Storage costs are skyrocketing! Over 80% of netizens called on mobile phone manufacturers to restart the SD card slot: they don’t want to spend more money.

Kuai Technology reported on August 10 that once upon a time, supporting microSD card expansion was a standard feature of almost every mobile phone. But starting around 2015, mainstream manufacturers gradually canceled this design. Samsung has no longer provided a microSD expansion card slot since the Galaxy S21 series, and domestic brands also followed this trend around 2019. There are three main reasons why manufacturers cut off the microSD card slot. The first is to pursue body integration and thin and light design. Eliminating the card slot can free up more internal space for the battery. The second is to improve the waterproof and dustproof performance, and reducing openings will help enhance the sealing of the entire machine. The most important thing is profit consideration. After canceling the expansion function, if users want to obtain larger storage capacity, they can only accept the high storage version premium set by the manufacturer. This pricing strategy has become an important means for manufacturers to increase profits. However, the surge in memory chips since 2025 has completely changed this situation. The explosion of AI computing power demand has severely squeezed enterprise-level memory production capacity, and the supply of consumer-level flash memory continues to shrink. Entering 2026, the contract price increase of memory chips will further expand, and the combined proportion of DRAM and NAND in the bill of materials of mobile phones will soar from about 13% in the first quarter of 2025 to an estimated 43% in the third quarter of 2026. If mobile phone manufacturers continue to maintain large-capacity built-in storage solutions, the cost of the entire machine will be unbearable and product pricing will lose competitiveness. Against this background, more and more netizens are calling on mobile phone manufacturers to bring back the microSD card slot. A survey launched by Android Authority showed that among more than 8,000 users who participated in the vote, as many as 82% hoped that mobile phone manufacturers would add the microSD card slot back into the design. Consumers' demands are very practical, and the price difference between manufacturers' built-in storage capacity can often be hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Rather than paying a high premium for official storage upgrades, it is better to choose the basic capacity version and then purchase a card to expand the capacity yourself, which can not only meet personalized storage needs, but also effectively control the purchase cost. Today, when storage prices remain high, consumers are no longer willing to spend more money on the so-called "storage tax". m