Did Power Users Cause Samsung Galaxy Note 6 To Bring Back SD Storage?

Last year, the mobile market saw the release of the Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which many sources, including the Inquisitr, felt was the best product of its kind, some even putting it up against the latest Apple products.

The Note series is known for its crossover design of being both a phone and a tablet – otherwise known as phablet, and uses a stylus as part of the design for taking notes. The product line even offers a tablet for the same purpose.

Despite the good reviews it received however, the response was negative when it came to expandable storage as to why it did not offer it, especially since the series has been marketed mostly to power users who expect it.

SamMobile suggests in their article which was published right after the device was available, that Samsung was likely more focused on their flagship Samsung Galaxy S series for the expandable storage, leaving them focused to offer instead their own proprietary internal storage technology for their then-new Note 5.

Many electronics addicts feel the technology is far superior than what a external storage slot would offer, where the space is left exposed to lower quality brands.

While this could be the case, it’s also been suggested that the Galaxy Note 5 did not offer the feature in order to make the device more consumer friendly right out of the box.

I choose the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 as smartphone of the year, despite the disappointment of lack of removable battery/SD card

— Christopher Pagan (@ChrisXPagan) December 9, 2015

Back in February, Ars Technica covered the additional storage supported under the Android 6.0 OS — which is now being pushed out to Samsung Galaxy Note 5 models, which appeared to clash with the Samsung company as well as LG, for devices that do support extra storage and the hardware company’s concerns that the operating system’s adoptable storage capabilities would present problems to their consumers.

“Samsung decided not to use the Android Marshmallow ‘adoptable storage’ model. We believe that our users want a microSD card to transfer files between their phone and other devices (laptop, tablet, etc), especially the photos and videos they shoot with the camera.

“With adoptable storage, first of all the card may be erased the first time it is inserted into the device. This behavior may be unexpected by many users and we don’t want our users to lose their files. Second, once Marshmallow starts using a card for adoptable storage, it cannot be read by other devices, so it loses this ability to be used for file transfer. Adoptable Storage is also primarily targeted towards emerging markets where devices with only 4-8GB of onboard storage are common. We think that our model of using microSD for mass storage is more in-line with our owner’s desires and expectations for how microSD should behave.”

The Inquisitr provides some insight on upgrades in an article over the weekend on the latest Android operating system, named Marshmallow, which Google is pushing out to other phones in the network.

With this news comes the anticipation for the next step in the product line which has many wondering about the new features.

International Business Times offered this bit of information on the Samsung Galaxy Note 6.

“According to a Weibo user by the name HG_VISION (via PhoneArena), the device will have a 5.8-inch Slim RGB AMOLED display with 2,560 x 1,400 pixels, a 64GB/128GB internal memory, a 6 GB LPD DR4 High-Speed RAM, and a 12MP camera with ‘Super O.I.S. Plus.’

“It is also reported that the [Samsung] Galaxy Note 6 would sport a 5.7-inch display, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820, and run Android N. It is expected to have a 64GB/128GB internal storage (with microSD card slot), a 6GB RAM and (along with the camera) a good sensor.”

Still no micro SD slot, it might well be a rumor https://t.co/1bhbxpwzt2

— Jeff DV™??? (@JefDev) February 17, 2016

Christian Today is also reporting that the Samsung Galaxy Note 6 will likely make an appearance at the IFA trade show in Berlin in September, and that it would be released by July, which the article says is a little earlier than expected.

The article also refers to the same features mentioned earlier, specifically the expanded storage.

The article by the Inquisitr mentioned earlier, which refers to the Android updates going out to different products worldwide, shows the complexity of the scheduling as to whether manufacturers/OEMs are ready to support features that power users gravitate to, who depend on the products for the flexibility.

If the Samsung Galaxy Note 6 does include the newly expandable storage as the reports claim, then the majority of the market might very well be driven by power users and Samsung had to no choice but to comply.

[Featured image by K?rlis Dambr?n via Flickr | CC BY 2.0]