[Rant] Cloud service is not a reason to have phones with only 128 GB

I am in the process of looking between repairing my phone or switching to a new one. And the no brainer evolution to the OnePlus 7 Pro I have is a Pixel phone. Pixel Phones are definitely not perfect, I know that the battery would fall faster than other phones but hey, that’s ok, google chip in it, possibility to go GrapheneOs, all good.

But the A versions only having 128 GB, and needing to pay 100 extra Euro on the Normal and Pro phone for 256GB is ridiculous, and not allowing me to add a SD card for that! Is insane I restarted my phone in December fresh from zero, and in the last 9 months I used 163 GB of memory. 48GB of it is my music on Deezer, for which I pay to be able to download “HIFI” files which I am not willing to trade for using less space on my phone, I work in a place with no 4G, I’ve got a few playlist I switch between. The rest is 25 GB of Pictures, 7GB of games. 44GB of apps.

Now the answer to this is “Well now with your Pixel phone you can use the Google Cloud, Google Docs blablabla”. Something insights by Google offering 3 month of Google one and 3 month of YouTube premium when you buy a Pixel phone. So much cloud that’s soo cool! And you can just redownload things when you need it. Well I don’t want to redownload my musics everyday when I listen to them, I don’t want to trade and limit what I would call normal use. I know not everyone will resonate with this, but the carbon impact on bandwidth used from cloud in 4G is important.

Normalise SD cards, Normalise not using the Cloud as a solution for everything

Update 2 Days later

Hey, writting here because this post has brought a lot of people to talk about storage of data on phone, which is quite nice. I am writting here just because a lot of comments are repeating certain points and It wouldn’t be useful answering to all of them if after their will be more comments saying the same thing.

I am not saying Cloud = Bad. It’s great we have a place out there where we can Store Data in case anything happens. I simply wish either brand gave us more choice on data capacity, seeing a Pixel 7a only at 128 gb ain’t cool, let me make a choice. Seing a Pixel & with 128gb or having to pay an extra 100€ for 256gb when a sd card is 30€ is not cool.

A personal server is in my plans, and it’s one of the projects I’m the most impatient to have.

I understand that I have a different use of phones then the average, I simply want to be able to adapt the tools I use to my different use.

I have taken the step to take a look at the storage in my phone by curiosity and to look with a different eye my consomption of Storage, and have deleted 3gb of games, and 3gb of apps that where useless. I’ve also started looking into my photos and took out 3gb of photos I had which where useless. And I think there is more photos I’ll delete, I am not done on that of course

My signal discussion are important to me, I am in a Long Distance Relationship, and discussions I have with my SO on Signal are the major part of my relationship, and I cherish them. I have set up signal so that it makes when charging at night a copy of my discussions, and when I have Sincthing, it loads the conv to a HDD Drive on my PC. That being said, in the floders I found bugged temp file from saves that did not end, for a total of 20 gb of Signal discussions (oof lol) which where deleted too. How ridiculus was it? Well in Storage>Files the weight of total files dropped from 20,68gb to 0,68gb

Anyway, I am now at 132gb :D! I’m not writting this because I am feeling attacked or to defend myself, just as a small update and because these are reocuring comment that’s all, i’m still anwering here and there if you arrive a bit latter to the post, it’s impressive from lemmy I feel to still be receiving comments and have a discussion that continues 2 day after a post. Usually on Reddit posts would die in 6 hours, and their where no dick’s in the chat. I’ve read every single message, and answers other people did

verysoft,

There's no excuse for a lack of expandable storage, theres no excuse for a lack of a 3.5mm port. Phones have been stagnant for the last 3/4 years.

dinckelman,

The new iPhones are coming out soon, and since they’ve likely replaced the silencer switch with an Bixby button, that’ll surely shake up and revolutionize the market with it’s yet another 150€ base price increase

planish,

Not putting a hole in the device envelope is an excuse; no holes makes it easier to waterproof. Somebody out there is going for the hermetically sealed wireless charging only speaker in the screen no holes phone that you can take to the bottom of the ocean and is immune to pocket lint.

