Nokia Claims a Memory Card Slot Would Have "Defiled" New Phone 371
nk497 writes "Nokia unveiled its flagship Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 handset today, but it doesn't feature an SD card slot. There's a reason why: Nokia's designers didn't want to 'defile' the design. 'We started with the premise that we wanted an uncompromised physical form,' executive vice president Kevin Shields, said. 'To put an SD card slot in it would have defiled it.' He said most people don't use the storage in their phone, although the Nokia Lumia 820, which has only 8GB of storage, does include a micro-SD card slot behind its removable cover, which Shields claims doesn't compromise the design."
Call the lawyers (Score:5, Funny)
Surely Apple has a patent on undefiled designs?
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Funny)
They certainly have a patent on not including standard features.
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They are pretty stupid. The first thing I did when I bought my phone was spend even more money on the biggest SD card it would take. I will, in all probability, never remove it from the phone - or at least, I never have removed them from my previous phones.
That means for me, the SD card just makes the phone bulkier, more expensive, and more prone to failure. I'm sure there are people who actually use the removable storage, but certainly it appears that I'm not alone.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
They are pretty stupid. The first thing I did when I bought my phone was spend even more money on the biggest SD card it would take. I will, in all probability, never remove it from the phone - or at least, I never have removed them from my previous phones.
That means for me, the SD card just makes the phone bulkier, more expensive, and more prone to failure. I'm sure there are people who actually use the removable storage, but certainly it appears that I'm not alone.
How is it making it more expensive? When there is no external storage, your phone price jumps in disproportionate amounts to the memory it has onboard. I suppose if you like paying $100 extra to get an extra 16GB on your phone, then having an "undefiled" phone will make you happy.
I'm also a bit baffled how a slot makes the phone "bulkier" - SD slots don't really add much to the thickness, and if anything, we've learned that phones CAN get too small (form factors for most things don't tolerate being shrunk too much).
What I'd prefer to see is all smart phones come equipped with SDXC slots, perhaps one internal (battery slot) and one external.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
But could you pick the ones with an SD slot based on taste?
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Funny)
and I'm a fat bastard, so my trouser pockets are oversized anyway. I can fit my phone *and* a chocolate bar in my trouser pocket.
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The right place to store a chocolate bar is the pocket right under your nose.
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The battery isn't removable, so it wouldn't have made that much of a difference.
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Doesn't Apple have a patent on non-removable batteries?
The lack of being able to change batteries and the price are the two main reasons I don't have any iStuff. WTF is wrong with you kids? When I was in school, the first rule of design was "form follows function." That seems to have gone right out the window in the last decade or two.
Look, Nokia, I don't buy a phone because it's pretty. I buy one for its capabilities. I don't fucking need pretty tools! I also don't need to impress people with how much mone
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Of course, iCloud makes that less painful now. It horrifies the parts of me that value privacy, so I keep them away from the smartphones.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Funny)
my friend [...] she or he
It must be a very close friend if you haven't yet discovered its gender. You are truly a master of implausible lies.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
When my friend's Android phone broke, she or he was able to transfer all the data to a new phone with a simple physical process. When I broke my iPhone, I was screwed.
Of course, iCloud makes that less painful now. It horrifies the parts of me that value privacy, so I keep them away from the smartphones.
Uh, your friend should have had backups in iTunes of their settings and all of their content in iTunes.
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Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, first day with my new phone, I bought a 32G uSD card. My dad bought the same phone, and on the way out the store he bought a 32G uSD card.
They're meant to stay in the phone. I think they just wanted to have no removable / serviceable ports.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Informative)
I used to have an iPhone but I got sick of having to use iTunes to get anything on or off the phone. So I switched to an Android (Samsung Galaxy S2) which has a MicroSD in the back. MicroSD's are cheap and hold a lot of data. Now I just put it in USB mode and I can copy away to my heart's content. I won't buy a phone that doesn't have expandable storage. iPhone had better put one in (fat chance) or I'll be sticking with Android.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, that's great. But it is not a reason for wanting expandable memory. Android phones with only internal memory have a USB mode too.
Re:Call the lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you either wouldn't have as much storage with a fixed internal memory or would pay a huge premium for it.
