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 100β¬ for 256gb when a sd card is 30β¬ 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
25gb of pictures... I mean... So you need all of that stored locally so it's accessible wherever you need it while you're in the middle of nowhere in the woods or a desert?
44gb of non games apps? π€
You realise you might be a power user that just bought the wrong device?
Yeah, this seems like a really weird complaint to me. My Pixel 6 Pro has 128 GB, and I've only just barely passed 100 GB used like a month ago, after having this phone for a couple years now.
I get that there will be niche use cases, but I feel like if you know you've got a niche use case, then you should probably be taking that into consideration when purchasing your device in the first place. For the average user, though, I feel like 128 GB is more than plenty.
"it's not a problem for me so obviously everyone else is just weird. Anyone who does anything differently is doing something wrong."
Ok.
I literally acknowledged the fact that niche use cases exist. Are you that desperate to argue on the internet that you're going to ignore half of the comment you're replying to? Jesus Christ, get over yourself.
You defined niche as something that doesn't affect you. That was my point. Because you ended up falling in line with where commercial services push you does not mean everyone else should accept it too.
I absolutely did nothing of the sort. Please try reading.
The problem is OP complaining and then contradicting themselves by confirming that the reason they don't have enough space is because they hoard things on their phone... As I asked them, why would they need to have 25gb of pictures available when they don't have signal to access their cloud storage?
Some people look at pictures they've taken. If they look at different things each time, who's going to be like "hey, I'm in a 2014 kind of mood, let's download those pictures as I might want to look at them later."
Not everyone just takes pictures and forgets about them. And many don't want to even trust cloud services with your data. Google already said all your photos will be used in training their AI. Some people may not like that.
They also have 44gb of non games apps and deleted 5gb after posting...
If you don't trust cloud services get a phone with more storage then, it's not something that you just didn't know would happen...
That's... did you read the actual post? It seems you did, but I'm curious how this sentence of yours the preceded to actually be typed by you.
Yes I did and OP could have paid 100β¬ for more storage or simply buy a phone with an SD card slot.
They came from a 4.5 years old phone, it's not as if they would have suffered to sacrifice a bit of performance to find a modern with enough storage in their budget range.
the problem is the cost increase is ridiculous and the whole purpose is to push cloud services. Google literally announced that. That's not just a theory. They said people won't need storage because of Google Drive.
That price point for 128GB of flash storage is absolutely ridiculous. If you disagree, I applaud you on being disconnected from reality. And dropping SD card slots as a push to the cloud is also something someone is allowed to complain about. They're nowhere near as common anymore when you look at other performance considerations. Generally, the higher performing the phone, the less likely an SD card slot is available. Even worse if you look at software EOLs and want a phone that will last more than two years.
The gripes are legitimate in my opinion. Storage shouldn't cost an arm and a leg when its available to consumers at much lower costs. SD cards shouldn't be dropped simply to sell other services. I find no problem with having either of those two complaints?
Why defend bad business practices simply because it doesn't affect you?
I added an edit that you might not have seen, but in OP's situation specifically, sacrificing some performance to get a phone with an SD card slot or with more storage for a price they would have been comfortable with wasn't much of a sacrifice considering they came from a 3.h5 years old phone.
Ever consider that they were able to use a 3.5 or 4.5 year old phone because they bought one with beefy specs? You're suggesting they buy a budget phone for power use and then what, replace it every year or two since the hardware was already several years out of date? Sounds like a great deal for phone manufacturers.
A mid spec phone from today would be equivalent to a high speed phone from 3.5y or 4.5y ago though... Might even be better!
That's exactly what I stated. The issue is today's mid spec phone won't be able to hold out for that long and it doesn't matter how long your old device lasted if the replacement only lasts 1-2 years.
There's diminishing return with new cellphone tech as years go by, I don't think today's midspec phones will be outclassed in a couple of years... Even flagship phones aren't necessarily using the latest and greatest processors...
I just did some shopping and if it's the 7A that they got them they could have bought a Samsung S20 Ultra or a Plus for the same price and it's pretty comparable, especially with the diminishing return on new phones processors...
store the raw or originals elsewhere; store smaller, resized ones on the phone for sharing with others or boredom browsing. 5-15mb files turn into 100-300kb or so.
I don't think anyone is arguing there aren't workarounds. But there shouldn't need to be. Why have to go through extra work when there's rarely any reason a phone shouldn't include an SD card slot. Adding my own, but I think replaceable battery is a good one too. I'm not a fan of disposable electronics.
4k video fills storage up quick. Why slap 17 camera sensors on a phone if there's nowhere to store the data? I personally throw movies/tv on mine when traveling for me and my kid. 100GB is about 7 or 8 movies in 1080p.
This is like claiming you've never needed a truck to haul things so you can't understand why anyone else would need one and anyone who does must be some fringe weirdo.
Like I told the other guy, I already acknowledged that niche use cases exist, and explained the steps that a user should take in that situation.
And like the other person said, you keep referring to this as a 'niche use' based on nothing more than your personal experience with your own device.
No, it's niche because it's niche. If it wasn't niche, phones would be built for that use case in mind to begin with. This has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the current state of devices available to consumers.
Saying the word 'niche' 19 times in a comment doesn't make it true. Manufacturers aren't making these phones because it's more profitable to push you onto a subscription service for cloud storage or bend you over on hardware costs. We're in this state because they know we don't have a choice in the matter as we can only buy what they offer to us. What are you going to do, not use a smartphone?
That's an entirely different argument to make.
The fact is that there are phones out there that fill OP's niche need. Other comments in this thread even recommended phones that meet that need. They're not as common, though. Why is that? Because... it's... what's the word... Dang, right on the tip of my tongue. Aw, oh well, it'll come to me later.
my laptop at home has 64gb emmc, and nearly half of that is basically windows, firefox and vlc (lan playback).
it's a consumption device. not a storage device.
they mention not having network access, so they want to consume stuff without network.
There's a reason many streaming services offered downloads later and not as the first feature. It's because people want to download things. Not everyone has constant WiFi around them.
You can consume downloaded things.