But if it’s got holes in it it really ought to have these.

CmdrShepard,

A headphone jack isn’t a hole it’s a closed port with electrical contacts inside of it just like your charging port. The back of the port doesn’t open up into the rest of the phone internals.

planish,

But you still have to set things up so the jack can be electrically connected to the board, but also waterproofly attached to the frame of the phone. And the jack itself needs to be a good one that has electrical connections between the inside and outside but is internally watertight.

Presumably there are headphone jack engineers out there making this happen.

CmdrShepard,

Presumably there are headphone jack engineers out there making this happen.

This has already been a thing forever.

Let’s also not forget how much manufacturers are charging for these devices. If you bought a phone for $19.99, I could excuse them skimping on low quality ports. When you’re paying $1500 for a device, I expect the best of the best to be inside it.

verysoft,

Theres plenty of IP68 rated phones with headphone ports and they are not even ridiculously priced flagships.

ZeroCool,

What also adds to the burden? A/B partitioning. Which means you have another 20gb or so, being used by a partition you can’t even access. Not to mention, you don’t actually get 128gb, more like 112.

petrescatraian,

@Kyoyeou It's okay to have 128 GB on a phone. At least for me. I got away even with 16 GB until last year, and I could still easily get away with 32 GB if I try hard enough.

What is not okay is to make such phones and not provide an SD card slot on it.

Kyoyeou,

Fully agree with that, I am not saying at all that 128gb, 64gb, 32gb are bad, but the lack of choices is

HaggierRapscallier,

I’ve realised I quite like my note9 with a headphone jack and sd card. I’ve decided I need to fix the battery and display. Use that for reading, audiobooks, and browsing. And then get a modern phone iphone/android flagship for calls and messaging.

IdleSheep, (edited )

I totally feel you OP. I have a 500+ GB music collection I refuse to give up for streaming apps (which don’t have all that music anyway). But I also acknowledge the vast majority of people install a couple apps, take a couple pics and videos, and that’s about it, so I get why 128 is the default.

My solution was to cough up money for a DAP (specifically the Fiio M11S). I know it’s outside the budget of most people and definitely a super niche purchase, but boy do I feel relieved knowing I can plug my 1 TB SD card in in it and have all my music whenever I want to (plus other neat features like an actual audio jack and no audio resampling). And it also means I’m no longer restricted in my phone choices which is wonderful.

Maybe it’s something for you to consider over a NAS or other local server solutions that require more upkeep.

Kyoyeou,

I have definitly looked too at a DAPS. My budget is still limited but it’s something I am heavily looking at. I am using Deezer HIFI for my music, but have been wanting to buy the albums I love on Qobuz from ShakaPonk Stupéflip and Rammstein too. Today form my 48gb of music Downloaded I still iften want to listen to other playlist I have that are not loaded right now I took the time to go try some DAPS at a music store, I tried a 300€ one running android from Sony, which was nice, and the sound quality was also a bit better than my Qudelix. But It was a bit slow, and didn’t have PEQ like the Qudelix. I also tried for the laught the the M11 hand Holly Hell is it good

There is definitly a future in 5 to 10 years where I am rocking a Android DAP that can do DAC for PC aswell, and a midrange phone. And there is a definit possibility that the DAP will be more used than the phone itself heh

IdleSheep, (edited )

For Android DAPs you definitely want to look into the 500€+ range simply because cheaper ones use very low end SoCs (usually the snapdragon 4xx series) which is why you had that experience with the Sony one. Only look at devices with a snapdragon 6xx and above to be honest. Also note most will never get an OS update so what you get is what you will have forever.

I also tried a cheaper DAP at first too (the Hiby R5 I believe) but although the audio was fine the laggy app experience left a lot to be desired, so I’m very happy I paid an extra 200 to have a DAP that’s not slow/laggy when navigating the interface.

For future reference you can bookmark this page that gets updated with newer DAP releases every once in a while.

