Quote from: LOL on January 20, 2020, 04:25:08

Quote from: S.Yu on January 19, 2020, 16:53:38
I'm pleasantly surprised by my revived Note8's 12MP using 36-stack night sight for everything now that its internals have been swapped to the SD version, processing speed has also doubled if not tripled compared to the Exynos(boy was that ISP slow processing a 24-stack) so 12MP may turn out to be plenty if demosiacing isn't an issue(night sight does subpixel sampling largely negating the bayer loss), but I definitely haven't thought of the lack of higher storage options as a push for the Ultra because I'm under the impression that most people prefer μSD expansion anyway. Just keep system apps and caches on the internal storage and offload everything else onto the μSD, it's much cheaper(~$70 512GB), the speed isn't that bad and most of your data no longer has to fail with the motherboard as mine did.

All nice and good until your microSD card fails.

Yeah, well I've had a phone's SoC fail on me, which resulted in all data on the flash becoming unrecoverable (possibly due to Knox encryption) but not external flash storage, and I've had more external flash storage devices than SoCs.

Quote from: S.Yu on January 19, 2020, 16:53:38
I'm pleasantly surprised by my revived Note8's 12MP using 36-stack night sight for everything now that its internals have been swapped to the SD version, processing speed has also doubled if not tripled compared to the Exynos(boy was that ISP slow processing a 24-stack) so 12MP may turn out to be plenty if demosiacing isn't an issue(night sight does subpixel sampling largely negating the bayer loss), but I definitely haven't thought of the lack of higher storage options as a push for the Ultra because I'm under the impression that most people prefer μSD expansion anyway. Just keep system apps and caches on the internal storage and offload everything else onto the μSD, it's much cheaper(~$70 512GB), the speed isn't that bad and most of your data no longer has to fail with the motherboard as mine did.

All nice and good until your microSD card fails.

I think it's a bad move because a lot of people are not going to cough up extra cash just to get the 108MP camera and the microSD card slot.

More people are buying 'budget premium' phones e.g. S10e, Note 10 Lite'.

Never skimp on internal storage and battery capacity. Everything else is negotiable.

I'm pleasantly surprised by my revived Note8's 12MP using 36-stack night sight for everything now that its internals have been swapped to the SD version, processing speed has also doubled if not tripled compared to the Exynos(boy was that ISP slow processing a 24-stack) so 12MP may turn out to be plenty if demosiacing isn't an issue(night sight does subpixel sampling largely negating the bayer loss), but I definitely haven't thought of the lack of higher storage options as a push for the Ultra because I'm under the impression that most people prefer μSD expansion anyway. Just keep system apps and caches on the internal storage and offload everything else onto the μSD, it's much cheaper(~$70 512GB), the speed isn't that bad and most of your data no longer has to fail with the motherboard as mine did.

Kudos to Samsung for keeping the microSD card slot. Honestly as long as they continue to offer the microSD card slot, most of the consumers will buy the base option anyways. So the choice to keep only the 128GB option should actually help potential consumers to avoid wasting money on non removable storage.

However, as experienced users will know, it is a lot more convenient to set up a device to use internal storage only wherever possible. Further, microSD cards can be a security liability if they aren't locked down with encryption should you lose or have your device stolen. Having SD card is not a security nor convenience issue, it is a huge benefit which gives you storage, backup & transfer freedom. I would expect a marketing person to put a comment like the one above. Not a person from technical site reviewing notebooks and phones.