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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.
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.
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,
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?
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 contacts to let me use a drop-in charger would be offer nearly the same convenience as the wireless charging.
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!
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?
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
Yup, that lack of SD slot sure killed the iPhone. And the iPod.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
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 think your SGS2 actually has 20GB of internal storage: 4GB shows up as "internal", 16GB shows up as "USB storage". At least that's how mine appears. The USB storage portion should also survive a factory reset.
'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.
...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.
But the MicroSD card and port can be 100% encapsulated in metal under the battery cover
What battery cover? The battery is non-removable.
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 $50-100 more.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yup, that lack of SD slot sure killed the iPhone. And the iPod.
Apple get away with EVERYTHING; proprietary connectors; proprietary software; proprietary protocols. Other companies can get away with a lot less.
I mean, they've pretty much already mismanaged themselves into utter irrelevance so why not go full suicide?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"executive vice president Kevin Shields said"...
One might think that would be eVP Bjorn Halvarti, or some such Norweigan name. Perhaps M$ has so fully taken over Nokia that the damn phone might as well be made in the USA!
resist propaganda
Too bad Nokia doesn't make iPhones.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
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 *
But the MicroSD card and port can be 100% encapsulated in metal under the battery cover
What battery cover? The battery is non-removable.
You know, that big flat area on the back of the phone -- the part that covers the battery (and the rest of the inside of the phone).
Just because it's not removable doesn't mean it's not covering the battery (and doesn't mean that it's not part of the RF shielding for the phone).
Nope, USB ports are shielded, the standard requires it. That's why the ground pin is huge, and encapsulate all the others. At the MicroSD card one'd need to add shielding, so it is technicaly harder, not hard enough to make any difference, but harder.
Rethinking email
This phone has wireless charging. What other phones have that built-in?
Samsung Galaxy s3.
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?
Maybe they're marketing to those of us who prefer to defile our own toys, rather than buying them predefiled.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
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 playing catch-up, you overwhelm the competition not by designing some elusive quality called beauty but by adding more features to your product or selling it for less. Alternatively you can include just one killer feature that nobody else has or is at least vastly superior to everything everybody else has. This is what Apple did with the original iPhone, a touch screen experience that was as good as or just slightly worse than what what you get from using a keypad.
People who want a beautiful phone will already buy an iPhone. Imagine you're a sales clerk trying to sell a non-iPhone because you've been given the "incentive" to do so. What would be easier to "prove" to the customer? That the OtherPhone is more beautiful, or that the OtherPhone is has more features than the iPhone?
Since you're no marketing expert, you can simply dazzle the customer by listing and demo-ing the features, no matter how useless they might appear at first. Sir, this has a 16MB camera, a TV function, a micro SD card, a flashlight, etc. By running through such a point-by-point comparison, you can make the iPhone look bad.
As for beauty, ever wonder why touch screen cellphones look remarkably similar to one another? It's because design-wise the most prominent feature of a touch screen phone is the screen. Everything else is the picture frame. So the perfect touch screen phone would be one that would work well without any buttons or other proturberances.
So, no, Nokia can't succeed against Apple by designing a more beautiful phone. That is already Apple's game.
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.
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
I'm still hoping for a phone that takes CompactFlash cards. :-(
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
...brought out new hardware. But now, since they sold Qt, I could not care less.
Is anyone really complaining that they don't have a full SD slot in their phone? Cause I'm not.
What! Are you assuming that Nokia hasn't heard of the Micro SD?
"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.
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.
Apple "get away" with the lack of an SD card slot because most normal people don't actually care. I had a heap of phones with SD card slots before my iPhone, and you know how many times I swapped/upgraded cards from the supplied one? Never.
Meanwhile, there was a socket, retention mechanism, etc to hold the card in the phone that could have been eliminated to make the device smaller, or consumed by more battery space.
If you have enough storage on the device (personally 16gb is plenty for me, i would guess 32gb is plenty for most others), all a slot does is waste space and provide another mechanism to break.
Yes, there is a niche for people who want a slot. But I doubt it is worth compromising other areas of the phone (size, battery, durability) for the other 90% of users who do not care about that feature.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If they can make email and web browsing work well on this phone, it has the potential to sell like hotcakes to the enterprise.
The enterprise is tolerating iphones despite the lack of good tools included with Exchange / Windows to manage them, and the lack of both mac hardware and developers on staff to write apps for them. And also despite the lack of ability to easily manage data leakage (who owns the corporate data stored in the Apple ID's icloud account?), enterprise application deployment, the need for an Apple ID, etc.
If Windows mobile can provide something as good at web browsing and email, with an easy to use development kit, and full enterprise support for the device in exchange and other active directory tools, it will make a killing.
And I say that as a happy iPhone user / Mac fan - I'm an enterprise admin by day, and managing either iOS or Android on the corporate network is nowhere near as easy as it should be.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Companies like apple and microsoft "patent troll" because if they don't, under the US legal system others will troll them.
That said Samsung was totally taking the piss. There was no need to copy the packaging, store decor, promo material, icons, dock connector, etc.
They deserve the legal smack down imho. That lawsuit isn't about any single individual feature (it's not round rects ffs), its about large scale cloning of all of those features in a single device.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The killer feature is the (potentially) microsoft eco-system (much like apple gear, if you play entirely within the apple world it all works together seamlessly). If MS can make Windows mobile 8 seamlessly sync with Windows (no iTunes!), be managed easily via Windows Server for the enterprise and perform as well as an iPhone (native code!) they could have a good product on their hands.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
samsung phones havent came with a uSD slot for some time. Google Nexus for example, are you that out of touch?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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?
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.
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
If I remember correctly offline navigation for just about the whole world takes 7GB with Nokia Maps. If you only need Americas or Europe you need less than 3GB. (Or you could pick specific countries you're planning on visiting. Just a couple of clicks...). My estimates may be slightly outdated, but probably not much...
It is what it is.
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.
samsung phones havent came with a uSD slot for some time. Google Nexus for example, are you that out of touch?
Huh?
The S III has a hidden micro-sdhc slot and so does my Note. The same was true for the both the older S and S II models.
So what the hell are you talking about?
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.
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?
An SD slot doesn't compromise the design nearly as much as you're suggesting.
A micro SD card has a volume of about 165 mm^3. The iPhone4 battery has a volume of about 11,890 mm^3. That's right ... using that space for the battery will improve your battery life by about 1 or 2 percent, and that's only if you can manage to use that entire volume for battery space instead, which is highly unlikely. (Yes, I know I only included the card and not the slot, but I also assumed the battery was rectangular, which it isn't. 1 or 2 percent is in the noise.)
Apple "get away" with the lack of an SD card slot because most normal people don't actually care.
Maybe they would care if they realized Apple charges them $100 for an extra 16GB, which I can pick up from Newegg for $10. People care when it hits their pocketbooks.
Price of a 16 GB iPhone 4S: 659 €
Price of a 32 GB iPhone 4S: 779 €
Resulting price of 16 GB flash according to Apple: 120 €
Price of a 16 GB Samsung microSD card: 13 €
Resulting cost of the lack of a microSD slot on the 32 GB iPhone 4S: 107 € = 135 USD
This, is why I like to have a microSD slot in my phones. Most people don't use it? Oh well, most people don't use Lumia phones either.
I get just a little bit sadder.
One might think that would be eVP Bjorn Halvarti, or some such Norweigan name. Perhaps M$ has so fully taken over Nokia that the damn phone might as well be made in the USA!
Nokia is Finnish, not Norwegian. Perkele!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.