ColeSloth,

If you were in the US I’d recommend you pick up a used Note 20 Ultra that comes with 128GB and an expansion slot for up to another 1TB.

I keep tons of pictures, movies, Netflix downloads, and TV shows on my phone and never touch cloud storage.

Only issue is that outside the US is mostly exynos chips instead of snapdragon and they weren’t nearly as good. Can you import? Would your carrier work with a snapdragon variant?

figaro,

You are an extreme outlier. Most people don’t have that much stuff on their phone.

I agree it would be nice if phones started at 256gb, but honestly the average person won’t come close to that in 2 years, even if they don’t know about Google photos.

ColeSloth,

Not that extreme. Recording alone on a newer phone uses 1GB in 8 minutes and that’s not even 4k.

Then you have games. One of the most popular games in the world is Genshin Impact and its been downloaded 50,000,000+ times from Google play. It also currently needs 20GB of space.

Sure, most people don’t need over 128GB, but ones that do are far from extreme outliers. Personally I travel a lot and don’t usually have consistent data when I do, so I keep a couple hundred gigs of TV shows and movies on my phone to watch, along with games.

Nioxic,

That depends a lot.

Photos takr up more and more space. Videos too (will vary on settings)

Same with apps (especially games)

reverendsteveii,

25gb of pictures

Either you don’t have a backup of those because you don’t care, in which case you should delete them to make room, or you don’t have a backup of those and would be devastated if you lost them, which means you should back them up to the cloud, then delete them to make room. An SD card slot would be nice, you’re right there, but you’re not exactly cornered with no options here. You’re just dismissing good options because they’re not an SD card.

KyuubiNoKitsune,

I have like 71gb of pictures on my phone (50k pics) and I like it that way, why would I delete them? For them to sit on my PC or in the cloud never to be looked at again?

I often go through photos on my phone, it’s like a history of the last few years and I find myself scrolling back to find a picture at least once a week.

I could use the cloud service but it’d take so long loading the thumbnails that it’s completely pointless.

“why do you put these photos on the wall? You’d be devastated if someone stole them, you should rather keep them in a box under your bed” that’s a dumb take.

reverendsteveii,

You’re gonna lose them all one day.

KyuubiNoKitsune,

No, because they’re both in the cloud and on my PC.

reverendsteveii,

My bad, I got you confused with OP and their “under no circumstances will I back my stuff up to either the cloud or local storage” attitude. I can’t count how many people I’ve seen who feel that way right up until the moment where they’re saying “What do you mean you can’t recover them?” I sometimes get a bit preachy about it because I’ve seen people lose their wedding pics or pics of dead relatives, and I personally lost a bunch of the stuff I worked on as an undergrad that’s just gone forever now.

KyuubiNoKitsune,

Yep, it’s heartbreaking. I accidentally did a full format of an HDD that had pictures of my friend who had died on it and a bunch of other stuff from the prior ~10 years. My heart sunk when I realised that I hadn’t backed up the folder beforehand. I now have a physical backup in a box, my drives are a raid 1 and I have most of the important stuff in OneDrive, which is handy if I get any crypto malware that encrypts all my data, because it has revision history. I’m not going to get caught out like that again.

But at the same time, I’m going to carry the photos on my phone over to my next phone too.

DadeMurphy,

It is and it isn’t. Let me preface this by saying flash storage should not be as expensive as it is. That being said, you may think 128gb is low, but most people aren’t going to want to be forced into paying more for a device that starts with 256, especially when plenty of people get on fine with 128. Not when the price will reflect the larger storage. If you think they are going to up the storage and not the price, you’re dreaming.

Especially on an iPhone, since it only has one partition and isn’t using extra space to fill a B partition with another OS.

If you’re just a casual user, who just uses a few apps and needs portable access to the internet, 128gb is plenty.

Cloud storage isn’t really a solution to augment your storage capacity, since you don’t actually own it. If you stop paying your cloud subscription, all of your data goes bye bye.

