The real reason why microSD card slots are disappearing from smartphones

A lot of technical reasons are discussed by manufacturers as to why microSD card slots are disappearing from smartphones, especially from the high-end ones.

Taking only Android smartphones into focus, not many smartphones come with a built-in microSD card slot. Even the flagships do not have microSD card slot (except Samsung’s, now even they are removing it in latest series). What might be the reason of dumping the beloved microSD card slot?

There are a few reasons I am considering after a lot of research.

One of them is phone’s thickness (actually, thinness) which doesn’t let the microSD card slot to be installed in a slim chassis. Another is smartphones today have enough storage that manufacturers think users don’t need to expand the storage.

The third one is very crucial which we’ll discuss in detail today.

It’s fast draining of battery and overheating of the device.

Negative effects of having microSD card slot in smartphones.

There are negative effects on phones when it has microSD card slot.

It uses more battery to power the transfers which cause phones to overheat. This usually happens on low-end devices as high-end (flagships) have latest and efficient chipsets.

User can use any cheap, faulty, or slow microSD card to cause hell lot of other issues. Although users can eliminate this issue by opting a branded and high speed microSD card. But if you see who buys the quality micro SD cards more is just photographers not the mobile owners.

More disadvantages of keeping the microSD card slot in smartphones.

• MicroSD Cards have a FAT32 file system which is not par with the internal storage making it slower than the primary memory. On top of that in this modern era 4GB file limit is the biggest issue with FAT32.
• Latest Android versions do not allow users to install apps onto the microSD card.
• Google and OEMs want to encourage users to use cloud storage instead.
• Users can already transfer files via WiFi or even directly to external storage using an OTG cable.

Maybe these are the reasons OEMs don’t provide a microSD card these days. But hey, this is not a negative post. MicroSD cards are really very useful and there are many users (including me) who would want a microSD card slot on their phones. Because even the more storage is not always enough.