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iPhone 5

carlitos said:
What do people use these microSD slots for? I have all my stuff in a cloud someplace, so can't imagine a use for a memory card on my phone. It was a real pain in the Blackberry, with the phone forgetting it's there and me having to dig the thing out and re-boot to find the photos.
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See how well that cloud works as you travel about. You get into dead zones and slow zones, and you're SOL if you're streaming music.
 
You can already get a wifi based solid state disk and take your cloud with you.
 
We're just having 4G activated in this area this month. Cloud storage is useless if you can't access it at a reliable rate.

But people also use the microSD slot to back up contacts, pictures, and other files, and then transfer them in a surefire and simple manner. It's a catch all.
 
Cloud?

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/

Apart from the fact that he made quite some serious mistakes security-wise, i'm wondering who it was that came up with the brilliant idea that a cloud service can access and manipulate local data at will.

But then i'm also wondering why people are so happy to put all their data into some remote storage system that they have absolutely no control over, that they know nothing about it's security, the people having access to it, etc.

Greetings,

Chris
 
carlitos said:
What do people use these microSD slots for? I have all my stuff in a cloud someplace, so can't imagine a use for a memory card on my phone. It was a real pain in the Blackberry, with the phone forgetting it's there and me having to dig the thing out and re-boot to find the photos.
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The other obvious use case is travelling abroad, where you want to avoid getting extorted by your telco for roaming charges. The alternative of using Wifi depends on sporadic availability, and definitely a no go on planes, so having the stuff permanently available regardless of location is for many people a better solution.

Never used a Blackberry, but that sounds pretty awful! Never experienced that on Android, for what its worth. The Media Scanner works behind the scenes to keep your media galleries constantly up to date.
 
A 9-page thread on the iPhone 5. I guess this is why all the news websites have tons of stories on Apple gadgets or when there is a problem at Foxconn it's referred to as the Apple factory. Click, click, click!
 
carlitos said:
What do people use these microSD slots for? I have all my stuff in a cloud someplace, so can't imagine a use for a memory card on my phone. It was a real pain in the Blackberry, with the phone forgetting it's there and me having to dig the thing out and re-boot to find the photos.
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Haha, Blackberry sucks!

Yeah, an SD card is nice because it's flash memory so you can access your stuff in an instant without having to wait for it to download from some "cloud" service, plus you can install apps on it, giving you more options for functionality.

Besides all that, you can upgrade your device's storage capacity easily and cheaply. Instead of paying $700 on whole new phone with an additional 32GB of storage, you can just buy a new microSD card for under $40.
 
John Albert said:
Yeah, an SD card is nice because it's flash memory so you can access your stuff in an instant without having to wait for it to download from some "cloud" service, plus you can install apps on it, giving you more options for functionality.
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That is one problem I have though I'm not on 4G network, just 3G.

The cloud sounds great but when I tell my phone "play Metallica" then waiting a couple of minutes for the song to start kinda kills the mood.
 
WildCat said:
See how well that cloud works as you travel about. You get into dead zones and slow zones, and you're SOL if you're streaming music.
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This really isn't an issue for me personally. Whenever I see those focus group commercials for ... Verizon, maybe? ... that show the focus group choosing the network with the "most 4G coverage" I wonder whether those people really need it. If you live in New York, why would you care whether there is 4G coverage in Laramie, Wyoming or Tulsa, Oklahoma? Makes no sense.

As someone that does travel a lot, but tends to always be in a big city, I've never had a problem. I use a GPS running app and Spotify for music when I run nearly every morning, wherever I am, and it works every time. That's why I haven't bothered to downsize and transfer my iTunes. Just my personal experience, mind you. The photos seem to find their way to my Mac laptop iPhoto app and my virtual pictureframe at home magically via the cloud. It's pretty cool.

Thanks for all the explanations on SD though. Makes sense. I personally haven't needed a lot of storage, but I could see why someone would want the option.
 
carlitos said:
This really isn't an issue for me personally. Whenever I see those focus group commercials for ... Verizon, maybe? ... that show the focus group choosing the network with the "most 4G coverage" I wonder whether those people really need it. If you live in New York, why would you care whether there is 4G coverage in Laramie, Wyoming or Tulsa, Oklahoma? Makes no sense.

As someone that does travel a lot, but tends to always be in a big city, I've never had a problem. I use a GPS running app and Spotify for music when I run nearly every morning, wherever I am, and it works every time. That's why I haven't bothered to downsize and transfer my iTunes. Just my personal experience, mind you. The photos seem to find their way to my Mac laptop iPhoto app and my virtual pictureframe at home magically via the cloud. It's pretty cool.

Thanks for all the explanations on SD though. Makes sense. I personally haven't needed a lot of storage, but I could see why someone would want the option.
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Even here in the big city I find dead zones in my coverage. At my own house, for example, I have a weak 3G signal if I get any signal at all. In fact as I type this my phone is showing no 3G signal. If I walk to the end of the block (5 houses down) I get a very strong signal for some reason, can even stream the live football games on my Sunday Ticket app.

Not an issue at home, because I have the wifi. But a big problem when I'm away from home and in a dead zone.

eta: I was down in Mokena last weekend and Sprint actually had their 4G working down there, I did a speed test and got 8.6 Mbps down and 4.6Mbps up speeds! Supposedly will have it up and running in the city in December.
 
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I'm in the South Loop and the move from 3G to 4G was a huge improvement. There are a ton of 3G dead zones around here. It got to where I was warning people before I crossed this or that bridge that we were about to disconnect. I found 3G to be much worse than the old networks.
 
John Albert said:
Yet somehow, I imagine you're unable to present any evidence that they do?
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So, you're surprised that we on an internet forum have no proof of the internal strategies of one of the largest companies in technology??

Really?
 
I confess that I have unlimited data on this phone, so I spend zero time thinking about data usage. It's actually more convenient for me to find an album online with Spotify than it is to bother syncing up iTunes. Plus I usually find more interesting stuff just by searching.
 
WildCat said:
Even here in the big city I find dead zones in my coverage. At my own house, for example, I have a weak 3G signal if I get any signal at all.
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I too live in a big city, and I'm lucky enough to have decent coverage throughout my apartment except for the bathroom.

Come to think of it, that's probably a blessing in disguise for my callers. Who would want to carry on a conversation with somebody pooping and grunting on the other end?
 
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