If Samsung wants to sell me another phone

they will have to reinstate expandable memory as a part of their handset. It looks like they might just do that:

Android Circuit: Samsung Galaxy S7 U-Turn, Apple Suffocates Android, Galaxy Note 5 Defeated

Samsung Revives Memory Card Support

One of the big omissions in Samsung’s high-end devices in 2015 has been the loss of expandable memory. The removal of microSD card support saw a huge backlash from fans of the Galaxy devices – especially Galaxy Note users. Reports from HDBlog.it suggest that those complaints have been heard and microSD is on the way back in 2016. Forbes’ Jay McGregor:

Samsung of late has more a pragmatism to it. It’s willing to shun convention in order to secure sales, which it showed by bringing forward the release of the Note 5 and the (rumoured) early release of the S7. It’s likely that Samsung has had serious discussions about a possible return of the microSD slot in its flagship line. Even the notorious leakster, Evan Blass, predicted back in August that the Korean company could make an about-face for a future Samsung flagship.

I also thought this was a fun quote about Apple vs. Samsung:

Unlike the early days of the smartphone era, the current crop of smartphones have a relatively fixed hardware platform. Your flagship devices are going to offer a broadly similar feature set, from camera output and screen displays, to chipset benchmarks and battery performance. There will naturally be areas where phone ‘A’ is slightly better than phone ‘B’ but for everyday use the sweet spot of current smartphone technology covers the vast majority of manufacturers’ main devices.

The catch is not in building a cutting-edge smartphone, it’s making a cutting-edge smartphone that people believe is a cutting-edge smartphone that they want to buy. This is Apple’s core strength. Samsung can parade the technology for the Galaxy range, but the knee-jerk reaction is that it has all been seen before in the iPhone… even if the technology itself debuted in a Samsung handset.

UPDATE, 12/5/15: According to new rumours, the microSD capability of an S7 may be in doubt.