Phones come with expansible memory because each one wants a different capacity, and the manufacturer would be stuck selling a low capacity high volume model and a high capacity low volume one, satisfying nearly nobody.
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Thank you sir for summing up why phones should have SD card slots. I can't imagine being stuck with a device with no expandable storage. I always want more storage, there's no such thing as enough.
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Um ... was this accidentally mis-modded by someone with a broken funny bone? Because, if not, what the heck are you talking about?
MicroSD cards are *tiny* and can't possibly add any appreciable bulk to a phone. 32gb models can be had for less than 20 bucks on Amazon. Even 64gb models are less that buck-a-gig.
So I reiterate, what the heck are you talking about?
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An external slot is about worthless. It's prone to dirt and other problems. I prefer the internal slot. Not putting any slot on it is idiotic. Another idiocy is having a cap on how much memory can be used. I want a 64gig card for mine but it's limited to 32gig.
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Good idea Nokia (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good idea Nokia (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, no one uses storage, right?
Since most, if not all people won't buy this phone, it logically follows that they won't be using storage in it either. Cutting down on the memory chips for the phone that nobody is going to buy saves manufacturing costs, so it's actually a clever business decision.
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Yeah it was... but it's damned hard to argue with the logic.
Re:Good idea Nokia (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, you are doing so well you should definitively make-against the-grain decisions for your customers. I mean, no one uses storage, right? Why would you want to put more memory in there. I'm sure it had NOTHING to do with saving a few bucks.
I think it has NOTHING to do with saving a few bucks, and everything about locking customers into a windows phone ecosystem.
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It more likely has something to do with DRM. Not having expandable memory can only turn people out of the phone, not into it (you can disagree on how many, it can be near zero, but can't be a positive). Thus, it is in fact hindering MS's objective of locking customers into Windows.
If not for DRM, the next most likely argument is indeed that it will save a few bucks.
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I think the bastards are just copying the iPhone which also has no SD card slot. Apple should sue them.
Re:Good idea Nokia (Score:5, Funny)
I think the bastards are just copying the iPhone which also has no SD card slot. Apple should sue them.
Great business model: sue people for not doing things you're not doing.
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The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Captain.
Admiral.
New meaning for "defile" (Score:5, Insightful)
Defile, in this case, means "make useful for longer than the two years of the carrier subsidy". Nokia doesn't want to kill sales of their next phone with this one. Just like Apple.
Except that Apple will be here two years from now. We can't be that sure about Nokia.
I still have my n900. Gee, what could have been, if they hadn't been such cowards!
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The 820 has 8GB onboard and a MicroSD slot.
The 920 has 32GB onboard and no slot.
So it's not great, but on par with the midrange iPhone.
And a lot more changes on phones than storage. New generations of wireless make phones more spectrum-efficient. CPUs, graphics, and screens improve. If your service provider is willing to subsidize $400 every two years and you pay the same for service either way, why not upgrade and donate your old phone to someone who can't afford one?
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2 years to 80% capacity is not "very limited" when people replace their phones at that time anyway.
If you are using a phone longer than that then apple provide a service where they replace the battery for around $100.
I have been using mobile phones for around a decade and have not once had to replace a battery before the phone broke or became outdated, i have had to replace broken battery COVERS many times however.
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I just recently replaced my battery on my original Motorola Droid. It still works great. I got the new battery from Amazon for 14.00 and that included 2-day shipping.
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Perhaps if you were more careful not to drop your phone, it would last long enough for the battery to become an issue. I personally have replaced batteries on two phones (admittedly one was an NiMH battery, and the other a very early LiPo), and considering now replacing a third, but have never had a battery co
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I had a nokia candy bar type phone way back that I literally beat the living hell out of for over a year. I cracked the face and the back cover and finally it was so screwed I had to buy another so I bought the same model on sale for $4.99 (it was a tracphone) and I used the cover off it for my old phone. With the new face and back I also had a new battery and charger for a fraction of what a new battery alone would have cost! I then used the new phone to keep a battery charged up all the time and when o
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Are you serious? Why the hell would anyone design a system like that?
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In principle, it may have slight speed benefits.
It's the sort of thing you might do if given a clean-sheet, and nobody puts 'the user might want to pull the card out to read some data' on the spec-sheet.
