The company's flagships smartphones lack microSD slot

May 7, 2015 00:29 GMT  ·  By

Many consumers make their purchases based on certain criteria. When it comes to smartphones, most ask for microSD card slot and removable battery, while the rest of the specs might vary.

Depending on the budget, these specs can be higher or lower, but there are some situations where you are asked to pay a high price though you won't get all you want in the first place, like microSD card slot and removable battery, for example.

The last major handset maker to have made such a compromise, Samsung, launched its flagship smartphones Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, but neither has removable battery and microSD card slot.

This is not a new thing for Xiaomi fans who have been treated similarly since the Chinese company's flagships smartphones don't have microSD card slots.

Ironically, the company's affordable Redmi lineup comes with microSD card slot, which is advertised as a selling point.

Xiaomi hasn't made any statements on why it doesn't want to include microSD card slots into its high-end smartphones, which is why Hugo Barra's recent interview with Engadget is enlightening on that matter.

He first said that his company was completely against adding microSD card slot into phones, and then explained why. Barra stated that microSD cards “are incredibly prone to failure and malfunctioning of various different sorts.”

"It is a trend: SD cards will disappear"

According to him, because you never know whether or not you purchased an original Kingston or SanDisk card, people usually blame smartphone makers for all the trouble fake cards are giving them.

“They're extremely poor quality, they're slow, they sometimes just stop working, and it gives people huge number of issues, apps crashing all the time, users losing data, a lot of basically complaints and customer frustration. It's gonna be a while before you finally accept that maybe the reason why it's not performing is because you put in an SD card, right?

“You're gonna blame the phone, you're gonna blame the manufacturer, you're gonna shout and scream and try to get it fixed, so many different ways until you say, 'Actually, let me just take the SD card out and see what happens,'” said Barra.

Xiaomi's VP Hugo Barra also predicted that SD cards would disappear in a not-so-distant future and that we shouldn't “basically” expect SD card slots in any of his company's flagships.