[Samsung Galaxy Nexus] ttabbal:
Google's stated reason for no SD (wanting unified storage) is fine for what it is, but doesn't preclude using an SD in ADDITION to the internal unified storage block. Saying it's all or nothing is stupid. First off, fact check:

SD slots are CHEAP in the extreme. JUST ONE option on digikey, RETAIL price for a SINGLE UNIT. http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DM3CS-SF/HR1972CT-ND/2602740

$1.79... I'll give them another $10 for it. They need profit after all... :silly: Buying in quantity, they can easily be <$1.

What else do you need to use the thing? Well, some space on the board, easily found. They found a spot for the SIM. The boards in these phones are TINY. A little extra PCB space is easy with the huge screens they are using. As for the CPU, SD uses a simple SPI bus. Every embedded CPU comes with at least 1 of them, and they can be shared. Most have more than one. Even if it doesn't for some reason, which is very unlikely, SPI is trivial to bit-bang. The SD card would be so slow compared to the CPU that the overhead of CPU based access is not worth mentioning, and you could just choose not to install one if it bothers you. Options are always good, right? The LG version of the phone includes an SD slot, so I'm guessing there's an SPI controller on CPU...

So let's get over cost as a reason NOT to include one, ummm-kay? :D

"It's an old phone" ... ummm.. .so? The N4/N7/N10 don't have slots either. Nice straw-man though. :D

"Just don't buy it then"... Since when are people not allowed to have an opinion that differs from a manufacturer? Could we not devolve to Apple levels of fanboi-ism please? We are better than that.

"Google doesn't like USB Mass Storage, it causes issues" ... OK, that's a fair complaint. So don't use it for the SD slot either. There's MTP, which kinda sucks, but it's there. There's ADB, which they could just put a little GUI on top of for every OS they support (see QtADB). There's also various ways to access the data using network filesystems/protocols. There are options...

"It's not "unified" anymore".. ok... so don't install one by default and let users choose. I guess you could do a RAID type setup and make it unified, but that's a bit silly.

"16GB should be enough" ... for some people, sure. Say hi to Bill Gates for me. :p (Yes, I know he was misquoted)

"Cloud!!!!!" ... Okay, you pay for the data plan then. Until then, STFU about the cloud. And build more towers while you're at it. Not everyone has a crazy dense cell network with unlimited data. Wifi? Well, I can't stay at home all the time.... Can't use the Wifi at work, they have it too locked down. And I'm only able to sustain about 1Mbps at work over the cell network. No idea why, it's faster on every other tower.. :silly:

More internal storage: "COST!!!$$$$"... no. 256GB SSDs sell for close to $160 now (Newegg ad from a couple days ago). 32GB is cheap. So is 64GB. And even less so than SSDs as we don't need the super fast flash they use, the expensive controller chips, or the SATA interface. Or you could just include the cheap ass SD card slot and we'll buy our own. :p

USB-OTG: Fine if I'm sitting still, but you know this is a MOBILE device, right? Let's not break the USB port over this, ok? :D

Obviously, some of the above is a little tounge-in-cheek, and I'm referring to the N4/7/10 as much as the gnex here. But really, since when are options or questioning choices of manufacturers bad? Yeah, the whining can get a little dense sometimes, but still... At the very least, have some fun with it... :cyclops: