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From: Your Name <YourName@YourISP.com>
Newsgroups: misc.phone.mobile.iphone,comp.mobile.android
Subject: Re: What's the actual *advantage* of not having an sd slot?
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:35:34 +1200
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On 2025-06-22 10:48:33 +0000, R.Wieser said:
> Your Name,
> 
>> In some ways they are gouging the customers who still want / need those 
>> functions.
> 
> Are they ?   What do you think it costs to manufacture small batches of 
> a certain product ?   And than there is the risk involved in not 
> getting all of them sold.  And its not only the manufacturer who runs 
> that risk, but also all the resell points, upto-and-including the 
> store, in between.

Depend on the shop's agreement with the manufacturer. In some cases the 
agreement is that any unsold product can be returned to the 
manufacturer. This is pretty normal for magazines and books (the covers 
are torn off and returned to the publisher for credit, while the rest 
of the books / magazine goes in the bin / recycling). It also happens 
for many other products.

In the case of Apple, Samsung, and others, some of the shops are owned 
by the manufacturer themselves.




> As for gouging, that only works when a single manufacturer is involved 
> - or you must believe that all the manufacturers all over the world are 
> colluding.

Not colluding as such, but once Apple does something, all the others 
quickly follow. Samsung even has a habit of making fun of Apple for do 
it, only then for Samsung to do exactly the same thing a few months 
later.

Again, the same thing happens in many other industries. One mass market 
car maker does something, and the rest quickly follow. One supermarket 
raises (or less often lowers) the price on product X, and the rest 
quickly follow.




>> They remove things from a device without lowering the price, and then 
>> charge extra to get those same functions back again.
> 
> You know as well as I do that they do not just remove features while 
> leaving the rest of the phone the same.   As you mentioned it yourself, 
> the choice to remove the the audio jack could easily be from the 
> manufacturers wish to make the phone even thinner than the last one.

Yes, there are various reasons and excuses for doing something (these 
days it is often the "green" environmental excuse), but it doesn't 
change the fact that the customer is getting less for the same price.

There is very little change between newer models of phone these days, 
so removing the headphone jack, while yet again 'upgrading' the cameras 
doesn't excuse them from not dropping the price for less functionality 
.... although the price of a headphone jack is likely only a few cents 
to big manufactureres. The charger is slighty different and more 
expensive part though.

Plus the other so-called improvements would raise the price by more 
than the few cents of the missing headphone jack.

The only real reason was simply to be able make the phones thinner. The 
excuse of making room for a "bigger battery" isn't really sensible 
since the amount of space the headphone jack takes up is minimal - at 
best you might get a few more minutes from the "bigger battery" ... 
which of course isn't actually bigger, because the phone is now thinner 
anyway..



>> No longer including a charger is another recent example.
> 
> Why include a charger when the phone has gotten an universal plug and 
> thus (supposedly) can be charged by any old charger you've got laying 
> around ? It can be argued that most of chargers delivered with a new 
> phone would just turn into landfill.

That is the one of the supposed reasons ... but people have always told 
to use the charger that came with the device, because using a "wrong" 
charger can cause the batteries to catch fire. Suddenly there is no 
charger in the box, but there are still plenty of "wrong" chargers out 
there that people are now using,



> Yes, it would have been nice to see that reflected in the price of a 
> new phone, but (big) companies are definitily not there to let their 
> customers profit from any windfall they might come across.  Besides, 
> with a mid-range phone costing $500,- or more and a charger about $15,- 
> we are talking about 3%.  Thats not really going to break the bank.

"$15" still being charged for not getting the charger ... and then 
*another* $15 for having to buy the charger separately. "Charger" is 
simply the most obvious example. Other functionality, including the 
headphone jack, has been removed that then requires the customer to pay 
out more to regain that function.



>> The original iMac dropped the floppy disk drive and had no real 
>> replacement since USB thumb drives being too expensive at the time. You 
>> had to buy an external floppy disk drive (once they were available!) to 
>> be able to easily and cheaply transfer files between computers.
> 
> And with that you have deliverd a nice example why removing 
> functionality is two-sided sword : They may grab a bit more cash, but 
> they are losing control over what they regard as /their/ device.
> 
> Something similar happened to the Commodore 64 : they started to sell 
> huge external diskdrives (called "breadboxes" by the users),

The "breadbox" / "breadbin" was the orinigal C64 (and VIC20) computer 
itself, although mainly after the thinner C64C was released as a way to 
distinguish between the two. I've never heard the term used with the 
Commodore disk drives.
<https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61224>
<https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=81178>



> and other companies jumped at the chance and created much nicer 
> diskdrives about a quarter (and even less) as big. (I've still got both 
> in my closet).

When you're talking about separate plug-in devices liek external disk 
drives, there's nothing stopping a third-party company making a 
competing compatible product (copyrights and patents allowing of 
course).



>> Same happens in many other industries too.
>> 
>> It's called "the price of progress".  :-(
> 
> You mean "the price of progress" which means that you are *willingly* 
> carrying a device wich is a super-version of those ankle-bracelets some 
> convicts are forced to wear ? :-)
> 
> Regards,
> Rudy Wieser

Personally I have never owned a mobile phone at all.  :-p
I have no need for one and it would be just yet another expense of 
continually paying for the plan fees (even pre-paid plans require at 
least an annual top-up here).