I was so disappointed when I found out that Samsung removed the sdCard slot from the S21. I've had the S series phones since I had the S3. Along the mostly great journey we had the removable battery and the sdCard taken away (S6). Thankfully when users like me and many others refused to buy the S6 the the sdCard was brought back (but not the battery access). But now Samsung took it away again in the Galaxy S21.
I'm hoping few people buy into Samsung with the S21 and us long term Samsung loyalists hold off upgrading to the S21 in hopes of sending a clear message to Samsung. WE WANT OUR OWN STORAGE OPTIONS!
I know that if the S22 is released without an sdCard slot I will sadly move on to a less desirable brand I order to maintain my storage desires.
Samsung's justification for removing the sdCard is waterproofing. But, there is still a SIM card slot (for now) so if they can waterproof that well and they move to eSIMs then they should be able to waterproof just the sdCard in that same space where the SIM sits now.
Another thing to keep in mind, internal storage has to be copied via smart switch when upgrading. Imagine upgrading and having your current and new phone tied up for HOURS transferring the settings and internal storage. My SD card can quickly pop out and transfer between my devices in a matter of seconds. If I have to transfer large amounts of files to my computer, I can take my sdcard out and pop into my computer, freeing my phone to be what it should be - mobile and letting me do things on the phone, not tethered to a transfer cable or kiling my battery or being tied up transferring files.
Strong agreed with Astronaut, Also I hate the Cloud storage. When I found out the Mobile Data ran out the upload data than limit data a month. I fedup with spend money to top-up. I already disabled a Cloud. I used a SD media in my Samsung Galaxy S20 mobile. I alway Backup from internal storage and heap a photos & videos on SD. When Mobile is broken or accident. Easy take out SD and insert a new mobile is automatic restore from Backup with security password.
When I saw the new Galaxy S21 didn't have SD slot. I was shocked and disappointed.
Otherwise...... No SD slot, No buy a Galaxy S series. Until bring back SD on next version. Will Samsung promise ?
Yes, SD card or at least more storage by default. The S10 has 128 GB and SD storage. The S20 should have been at least 256 GB as it removed the SD card. And the S21 512 GB for 8K video. But that is still nothing compared to a few 1 TB SD cards.
Yes, all the manufacturers are moving to eSIMs. And, that's both good and bad. I'd prefer to have both an eSIM and a SIM slot. I travel overseas a lot and like the option of being able to just pop my SIM out and pop the new one in for that country in about 15 seconds. With eSIMs I'm concerned every time I want to switch I'm going to have to contact the cell provider and get them to switch it back over whi h will probably be a hassle.
You can load up multiple E-Sims on one phone. Yes I prefer physical sim still as well since I like to swap my numbers around on multiple phones to test out.
E-Sims when I travelled was much easier and did not require any call in to carriers. All the ones I loaded internationally just needed a QR code to be scanned and it added the mobile plan in right away.
I will not buy another Samsung phone nor tablet if they remove the micro sd slot from their devices. Samsung is taking away one of the biggest reasons I choose Samsung.
In my opinion, Samsung is shooting themselves in the foot for short term gains and losing their key advantagein themobile device industry. I buy multiple Samsung microsd cards, more often than I switch phones. Now without an sd slot, Samsung can kiss my business goodbye on their phones, tablets and sd cards. Not smart to kill 3 sales channel because you decided to make a dumb move to remove the valued sd card slot from the phone lineup.