To be fair - removable storage raises issues.
For example - you have to deal with files going away - perhaps uncleanly - during operation.
You have to cope with checking the content hasn't changed since the card was unplugged (and a 32G card, with ten thousand media files takes some time to scan).
UI complicati
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Plenty of users will be fine with 32gb and no slot. I've had 16gb iPhones for the past 4 years, and very rarely run out of space. With the advent of cloud services, wifi sync, etc things won't be so bad. And - the space the slot would have taken up can be used for battery, etc.
50% of the content on my phone (7gb worth) is never really used. If you need >32gb of space, buy something else.
Oh, I got it! (Score:5, Funny)
:-)
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Did you see that it still has an internal slot?
Almost all new phones I've seen have this and I like it better. My old phone had a twitchy spring and liked to randomly eject the microSD card.
This is a non-story.
I didn't see that anywhere, the linked article says:
The Nokia Lumia 920 comes with 32GB of storage, but omits the memory card slot found on its cheaper sibling, the Lumia 820.
When pushed on why Nokia didn't include a memory card slot, the company's executive vice president, Kevin Shields, told PC Pro it would have harmed the clean design.
I haven't found any source that says it has an internal slot.
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:4, Insightful)
Looking at Nokia's official stat-sheet, I don't see any mention of a Micro-SD card, although it does have the memory at a much more usable 32 GB of internal storage.
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This outline the bright logic of their explanation.
That sentence makes as much sense as the low end phone having a microSD slot, and the mid range phone not having one.
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So, let's be real, they are marketing to less sophisticated users than us, ones that are not terribly likely to put a microSDHC card in any socket.
But unsophisticated users are going to buy Apple. Right now, Apple would feel much safer to an unsophisticated user than a new phone OS on a new phone genre from a troubled manufacturer.
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I won't argue the storage point, but who uses their phone as an mp3 player? I have an mp3 player for that.
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:4)
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Uh, who carries an mp3 player when your phone can do that just fine (and stream Pandora on the go!).
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:5, Funny)
In fact. I also carry a voice recorder, a notepad (and a pen), a radio receiver, a pager (in case somebody decides to send me some text), a camera, a phone-number list, a calendar, and a video recorder. Why would I not want to? Each one does its work quite well.
The only problem is that I've run out of supply for my instantaneous camera, and had to stop using it.
Re:New meaning for "defile" (Score:5, Funny)
Because the iPhone does just fine without it? (Score:2)
No defiling (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait until their next phone that will have no speaker or microphone since that would compromise the physical form and most people don't talk on a Smartphone anyway.
So what about the SIM card slot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what about the SIM card slot? (Score:5, Insightful)
How come a SIM card is blended perfectly with the case but a Micro SD card -which is smaller- "defiles" the design?
Because the "design" is to sell 8, 16, and 32 GB variations for $499, $599, and $699, respectively.
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I think it's more complicated than that.
If they include an SD card slot, they have to balance the cost of machining the parts to make that work versus how many people will actually be angry that option doesn't exist. If they make more money by opting to not include a feature that's rarely used, then I say go for it. I don't think it's a conspiracy to get people to buy more expensive phones if they want the space. If that was the case, they wouldn't bother with an 8 gig phone. Or 16 for that matter.
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..nokia's sub 100$ phones include a memory card slot. in fact I think all cheap models from them that cost more than 50 bucks unsubsidized do.. the card slot costs literally pennies - it's just very small piece of plastic and few very small pieces of metal(the chip supports it regardless!). it's a conspiracy to skip on some industrial design and to get good profits from the memory they do include.
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Quite stupid... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not having a micro-SD slot on a phone is quite stupid these days. Heck, my last 3 "dumbphones" have had SD card slots (though I think one was mini-SD) and all of my smartphones have had one. On my current phone (Samsung Captivate Glide) I've got a 32 GB one in so I can take my reasonably sized music library (~25 GB) with me without having to lug around yet another device. 8 GB is pathetic for a smartphone, sure, you might be able to get all of your applications on there, but not much else. To put this in perspective, 8 GB is the same amount of memory the lowest-end version of the iPod touch which came out back in 2007.
