this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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After having a phone without a 3.5mm port or a microSD card slot, the top 2 features I want on a phone are a 3.5mm port and a microSD card slot.
Shame Sony discontinued their Xperia 5 series, even if they were also excessively priced.
What's the use case for microSD slots on phones these days anyway?
If it's (just) to avoid paying Google or Apple storage fees, you can work around that by buying one or several HDDs to keep at home and sync stuff over the local network, possibly even build a server and access your stuff remotely.
I really don't understand the need for that much space on the go, though. Are you watching entire series on your phone?
"just", I think not giving money to Apple or Google anything is a perfectly good reason alone to want expandable storage.
Phone manufacturers charge a massive premium for more storage on a phone, storage which is then lost if the phone dies. A microSD card can be moved around and they cost little.
Not everyone has a home server, in fact a very very small percentage do and being able to store their photos and what-not on a microSD card is very valuable. The freedom to add more storage is a good thing to have. Most people can understand an SD card, but not how to setup an entire home server with syncing etc, let alone exposing that to the web to access it anywhere. It also costs money to run, a microSD card doesn't.
The only reason we don't have expandable storage or a 3.5mm port anymore is: money. They want to sell you that cloud service, upcharge you for more internal storage and make you buy their bluetooth earbuds.
I hope you’re not suggesting that people store all of their photos and movies and stuff on their phones SD card and SD card only……
SD cards are absurdly volatile and prone to corruption.
Of course not... people should still do regular backups.
I understand all of that and I agree with you. Not wanting to pay monthly storage fees is perfectly reasonable too. I know I did everything to avoid giving Google any money for storage.
But microSD slots on phones aren't coming back, and manufacturers are giving you 512GB of internal storage at most, so we need to move on with the times.
I don't have a home server (yet) either, but I do have 2 TB disks I use to store all the important stuff I want to save forever. Nothing lives on my phone so I'm fine with 128GB.
Local syncing can be done just by installing Syncthing or Omnisend, and everything gets transferred through your home Wi-Fi. No need for complicated setups. I mentioned home servers as an example but you certainly don't need one.
MicroSD cards also die so I don't know why you used that as a slight against internal phone storage. You should always have backups.
Storage is dirt cheap these days, it makes no sense to hinder yourself buying niche phones, often at inflated prices, just for a feature that is easily worked around. In my opinion.
aw man, this is the first i'm hearing about discontinuation. apparently it's because people want larger phones?!
i have a 5 IV and it is by far the largest phone i've ever owned... i wish it was like an inch smaller. but it was the only model i could find that doesn't have a non-rectangular screen. these bloody camera cutouts are everywhere and i never even use the front camera.
Yep... everyone wants phablets. Apparently.
I don't mind the cutouts (if done right), they just sit in the notification bar, so they never obscure anything anyway. That's a place Sony could have shaved off the extra height imo, the top and bottom bezels are pretty unnecessary.
We are slowly moving to under-screen cameras now though.
i mean the bezels together are less than 1cm. and the notch takes space from notifications, with two sim cards and a vpn active that shit overflows instantly anyway.
Fair, I suppose it depends on how the software handles it too. Personally I never let notifications stack up and the VPN for me is on the other side. I'd personally rather have the shorter phone and a cutout.
vpn is on the right, yeah. but this is with just one sim:
with two i get another signal strength and wifi calling symbol. it's already collapsing them when not on the quick setting screen, which is very frustrating.
FYI, you can disable the icons you don't want/need using (https://github.com/zacharee/Tweaker). Although that doesn't solve the actual problem...
i do want the icons, yeah.
Thanks, I didn't know about this. Though it should just be default settings you can change... size, position, enabled/disabled. All pretty simple settings that should be provided.
Nothing better than a selfie from a low angle, right?
i think they mean "under" as in "behind".
lol, that’s very possible
Yes that's exactly it. A camera under/behind the display. Not at the bottom of the screen aha (the bottom changes I guess too, depending on your phone rotation).
The Sony form factor is the best on the market IMO. You can hold it in you hand and get more screen in the height.
They’re really no different to a regular iPhone or iPhone pro in terms of size.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-16-Pro,Sony-Xperia-5-V/phones/12239,12193
agree, i just wish they kept a model like the Z* Compact around.