Pandora with microSD - will you buy it?

[Nintendo]

Full SDXC support, right off the bat would be nice too.

 

[Stephane Hockenhull]

µSD cards are hopeless for swapable media. You lose them way too easy and they are next to impossible to label. They are fine for storage you never remove, but not if you swap it out.

I'm with slaeshjag.


you can't label them and you can't swap out microSD cards casually, you have to be extremely careful to not lose them.


they are great as upgradable semi-permanent internal storage for mobile devices.


not so great as removable media.


last time one flew out of its spring-loaded socket I spent 5 minutes looking for it.

 

[slaeshjag]

^ That happened to a M2 card for me a few years ago, took me 4 hours to find it.

 

[kaprikawn]

All I care about is price and availability, and currently microSD is much more expensive at the capacities I want in the Pandora (32gb / 64gb). If, sometime in the future, it's cheaper and easier to get microSD than it is to get the current full size then I'd want micro.

 

[Neelix]

µSD cards are hopeless for swapable media. You lose them way too easy and they are next to impossible to label. They are fine for storage you never remove, but not if you swap it out.

I'm with slaeshjag.


you can't label them and you can't swap out microSD cards casually, you have to be extremely careful to not lose them.

So am I. Removable storage needs to be big enough to handle it easily.


I very rarely try to remove the microSD cards from the devices I have that use them because its just not worth the effort and risk. If I need to transfer files on or off such a card I'll usually use a USB cable connectivity and mass storage mode instead.


I have no issue with the use of microSD as internal storage.


- Neelix

 

[Askarus]

No micro SD Pandora.


I would buy it but I would need some month to stop hating it.


Arguments pro:


1: They need much less space on the board.


2: They might be the future


Arguments contra:


1: They get lost easily


2: All the SD cards we boughed for our old Pandora are useless


3: No one knows how things develop. Who knows when they'll reach capacity and speed of normal SD cards


As I said in other threads as well: I don't have any problems with an internal micro SD instead of a NAND and 2 external SDXC slots.

 

[_wb_]

Back in the days, 3.5" floppies really were an improvement upon 5.25" floppies. Faster, more storage, sturdier. Our storage media have come a long way since those days. In my opinion, SD hit the sweet spot: it is as small as practically possible for humans, it is quite sturdy and reliable, you can even put them in a washing machine and they'll typically not get broken. Yes, we could go even smaller, but it comes at a price: human hands and eyes can deal with only a certain range of objects, and microSD is already beyond the comfortable range.

 

[Ian J]

The majority of my cards are MicroSD that I use with adaptors, I see no issue with using MicroSD in a future device if it helps keep the size down.


Every card I have purchased came with an adaptor and a small carry case that I can use to put multiple MicroSD cards in if required.

 

[Nintendo]

Be more careful and they won't get lost.

 

[slaeshjag]

Put one on your desk, check back in two weeks and try finding it.

 

[ghostpatch]

+1 for full sized SDXC Cards

We're talking about 2014 and beyond. Full sized SD will have been surpassed by the domination of new devices using micro SD by then.
Full sized SD isn't the future.

who cares? Besides SD cards wont die so easily. Sure they are standrad for small devices but when you look at camcorders and cameras, full sized SDs are standard. Thats because when you swap the media you want to have something robust rather then something small. SD cards are small enough for such devices. Compared to CF cards it's already a huge reduction of space. CF cards are still being used by the way. They're also not dead yet. Thats why microSD cards will never become standard in the semiprofessional and professional area!


I'll still buy Pandora2 either way

 

[Znirk]

We're talking about 2014 and beyond. Full sized SD will have been surpassed by the domination of new devices using micro SD by then.

Probably true, but irrelevant. Present-day devices and their cards won't magically disappear just because something else dominates the market for new equipment. I'd want a P2 to be compatible with what I have, not what I might or might not buy at some point in the future.


That said, my opinion on the P2 can be safely ignored because I'm not buying one. I'll probably get my Pandora 1 later this year, and I tend not to replace stuff before it breaks.

 

[Nintendo]

Put one on your desk, check back in two weeks and try finding it.

Put it in a microSD case. Take care of it.

 

[Askarus]

We're talking about 2014 and beyond. Full sized SD will have been surpassed by the domination of new devices using micro SD by then.

Probably true, but irrelevant. Present-day devices and their cards won't magically disappear just because something else dominates the market for new equipment. I'd want a P2 to be compatible with what I have, not what I might or might not buy at some point in the future.

Totally agree with.


It's nothing more than speculation that micro SD will replace SD.


In my oppinion both will live on.


For mobile phones micro SD is the better solution but for camcorders it's definitly SD.

 

[Caine]

The majority of the SD cards I own are full-sized SD cards. Not having a full-sized slot would render all those useless. Mini and Micro SD can easily be inserted into full-sized slots with an adapter but it doesn't work the other way around.


The only real disadvantage of the full-sized slots is that they use up more space.

 

[ShleeDragon]

SD to micro adapters are easy enough to manage.

 

[diligentcircle]

I honestly don't care that much. If it makes the P2 smaller or allows more stuff to be put in it or some such thing, go for it. I suppose it would render the SD cards I currently have useless for the P2, but I'm not one of those guys that buys the latest and greatest 500-bajillion dollar cards. Another $20-40 isn't that much of a deal compared to the cost of the P2 itself.

 

[_wb_]

SD to micro adapters are easy enough to manage.

How would that work for an internal microSD slot behind the battery?


Also most people don't want to have adapters sticking out of the device...

 

[bismuthdrummer]

MicroSD is great technology but also a profound demonstration of the lower bound on size.


I like the size for when having that small of a card actually matters. The incremental gain from the smaller size doesn't make a difference when you're walking with a full-blown UMPC in your hands... you should expect some form of a small brick. I hope we're not shooting for a palm-sized Pandora or anything like that.


Small flakes that a baby can swallow or that a fan can blow into the garbage is not the future. Objects much smaller than your fingertips are generally difficult to manipulate. Is this so hard for members of a tactile-oriented community to understand?


Even the credit-card-sized Raspberry Pi went full-size SD because according to their founder, Eben Upton, the mechanical robustness of the slots was not the same and microSD is like contact lenses in terms of difficulty to work with them with your hands. So at least part of their reason was because of the size, and both reasons he gave were the physical limitations of the device's enclosure, not its innards.


I would like microSD only for the internal slot as proposed by Exophase. The other two cards need to be there and need to be full-sized SD.

 

[peacelovefleshbones]

No miscro sd. Too expensive and too small. Internal might be nice to replace nand with.