TL;DR stop crying and pony up for more local storage. I’m paying an extra 400 or so for 1TB.

zikk_transport2,

Disagree

Any mobile device (that is not stationary).is a risk of being lost or stolen, which means if you have important data on it - it’s at risk

Cloud services offers backup for such data, so large storage is not needed.

Alonely0,
@Alonely0@mastodon.social avatar

@zikk_transport2 @Kyoyeou the cloud is someone else's computer, and I'd rather have my data on mine. I can understand why a normal user, who can barely manage their own computer, would want someone else to do it for them. But I am perfectly capable of doing my own backups and self-hosting random crap.

zikk_transport2,

I never mentioned that you cannot use your own cloud :)

chahk,

Cloud services offers backup for such data, so large storage is not needed.

One does not negate the other! I self-host my own photo and document backup service, but that’s not a replacement for actual on-device storage. Just try pulling up a “backed-up” picture when you have slow connection or no Internet at all.

zikk_transport2,

This is why there are previews. And yes, this is the case where it’s an issue with the cloud storage.

If I have to choose between this issue and data loss - I pick the issue.

chahk,

If I have to choose between this issue and data loss

But why do we have to choose in the first place? There’s absolutely zero technical reasons not to have a model with more storage. No financial reason either, since a lot of people will buy that model only because of a bigger number on the box. The only reason is to purposefully hurt the customer in order to push us to buy their cloud storage, because it’s a steady revenue stream instead of a one-time purchase.

pinkdrunkenelephants,

You can and should have both.

Kyoyeou,

Hey I have made an update to the post and I answered in it!

PeepinGoodArgs,

Use a USB c flash drive. I have a 128 gb phone with a 256 gb flash drive and it works

pseudonym,

Does it just stay in there all day? Seems like a phone butt plug

PeepinGoodArgs,

Lol no. I take it out when I don’t need it.

sudoku,

SD cards are irreplaceable to me because my phone does its backups into it. If my phone dies, I still can pull it out and have everything I need. And I’m not going to give my personal data to someone elses computer in a datacenter.

accidentalloris,

If the phone is lost/stolen/damaged, your SD card could be inaccessible too. Your backups are your business, but you are opening yourself up to all kinds data loss if your only backups are stored within the device in question.

sudoku,

of course. I do copy my files once in a while, but my phone does app backups to the card every few days.

sapient_cogbag,
@sapient_cogbag@infosec.pub avatar

You might like something called Syncthing. It’s a FOSS data replication thing that doesn’t store stuff on other people’s servers but if you have a computer or some other place you want to throw files, it can keep things synchronised with your phone, without any cloud storage crap ^.^

Nioxic,

I highly recommend syncthing

Irs free.

You gotta set it up on all devices that sync anything but its very set and forget

Ganbat,

Everyone in this thread talking about phones more expensive than my car.

Speaking as a person with a $120 phone, I honestly don’t have an issue with 128GB for a mobile device. I don’t film on this thing daily, and the largest apps I have are Sonic Forces and Mario Kart, so I’m pretty much never going to have to worry about using the space up.

chahk,

That is fine, and it’s your choice. All we want is to also have choice instead of phone manufacturers either refusing to make models with large storage, or outright ripping us off for the privilege.

dog_,

Remember that Stock Android (or at least Pixel’s android) doesn’t even have a local backup. That’s honestly ridiculous. I don’t want to use your god damn cloud service Google. Especially coming from an iPhone, where you could backup your phone to a computer. Android not having it in AOSP/Stock is frankly ridiculous.

kaesaecracker,

It does have it. But you have to invoke it with ADB.

dog_,

From what I heard. That’s going away very soon.

Anonymousllama,

128GB as the baseline is rubbish. Even 256GB is average considering the amount of high quality media we deal with nowadays. The amount of money these companies pull in from “upgrading” your storage is amazing, it costs dollars to upgrade from 128 to 256 but they’ll charge you a $100 premium for the privilege

RaoulDook,

Nah it’s fine for those of us who don’t live our whole lives inside the smartphone world. My desktop PCs, servers, and laptops are where I keep my important files, not on a phone.

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