier gave it to them that way--not because they felt they needed it that way. There is a *tiny* vocal minority claiming this is an issue and I'm not even convinced they really care when it comes down to it. If the S5 came out with a sealed battery they'd still buy it. The HTC One S and One were both excellent and popular and both came with a sealed battery. Among the flagship phones this is a samsung vs. rest thing not an android vs. apple thing.
 
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Let's talk more about having a NAS or private cloud. Is it more complicated than inserting an microSD card? Trick question.

You should have a NAS doing backups for your computers. If you don't, then I strongly suggest that you do if you have multiple computers in the home or if you have important files that you can't afford to lose. If not for anything else, do it for backups. You don't know if your computer storage would just up and die. If you have important documents, videos, pictures on those things, good luck getting them back without backups. I'd like to think most members on [H] are serious about their data.

Beauty of most "NAS in a box" solutions, they also provide media distribution capabilities. If you have that already up for the purpose of backups, it's already there. If you are doing it completely DIY, then you have even more options.

So how difficult or complicated is something that's already there?

Currently I suggest a Drobo 5N NAS DRDS4A21 if you are interested in getting a NAS in a box. It seems to be the best priced 5-bay storage array (with mSATA ssd) especially when was discounted under $400.

Reviews:
http://photofocus.com/2013/02/06/the-drobo-5n-mini-review/
http://www.macsources.com/drobo-5n-review/
 
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Gee I bet just everyone in America has one of those NAS in their home. Totally sensible to expect someone to make a $400 purchase to justify no microSD expansion.
 
rudy said:
Gee I bet just everyone in America has one of those NAS in their home. Totally sensible to expect someone to make a $400 purchase to justify no microSD expansion.
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You're missing the point... yet again...
 
CHANG3D said:
You're missing the point... yet again...
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You have yet to take me step by step through the process of setting up and configuring these easy NAS devices so I can take you step by step through installing a microSD card.
 
Anand needs to get out more often. Go to any airport and notice how many 'normal', non-techy people congregate around charging stations or wall outlets.
 
rudy said:
You have yet to take me step by step through the process of setting up and configuring these easy NAS devices so I can take you step by step through installing a microSD card.
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Take me step by step how to backup your computers and laptops and create a media server using a single microSD card.
 
compared to htc and moto offerings samsung build quality is total shit
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Do people think repeating this nonsense makes it true? There is not a shred of evidence that Samsung phones are less durable or less well made, in fact quite the contrary.

Subjective opinions on what material you like to hold != build quality !!!

This is not hard to understand, is it?

Apple seals their batteries inside the phone, then make hundreds of dollars of profit when people need to replace them when they inevitably die or stop holding a charge. Versus buying a $10 battery on any online/local retailer and 10s to swap it on a Samsung phone.

No one has been able to show how having a sealed battery compartment gives you a bigger battery in less space, because it isn't true. Its simply a design choice, not a functional one.

I mean a few years ago it was given that ALL phones would come with replaceable batteries, and with upgradeable storage, until oem's caught on to the fact that they could increase profit margins by not offering them, led by Apple. Now its being spun as some kind of consumer benefit :(:mad:
 
Considering Apple doesn't charge more than eighty bucks for an iPhone battery replacement, I find the claim that they make hundreds of dollars in profit to be more than slightly dubious.

That's just me, though.
 
wonderfield said:
Considering Apple doesn't charge more than eighty bucks for an iPhone battery replacement, I find the claim that they make hundreds of dollars in profit to be more than slightly dubious.

That's just me, though.
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Point taken. But I never said per phone ;)
 
MrCrispy said:
I mean a few years ago it was given that ALL phones would come with replaceable batteries, and with upgradeable storage, until oem's caught on to the fact that they could increase profit margins by not offering them, led by Apple. Now its being spun as some kind of consumer benefit :(:mad:
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a superior battery that lasts all day without needing to be swapped is a consumer benefit. :eek:
 
i have never had to replace the battery on my note2, but since i plan on keeping it a while i am pretty sure i will someday, so i appreciate that samsung lets me do it. i also keep my entire music collection on a 64gb microSD card in my phone so that i can listen to it on the plane or hiking or any other place i dont have internet. personally, i think the switch to non-removable batteries and cloud storage is a loss for the consumer. i dont mind too much since i will be keeping my note2 for a few years still and by then phones will probably be completely different from now.
 
rflcptr said:
a superior battery that lasts all day without needing to be swapped is a consumer benefit. :eek:
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What has that got to do with replaceable batteries? A replaceable one, for which you can carry a 2nd battery around (for $10), buy a bigger one, is 10x the benefit of a sealed one, with zero downsides.

I like how sealed batteries are somehow being claimed as an engineering necessity for a well designed phone, which is total nonsense of course.
 
MrCrispy said:
What has that got to do with replaceable batteries? A replaceable one, for which you can carry a 2nd battery around (for $10), buy a bigger one, is 10x the benefit of a sealed one, with zero downsides.
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can you quantify 10x? can you verify zero downsides? unlikely.
I like how sealed batteries are somehow being claimed as an engineering necessity for a well designed phone, which is total nonsense of course.
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who argued this?
 
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arcturus said:
Agreed, and a phone which can swap out those superior batteries is an additional consumer benefit.
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"superior" being defined as a battery that occupies as much volume as possible without compromising features of the phone or being compromised by a chassis too unwieldly for that goal. ;)
 
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rflcptr said:
can you quantify 10x? can you verify zero downsides? unlikely.
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10x or 100x or 2x doesn't matter, its better. And yes, unless someone shows that a removable battery makes the phone worse, and its not a subjective opinion like 'build quality' or 'looks', there are zero downsides.

rflcptr said:
who argued this?
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It's implied all over the Anandtech article and in this thread.
 
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