We all know that most Android phones have an SD card slot, which allows users to add extra storage space to their device, but Apple has never brought the feature to iPhones and there are some good reasons why.
Starting with the user experience, Apple likes having complete control over their products to make sure users enjoy them with few headaches, but SD cards come with several problems, for example instead of the device managing files automatically, users have to decide where to put them on the SD card or internal storage, this is not only inconvenient but it also adds fragmentation what do user fills up there SD card, they’d have to either transfer that data to a larger card which can be complicated process or stop using the old SD card completely and go without having the data on device. Also when transferring to a new phone, users would have to manage their SD card data in addition to their internal storage which makes upgrading even more inconvenient and that’s a problem, since Apple wants to make buying new phones as easy as possible.
Not to mention just shopping for SD cards is unnecessarily complicated, users have to figure out which ones are compatible with their device and how much storage capacity their device supports, get either of those wrong and you’re stuck with an SD card that doesn’t work at all.
Next is performance, SD cards are slow and unreliable, delivering an uneven smartphone experience, if users select a video from the SD card they may wonder why it takes so much longer to open compared to videos stored internally, plus after a number of years SD cards can fail since they have a limited number of Write Cycles. And the last thing Apple wants is users blaming them for losing their family photos, plus expandable storage motivates customers to choose higher capacity iPhone models which means more profit for Apple.
Finally SD cards take up quite a bit of space which Apple may prefer using for things like a larger battery or larger camera system.
This article is inspired by a video in Apple Explained YouTube channel.
