Palm: lack of microSD slot on the Pre purely a "design" decision
By Laura June 
posted January 23rd 2009 3:25PM
posted January 23rd 2009 3:25PM
Palm Product Manager Matt Crowley is holding a week-long Q&A session about the Pre on Facebook, and some pretty interesting discussions are taking place. Most interestingly, so far, is Crowley's answer when questioned about the (for many) cringe-inducing lack of a microSD slot on the company's much-hyped device in-the-making: "Design was the highest goal on the Palm Pre project. The phone has to look and function great in the hand and up against the face on a call. The decision to include or not include expandable storage is an easy one when design is the highest priority. The physical size of the device would have been compromised if we added another physical component to Pre. Just a millimeter can seriously impact the curvature of the design in a way that minimizes the design intent. We wanted to maintain a slick curved slider design without building out too much thickness. When you look at the two parts of the product and see how thin they really are, you may be amazed that we were able to fit everything in. And yes, all the stuff does fit." Now, we're pretty into the design of the Pre, but this kind of strikes us as a lame answer. Regardless, you can toss your own questions into the ring until January 28th. [Via Palm Infocenter]
Hmm, well i was intrigued by the Pre until i read that. No dice.
This phone has EVERYTHING (wifi / EVDO Rev A / bluetooth / gps / massive built-in memory / extremely fast processor / aesthetics), but the microSD card slot. With this much built-in memory and a very fast internet connection, the microSD is hardly an Achilles' heel. I'm surprised Palm isn't at least making an accessory, giving us a choice.
Frankly, I've already stored most of my media online. As long as the Pre has a file manager and a way to download files from the internet, this thing is going to turn into my celestial jukebox. I'm still buying this phone. :)
I honestly thought that the Pre would be Palm's king of the hill redeemer phone. For all the crap that they sold after the few good phones & many great PDA's they came out with.. I thought i beat the design of the iPhone 3G & the futures of the 5800XM but well the lack of a small slot... It could be a deal breaker for some... Hey, people have to realize that the future is going to be where these little devices will be carrying your digital life & the Pre was going so well with all the features. We'll see how it plays out when the N97 & iPhone 4G come out! :)
Not 4G. There won't be enough WIMAX spots for that..... think hi-res iPhone HD, to compete with NVIDIA's Tegra chip.
Embedded flash memory is always a bad idea, I feel.
It's prone to death when written to often, and I'd much rather have that component removable, thankyouverymuch. Being stuck with embedded memory when it fails is never mentioned by Palm, of course, instead they say:
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"The other advantage of embedded memory is that you have a large amount of storage out of the box for media and files."
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...because we all know sticking in a 2GB, 4GB, 8GB or 16GB microSD card is too hard :p And choice is a burden :p
Anyway, this ranks as the first time on earth I've heard microSD omitted 'cause of size / design reasons. I tend to agree there's some crazy logic in that answer. I just refuse to believe it.
"Anyway, this ranks as the first time on earth I've heard microSD omitted 'cause of size / design reasons. I tend to agree there's some crazy logic in that answer. I just refuse to believe it."
...iPhone?
Nobody seemed to miss it very much.
I'm not aware of any iPhone guys say space was at premium. I could be wrong, though.
Crowley's answer was pretty damn lame indeed. If they were that concerned about the design they could have just put the MicroSDHC card holder under the battery cover. While this isn't optimal, from my point of view, it's been done before successfully by other companies.
bunch of bullshit
All I hear about on this site is whine about the lack of removable batteries and expandable storage.
I really can't understand how 8GB would be an issue. One song is like 4-5MBs you know. I'd also like an internal battery, seeing how much space it would save.
Except that no external storage means its a ZERO sum for me
IE no change of me buying. I don't care how good it is.
No MicroSD because it would take too much space ??!! Ludicrous nonsense, adding a microSDHC card and repositioning other circuitry to make space would have added perhaps 1-2mm to overall length at most.
ABORT, RETRY, FAIL!
Anything that limits the user's use, limits it's appeal. I won't say it's a fatal flaw, but it was very short-sighted. Or, if I were a cynic, I might conclude the external storage capability was left for PRE v2 to induce premature upgrades and stream the revenue.
And a bad decision it is...
I can't help but notice that the majority of you that don't use microSD are Blackberry users, dumbphone users, or WinMo Standard users. All of you clearly don't have phones that can handle multimedia very well. With the Pre that will likely change. You WILL use your phone for music and movies... Not just because you can, but because you find it makes a better multimedia device than your old iPod. Try to think about that...
Now Imagine yourself with an 8Gb iPod and no upgrades in sight for 2 years...
Semms pretty stupid now huh?
....So - there's no Flash Support, no expandable memory, no video recording function (probably because there's no expandable memory), limited applications at launch....
I've talked myself out of this already! I'll get a 5800 as a stop gap and get the next Pre...unless the next iPhone knocks me for 6...which I doubt.
Maybe it would be better if Apple let all the other companies use Multi-Touch and charge them $50 surcharge for every device that sold that uses Multi-Touch. The other companies aren't going to do it as well and it will be a steady revenue stream for Apple. I sure don't envy Palm now that they'll have to remove the pinch from their Pre after demo'ing and getting all the potential Palm Pre users all hot and bothered about getting to expand and shrink items with two fingers. Maybe Palm can fix it to use three fingers instead. Whatever. Palm will figure something out.