Why no externally accessible SD card slots on the Droids

[amn70]

I don't understand why the manufacturers insist on hiding the SD card slot inside the battery cover. This seems to be a common practice with not just the Moto's but most of the Android based phones. I am going to be getting Droid X but The Incredible, Droid and Droid X and Droid 2 and I think even the EVO all have them hidden under the damn battery cover and you have to take the battery out to access them. On my old Motorola Z6TV slider Moto was smart enough to put the Micro SD slot right on the top outer edge of the phone where its easy to get to. I just open the tiny plastic cap with my fingernail and press in on the card and out it comes. Anyone know why this new practice of putting them under the battery cover is so common now? Makes no sense.

 

[tktouch12]

i think it might have something to do with the fact that taking it out when the phone is running could harm the card. so, if you can only take it out when the battery is out you cant hurt it. but thats just my guess.
or maybe it just works out there

 

[aminaked]

Yeah, it would open a can of worms as far as support issues and lost data. I'm sure they could engineer some kind of solution, but it might be costly.

 

[aaf709]

It was external on my Voyager, but it was only for storing music, video and pictures. I would constantly have to re-seat it as it didn't stay connected correctly.

 

[sc4fpse]

The card is buried underneath the battery to prevent it from being removed during use. As someone else previously stated, removing the memory card while data is being accessed or written is a great way to corrupt the entire card. Not a good idea.

 

[amn70]

I guess its not a big deal since as I just found out in the Droid X forum that when the Droids are plugged into the PC the card is assigned a drive letter so its accessible that way so that makes up for it. On my old Moto Z6TV the card was not accessible when the phone was plugged into the PC so having it easily removable was important.

 

[ricks]

Why would anyone want to remove the card, accept to put a larger capacity one I can see. But why take it out?

 

[aminaked]

I guess if you have a bunch of movies, music, or pictures that you need to swap in.

 

[ricks]

Why cant they just connnect to pc with cable?

 

[Rsswga]

I have never had mine out of the Droid..no reason to...got the cable to plug into the laptop

 

[mikeofmikes83]

My walkman phone had a flash drive that was accessible. I understand the immplications of taking one out while its being written or read from, and I know thats more than likely the reasoning behind it...however, what about this: if you plug your phone into the computer, and then jus yank the cord out without unmounting it, its the same thing. I would have liked to have seen a secondary memory card slot so say, if I had a card that was full of movies, and one that was full of music, I could switch between the two via a SDmount/unmount widget or something. minor, very minor thing that I think could have been done differently. Dont get me wrong, I'm not complaining per say, I just think it would have been an interesting feature

 

[Tallica]

Why would anyone want to remove the card, accept to put a larger capacity one I can see. But why take it out?

Data transfer between pc and card is much faster if you do it with a card reader then thru usb.

 

[aminaked]

I meant, maybe you're on the road and you have a selection of sd cards with, say, music on them. Sometimes it would be nice to switch them out without rebooting...kinda like how you would switch dvds or cds in a player.

if you plug your phone into the computer, and then jus yank the cord out without unmounting it, its the same thing.

I see your point. We need a motorola or google engineer to give us the definitive answer.

 

[mikeofmikes83]

Its something that should be suggested to Moto for future development. I have a 16G card (like most everyone else) and mines only got (if memory serves....no pun intended) about 250m left open on it. Being able to hotswap out cards would definitely be a good feature, especially for those of us who arent ready to shell out ball park $100 for a 32g card.

You know what else I think would be pretty cool? A method for connecting peripherals like cameras, camcorders, things like that. You can connect to HDMI now, which is pretty freakin sweet even though the full capabilities have not yet been exploited. I think being able to jack in to my camcorder, rip the movie to my phone, then upload to youtube would be pretty neat.

One other feature: a way to get me to set my phone down more often, and do other things when I'm bored. I play guitar, and at one point I could just pick it up and play when I was bored. Now I take out my droid to tune it, look up tabs to learn a new song, DL the song using MP3 download so I can play along with it....droid has taken over my life hahaha. Ya know, as creepy as it might look, if I could have one of those droid eyeballs installed in my head I think I would. Pretty sure my brain's CMOS can be configured to ran a plug and play eyeball.