My 32GB Samsung Galaxy Nexus doesn't have a microSD card slot and though I thought I'd find it limiting, I've only filled it half full with music and a few movies. Though admittedly I don't listen to locally stored music much - usually only when flying.. normally I listen to streamed music.
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8 GB is pathetic for a smartphone
The Lumia 820 with 8 GB does have a micro SD slot. The Lumia 920 with 32 GB does not have a micro SD slot.
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It's a phone.... why do you need 32GB of storage, LOCAL to the phone? Do you have that many friends? Is your addressbook THAT large ?
Re:Quite stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a phone.... why do you need 32GB of storage, LOCAL to the phone? Do you have that many friends? Is your addressbook THAT large ?
Some people listen to music on their phone, or watch photos on it....
And it's nice to load up some movies to watch on the plane.
I think the grandparent poster thinks that smartphones are used only as phones.
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My 4s has 64GB of internal disk.
My Atrix 2 ends up at 48GB.
Yes, it is just numbers, but 32GB is behind the times, especially after Apple has set the standard now at 64, which no Android phone can do.
The 32GB Galaxy S3 [verizonwireless.com] is available today and the MicroSD slot supports cards up to 64GB, giving it up to 96GB of storage space. The 64GB model is supposed to be out next month, providing up to 128GB of storage.
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Does it have a SIM card slot? (Score:3)
I wonder if a SIM card slot would also defile the phone?
Microsoft? Nokia? Do you really think people will buy this excuse? Do you really think people will buy this excuse of a phone?
Nokia Lumia is a disaster stock price down 16.6% (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it.
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Stock price has little to do with actual performance or quality these days...or even reality.
My happy little Droid Razr Maxx... (Score:3)
has a microSD slot on the side under a cover next to the SIM card. Ingenious design.
IMHO, the only thing that could defile a phone these days would be the name Nokia on it. Or Blackberry.
Re:My happy little Droid Razr Maxx... (Score:5, Insightful)
has a microSD slot on the side under a cover next to the SIM card. Ingenious design.
IMHO, the only thing that could defile a phone these days would be the name Nokia on it. Or Blackberry.
Or Windows 8.
What's the problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Couldn't consumers just take their defiled phones to a priest and get them blessed?
Nice. (Score:3)
I have a 16 GB phone that lacks expandable storage and I bump up against the limit often enough. I have no films and only a couple GB worth of songs. Not even that many apps. What fills it are 8 MP photos and 1080p recorded video. If a phone has good "data creation" hardware (i.e., a good camera) it really needs a lot of, or expandable, storage.
Note: "the cloud" is not the answer.
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Somebody thinks consumers are stupid (Score:2)
While that may be true in some cases, as long as this BS is going on in the market, I will definitely stay with my non-smart phone. Nothing missing so far.
Buyers don't care! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is yet another example of why the tastes of slashdot readers are basically irrelevant for any manufacturer today. Users don't care about MicroSD slots, the lack of one does not hurt sales and most people who have MicroSD slots in their phones have no idea what to do with them. Yes you can get cheap 64GB SDXC cards for $60 or so, and it's criminally stupid to not have MicroSD slots (or just offer large storage at a reasonable cost). But users don't care. Google realized that, so did Nokia.
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Lol really? That's your example?
First of all, the people who hang out on bargain sites looking for gadgets to get cheaper are by definition geeks. Gadget geeks aren't necessarily technical, they're just people for whom gadgets hold great importance, and will be concerned about stuff like MicroSD and unlocked bootloaders and Cyanogen support, stuff the vast majority of consumers don't care about.
People who don't just visit bargain sites but actually comment on them are even more likely to belong to that cate
Wrong Order (Score:5, Funny)
'We started with the premise that we wanted an uncompromised physical form,' executive vice president Kevin Shields, said. 'To put an SD card slot in it would have defiled it.'
Hmm, Kevin: If you're trying to channel Apple, you have the order wrong. First you build a strong following among artistic folks by consistently bringing pretty technology to market. Then you talk like an effete douchebag. If you get the order backwards it sounds pretentious.
Why buy Nokia anyway? (Score:2)
More likely it would have defiled... (Score:2)
...the BOM.
