Quote:
Originally Posted by conan50
Right. Even "cheap" smartphones and tablets have a micro-sdcard slot. Can't believe it costs them much of anything. Yet not having one is an excuse to get consumers to fork out more money to buy more on board--overpriced--storage, something Apple does and Samsung seems to be following suit.
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Something I learned over the past few years, thanks to all the manufacturing updates from various Kickstarters: Adding a hole of any kind to a device, or letting something open and close, when you could otherwise just glue it closed, adds not only to the design and manufacturing cost and time, but also most significantly adds to the support costs of the device, from addressing issues when the wrong thing ends up in the hole or when users otherwise break something or do something the designers didn't anticipate.
Hackers who willingly take the risk of doing unsupported stuff are not the bulk of consumers.
So even if there was no cost to the slot itself, say if there is already an sd slot in the device for it's own use, the cost of exposing it to the user and supporting the various things a user might stick into it, will absolutely raise the cost.
Now, as for the price that manufacturers charge for the expanded built-in memory....that's horrible, don't get me started.