I’ve been searching for a replacement for my S9+, which I’ve been quite satisfied with. I’m considering settling on the last S series model that offers expandable storage, the S20, and I’m leaning toward the Ultra version.
I believe that Samsung’s phones and tablets could easily accommodate a headphone jack and an expandable SD card slot, but they choose not to.
Bringing back the headphone jack would hurt sales of their Bluetooth earbuds, and reintroducing the SD card slot would make purchasing the highest storage capacity devices unnecessary.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I would prefer them to replace the S Pen with an SD card slot or a larger battery.
They will never compromise their flagship devices with slow SD card speeds. Users tend to dump a lot of data, like photos and videos, into them, which can lead to lag over time, causing people to perceive the phone as slow.
That’s likely why slower phones like the A series still have SD card support. It’s not that they can’t include it; they simply choose not to. Fast memory is associated with fast phones, as everything loads quickly.
What’s really frustrating is that I have an S20 and thought it might be time to upgrade to a device with more memory, but my current network only has 128GB models available.
They won’t revert to allowing expandable storage because selling cheap onboard eMMC storage is a profitable strategy for them. It costs them about $15 for 128GB of eMMC, but they sell it to us for around $100. There’s no incentive for them to permit cheap external storage when they can compel us to purchase more inexpensive eMMC instead.
Unfortunately, no, it is what it is. Just go for the 256GB variant; it should be more than enough. If you prioritize expandable storage and don’t mind sacrificing some performance and camera quality, consider the A35 or A55, as both have SD card slots and plenty of RAM. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend getting an S20 since it’s somewhat outdated. Aim for the S23 when the S25 comes out to get a better price.