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Nokia Claims a Memory Card Slot Would Have "Defiled" New Phone
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."
Surely Apple has a patent on undefiled designs?
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.
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!
Bruce Perens.
No thanks, the lack of an SD slot is NOT one of its good features.
My HTC sensation has an SD card that doesn't detract from design - it's hidden behind the same cover the battery is - very common on samsung phones too. Please paraphrase executive vice president Kevin Shields' comments too "we couldn't be arsed" or "it was cheaper"
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.
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.
It is just a shame that they dropped their own phone operating system Maemo and went with that crappy Windows phone .
How come a SIM card is blended perfectly with the case but a Micro SD card -which is smaller- "defiles" the design?
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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Except for the tiny little fact that the 920 does NOT have any sort of SD slot, hidden or otherwise. Only the 820.
The story says that only the 8GB version does. The flagship 32G phone is non-expandable.
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,
My galaxy S II has 16 GB internal storage and a microSD slot. It is useful to be able to put things on the card rather than on the phone in case you need to clear the phone to factory state. That way you can restore the programs, songs and other things rather than just lose them. While I do back up to PC every month or so it makes sense to keep things close for on the road if you need them.
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?
What the fuck is with people tonight? Was the summary so badly-written that a whole slew of you dummies couldn't figure out which model has SD slots and which doesn't?
Design isn't just about "pretty", it's about function too. Great design would be to fit an SD slot in there and make it look good as well.
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.
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
So no one will be buying this then lol
The little slut is running Windows.
It's not 'does not have a microSD slot', it's 'does not have a plug and play microSD slot'. There is a rather large and significant difference from Apple's 'we just want to bilk you for extra storage by not having a microSD slot'.
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?
That they always want to give me less.
I want dual sim.... nope - most users would't use it.
I want dual microsd.... nope none is enough
I'd like to see the ex-nokia engineers with the talent and vision to produce phones directly from chinese manufacturers bypassing these nokia engineers still shackled by the current management team.
Only time will tell, but nokia won't be getting my money
As I understand it.
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.
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?
Couldn't consumers just take their defiled phones to a priest and get them blessed?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, the low end model (820) is defiled with a microSD slot, but its not really defiled because its under the battery cover. The high end phone (920) is free of such burdens, and the user is stuck with its 8GB built in memory because the Cloud is the future man, nevermind that you can't get a phone plan without limited data caps any more.
:-)
Bruce Perens.
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.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true! Right?
Yeah right. It's just coincidence that the internal memory shrink creates another throw away device and also makes it just that little bit harder to upgrade the o/s..
Locking you just that little bit more in the upgrade cycle.
Just coincidence...
The conclusion I draw from this is that people are too dumb to budget for resale value in looking at their phone contracts.
A blog I run for the wealth
I don't see the issue. Nokia believes that buyers don't care about easily expanded memory. They may be right.
My non-tech family members pick up a phone and feel it first. If it 'feels' right, that's it. If it lets them check email, send/receive SMS and make phone calls, that's all they are about. Memory or storage are the last thing they think about. Battery life isn't really a concern for them either.
For people like you and I, memory, storage, Ghz, replaceable batteries, cores, and the OS matter. I wish I would have gotten an N900 when I could. My N800 is showing signs of age, but it is still my favorite device - before a Samsung Android phone or a 10" tablet. The n900 was just too pricey for me. Oh well.
Don't most nokia phones end up in Africa and SE Asia anyway?
To most people, these things simply do not matter.
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.
I see two take-aways here. One: This guy is full of s**t. Two: He thinks we are all total morons.
'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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I started with Nokia, a 5190 in 98. It was a great phone in it's day. Then I bought a Nokia 500. Big mistake. When I wake it up random apps start, well, randomly. It crashes, it hangs, it's slow, very slow, the OS is virtually incomprehensible. It's the worst phone I have ever owned. I hate its guts, I hate it so much, that I will never buy another Nokia phone, with an SD slot, without an SD slot - I don't care. What garbage. I do have a micro SD slot inside though. It's the only part of the phone that works properly.
Another good reason to not get this phone. I already see the numerous posts saying people don't care if it has a slot or not. Well, they SAY they don't care but then when they run out of storage? Oh, then they are pissed to find out there is no way whatsoever to add more storage to the phone, other than buying a better phone. I like a beautiful form in a car, a good form on a phone would also be good -- but in both cases, I DON'T like one that is "beautiful" but useless (like a car that has inadequate cooling and overheats, in order to make the hood look good... or, say, a phone with no SD/miniSD/microSD slot whatsoever for form factor reasons.)
Just like people "don't care about DRM" supposedly, until it bites them in the ass... I literally had someone ask "why didn't anyone warn me about this?" after some DRM-infeced stuff they bought quit working (because the rights restriction server was taken down). I pointed out, I had told them about it like 5 or 6 times, then they were like "Ohhhhhh... yeah you DID tell me about that!" Oh well.
It's probably cheaper to manufacture this way. It's also possible that the 32GB chip is more expensive than the two 16GB chips. Finally, it might have been easier to hit some deadlines if designing it this way.
...the BOM.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Then you've missed the point. The value in an SD card is not just doubling the storage on the phone. It's the ability to swap out the card. With micro SD cards being so small, someone could keep a virtually unlimited amount of storage in their bag, purse, etc. It also allows easy sharing of large amounts of data across devices. I don't know whether many people really take advantage of that, but it's a good reason someone might not be satisfied with more storage instead of an SD card slot.
Nokia, It's too late to worry about defiling the device! You've already loaded Windows Phone onto it and ruined an otherwise acceptable cell phone.
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 $50-100 more.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Hey Mods, Stop using OverRated to be the only mods on a post... that will automatically fail in mod2 if I can get control of that....
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
I mean, they've pretty much already mismanaged themselves into utter irrelevance so why not go full suicide?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I think the Lumia 920 and Windows 8 finally shows what Microsoft had in mind when they underhandedly planted Elop as Nokia's CEO. You can't just destroy a company obviously and not have stockholder suits. SO, if a devious and nefarious evil company such as Microsoft wanted to destroy Nokia's stock price and then buy it's patent portfolio cheap to be used to bully Apple, RIM, and Android makers into paying Microsoft royalties ( which I believe is M$'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.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
This is what smartphone designers really think.
All the editors had to do was add one word to the headline: "Nokia Claims an External Memory Card Slot..." Because the headline makes it sound like the phone doesn't have expandable memory, when it actually has an internal memory card slot. In which it is exactly like 90% of the smart phones out there.
That would have saved people from writing dozens of lame, pointless RTFA posts. Oh well, it's not like they had anything better to do.
There is also scandal brewing about what they tout as one of the main selling arguments of the 920: Pureview. Technically it has nothing to do with the original non-WP Pureview which utilized a 41MP sensor. Nokia's reason to use that branding is the Motion compensation tech they use (as the 8MP sensor is pretty much the same as other current smartphones), but it seems that the clip they shot to demo the tech was actually shot with another (professional) camera, all the while clearly suggesting it was shot from the guy in the clip holding the 920.
At this point I have serious doubts the Lumia 920 will even deliver the same quality pictures their N8 did all the way back in 2010 (which came with 12MP sensor and Xenon flash).
Combined with not announcing a WP tablet while many others have it's no wonder the stocks are down 16%.
the 920 has 36G.... not 8
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Apple shows what kind of crap you end up with when design trumps function. Why is anyone still doing this shit?
my blackberry bold or world or some bb unit anyways had a sd card slot located under battery cover. it wasn't news then and it isn't news now
Well I have 7GB of map data on my Samsung wave phone, the phone will be unusable for offline navigation if it doesn't have enough storage for maps, wave is a bada OS phone, so I just stuck in a 16gb card.
So you may have an over the top music collection, but ordinary functions won't work well on that phone it seems.
A class 10 (your looks like class 4, most likely class 2) is a bit more expensive. I agree with your point though.
The feature list for this phone is very impressive but no user replacable battery no sale. More important than all the toys and gadgets the device must actually be capable of performing its primary function. Not allowing battery swapping or replacement is a deal breaker.
If I wanted to be lectured about how up is down and not having standard features such as SD cards and replacable batteries is actually a "good" thing I would have already purchased an iPhone.
Plus if the phone dies, I get to keep the data, and most likely continue to use the SD card.
card 0: porn stash
card 1: work docs
card 2: german porn
so how do I copy de files onto it?
Stock price has little to do with actual performance or quality these days...or even reality.
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.
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.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
And the SIM card slot doesn't? What kind of logic is that? Personally, I need all the storage I can get. I've been hauling around a 16GB MicroSD for a few years now and I've been deleting stuff to make space for more important things. I recently purchased a 64GB MicroSD to take its place and the extra space has been welcomed. If they made a bigger size, I probably would have gotten it.
I don't want to rely on what the manufacture and/or carrier think I actually need on internal storage. This is one of the many reasons I wont own an iPhone. I don't see why I should spend an extra $200+ either just to get 64GB of storage when I can pick up a MicroSD for $50 with the advantage of being able to transfer it to another device whenever I please.
Companies need to realize that not all of Apple's designs are good ideas and really shouldn't be copied.
You lost your password? lost? Flushed it down the toilet? Left it on a bus? Dog ate it? What sort of twat are you?
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I can guarantee that there will be no memory card slot in the next iPhone and that the American media will not care about its lack.
The phone has a slot behind the battery cover. This is a GOOD IDEA (TM), as it prevents dirt from getting in. who changes SD cards so often they don't want to pop the battery lid off?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Sorry, but it was defiled and defecated on from the beginning with Windows.
Only 8gb on their flagship phone.
RIP Nokia
I'm still hoping for a phone that takes CompactFlash cards. :-(
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Is anyone really complaining that they don't have a full SD slot in their phone? Cause I'm not.
...brought out new hardware. But now, since they sold Qt, I could not care less.
The OS is windows phone 8, right? I believe that the defilement caused by an microSD slot is at least 30dB less than the *ss-r*p*ng fact that the poor phone is running WP8.
"I suppose if you like paying $100 extra to get an extra 16GB on your phone"
Is this internal memory really equivalent? In three out of three sd-equipped phones in our household over the past 4 years, we have had three failed micro-sd cards. One dead on arrival and two after a year of use. Didn't happen to the internal memory so far. Moreover they seem to be rather slow.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
The 820 has the internal slot behind a cover. Not the 920. It is pretty clear even in the mess that is the summary.
And modern phones don't come with SD slot, the microSD has been standard for some time. Are you that out of touch?
So basically, you are wrong, out of touch and illiterate. Now do and make the world the better place by nominating yourself for a Darwin award. Yes I know you were just nominated to run for President in Tampa but come on, the Darwin award is more shiny.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Really, the reading comprehension skill on slashdot seems to be in a nose-dive. LEARN TO READ.
Slashdot really needs a moderation "wrong".
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That is why I got the Nokia 808 with the real PureView camera in. Despite being on Symbian it is the most amazing phone I have owned. I had HTC desire HD before, but that one could never get a radio signal (I don't want to die on a mountain somewhere or not be able to call for an ambulance if my child needs one just to be running Android), and the screen was unusable in sunlight. Nokia really know how to get the basics right. Plus their Push email does not drain the battery by needing a constant 3G connection open like Android does.
I really mean it. For the time period where the Lumia 920 will be relevant, 32GB is probably enough for most people and for all other needs, there will be SkyDrive or some other remote, I mean, cloud storage provider.
As much as people like to complain as if they were buying the last phone of their lives so it must have all the memory they need to store all those food pictures until they are 95 years old, phones will get old, break or you'll want a shiny new one with the newest stuff on it. I think 32GB is a good compromise (actually, for me it's more than enough).
Stick the card in...pull it out...stick it in...pull it out...how long before the phone starts feeling dirty? Anti-defiling design would also explain the shape and size...remember all the fake photo's of people loosing Nokia 8200s in bodily orifices on account of the really well engineered vibrate motor?
The Irish shoe gazer is now an exec VP at Nokia?
I wish Slashdot had a built-in way to save links to comments, to laugh at them and their moderators years later.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Apple and Samsung phones is still on top of the line before Nokia even how many times they will develop the versions of their phones.
By most people I'm assuming they mean those that don't take pictures or listen to music. My blackberry has the slot inside under the battery cover. If they were going for asthetics they could have gone that route. They either didn't want the expense of adding a slot, or there is some other reason like making it harder to transfer files between the phone and your pc. The latter is probably what it really is. That way you have to buy a $50 cable and pay for their software to interact with it.