Nokia: Too Late! (Score:5, Funny)
The real use for the Lumia 920 (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the Lumia 920 and Windows 8 finally shows what Microsoft had in mind when they underhandedly planted Elop as Nokia's CEO. You can't just destroy a company obviously and not have stockholder suits. SO, if a devious and nefarious evil company such as Microsoft wanted to destroy Nokia's stock price and then buy it's patent portfolio cheap to be used to bully Apple, RIM, and Android makers into paying Microsoft royalties ( which I believe is M$'s actual goal ) You have to pretend you are making an effort to compete. At least falsely. So, you destroy all of the work Nokia has done, fire anyone creative or innovative, tie Nokia up with contracts so there is no escape, then come out with a complete piece of shit like the Lumia 920. Nokia stock drops below it's cash reserves, and Microsoft can claim, we really tried. We don't know why it failed. This useless cell phone is the poison pill in a pretty yellow package to kill off Nokia.
First rule of design: (Score:3)
Form follows function. You build your visual and aesthetic design around the functionality you want, and work from there, not the other way around. That's pretty much the first rule of designing anything. Form follows function.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN oops, it's the story! (Score:5, Informative)
You might try reading the summary before you post next time. The phone that includes a micro-SD slot is not the phone that does not include an SD slot.
TL;DR: RTFS.
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN oops, it's the story! (Score:5, Informative)
The phone with a MicroSD slot is the Nokia 820. The phone without a SD slot, Micro- or otherwise, is the 920. It's been a while since any phones had full-size SD card slots.
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Yep, and that's my point. The 820 comes with a slot for you to bring your own flash memory chip. The 920 has a chip already installed that goes, guest where...exactly where the slot would have connected. Now, when you talk Apple, the iPod Touch always has a double memory compared to an iPhone when comparing top end to top end because the GSM chip takes about the same space as the memory chip.
If they are going to have 2 separate designs anyway, why wouldn't they just use a 32GB built-in flash chip in the 920 instead of a more complicated 16GB built-in flash + 16GB inaccessible (but still socketed?) card?
Re:MOD PARENT DOWN oops, it's the story! (Score:4, Insightful)
32GB of flash is super cheap, I got a Sandisk 32GB microSD (more packaging than an OEM chip) delivered for $18. The fact that so many OEM's want to tier phones based on internal flash just proves why we need standard removable storage, they're ripping off every customer who buys the higher end model for $50-100 more.
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If you're going to put apps on it a class 4 is actually preferable, class 10 devices are optimized for large streaming reads but suck at random small reads and especially writes. This was information collected by the Windows Phone enthusiast community at XDA interestingly enough. They collected the information because the Windows Phone 7 devices basically do a RAID0 across internal and external storage so it becomes very apparent if the storage is not performing well.
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The story says that only the 8GB version does. The flagship 32G phone is non-expandable.
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The Nokia has a memory card slot, it's just inside the cover. So you'd have to remove the cover and change the card.
Nope.
Nokia unveiled its flagship Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 handset today, but it doesn't feature an SD card slot ... although the Nokia Lumia 820, which has only 8GB of storage, does include a micro-SD card slot behind its removable cover,
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Read the article. They mention adding more ports makes shielding against interference harder.
The Lumia 920, on the other hand, has only two ports: a micro-USB charging port and the headphone socket. Yet, even that meagre number of slots caused headaches for Nokia's engineers, according to Shields.
"The micro-USB port is an RF [radio frequency] nightmare," he said, adding that it can interfere with the various other radios in the device without proper shielding. "Wireless charging is effectively a radio, so is NFC. Then you've got LTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth - and you've got a lot of antennas."
This phone has wireless charging. What other phones have that built-in?
But the MicroSD card and port can be 100% encapsulated in metal under the battery cover, making shielding much easier than with the MicroUSB port that has to be exposed externally.
The wireless charging is a nice touch (but only if it's a standard so when I go to a friend's house, I know I can drop my phone on his Motorola branded charger and it will still charge my Nokia phone). However, if I could choose between wireless charging and a microSD slot, I'd choose the microSD. Having a couple exposed charging
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup, that lack of SD slot sure killed the iPhone. And the iPod.
Apple get away with EVERYTHING; proprietary connectors; proprietary software; proprietary protocols. Other companies can get away with a lot less.
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