My wife had an n900. she dropped it and cracked the digitizer. (Not the glass, not the screen, the digitizer.) She has a pin set since it's synced to an exchange server. we assumed there must be SOME way to get the photos off of it. Nope. With a pin set, you can't connect it to a computer. And without a digitizer, you can't do squat. Now, all the pictures she's taken on the system since it was last backed up are stuck on it forever.
I feel bad for her. Not only does my Samsung Epic 4G have a SD card w/ all my photos, google+ automatically uploads them to picasa and syncme automatically downloads them to my home fileserver.
I do security
... the SIM slot is not defiling?
-Dave Haynie
Why are people so obsessed with the bulk of their phones? I'd get it if this were 1990 or earlier when they really were a lot bigger. Certainly there is an upper size limit beyond which phones become less practical but I think pretty much all phones shrunk down smaller than that years ago. I keep my phone in a little holster clipped to my belt and can easily forget it's even there.
Is it something about pocket size? I can keep my phone, even my bigger ones from a few years ago in a front pocket but I don't like doing that because I walk too much. Things I keep in pockets are subject to too much movement and wear out sooner, especially if they share the pocket with keys. Even if you could make my phone somehow better for fitting in my pocket (which it does fine already) I wouldn't want it there. Are people keeping them in back pockets? Sitting on them? That's just stupid.
Is it about fitting in purses? Most girls' purses I have seen you would want a little bulk on the phone. Otherwise you might never find it again in the mess!
Why give up a feature, even one you might not use often just to make it even smaller? All I see in these tiny thin phones is something that breaks too easily and a microphone which is too far from the user's mouth. Drop the microphone part and I think the same about some of the newer tablets and laptops.
I think the thin and small craze is just a marketing thing. A marketing thing that the public has unfortunately continued to eat up long after it should have ceased to be relevant. I really hope it goes away soon.
More for the ladies to have some eye candy. I'm sure you know what I "mean".
Do you guys remember when Nokia used to be cool?
or else!
I would still buy it for Nokia. They make long lasting phones unlike apple and samsung.
"Isn't that special?"
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Price of a 16 GB iPhone 4S: 659 €
Price of a 32 GB iPhone 4S: 779 €
Resulting price of 16 GB flash according to Apple: 120 €
Price of a 16 GB Samsung microSD card: 13 €
Resulting cost of the lack of a microSD slot on the 32 GB iPhone 4S: 107 € = 135 USD
This, is why I like to have a microSD slot in my phones. Most people don't use it? Oh well, most people don't use Lumia phones either.
I get just a little bit sadder.
Probably won't work for Nokia unless they can quickly empty their inventory to convince Microsoft that Nokia should retain their favored early adopter status. If Nokia can't sell the WinPhone units quickly, Microsoft would be forced to cut deals with other big manufacturers, Samsung, HTC, maybe even Sony. Microsoft may yet emerge as a winner in the smartphone wars. The future looks bleaker for Nokia. Failure for Microsoft would mean failure for Nokia as well, but success for Microsoft would not necessarily translate into success for Nokia. Microsoft at this point can still afford to fail. For Nokia it's not an option.
I have used more than 30 phones in my life and half of them came with expandable memory. The first thing I did with my new bought phone is to buy the biggest SD I could find but not the ones that are too pricey. I remember when 16gb Sd came out and they were 3X as expensive as 2 8gb Sd cards.
I use my phone as my flash drive for school, music storage, popo/movie storage as well as everything that needs a file drive. Add your card reader keychain and you're all set. I remember having a complete anime show(20+ episodes) just for those "boring moments" in life. Add in a couple of my favorite movies and I am all set.
A phone having no external memory, 8gb below internal is a waste for me. 50-70 HQ camera pics would consume 1gb, add a couple of apps, some ebooks and your 8gb would be gone as fast as you put your files on it.
This is what current smartphones lacks(yes I mean every smartphone even androids). Yes they do have the "meanest processors" and ram but what would you use those specs if you can't put anything bigger than 1 gb on it? GTA for android is at least 500mb and that is just one game.