Google's ridiculous reason about not providing MicroSD slots in their Nexus devices

I always felt that Apple iPhone and Windows Phone 7 to be very restrictive as they do not provide Micro-SD card slots. Google Android devices were much less restrictive by providing Micro-SD slots, which allow users to expand storage space cheaply.

However, when Google introduced its Nexus devices, none of these Nexus devices sport Micro-SD slots.

There was an interview with Android's user-interface designer, Matias Duarte, who answered the question of why the Nexus devices do not provide these Micro-SD card slots:

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Androids-Matias-Duarte-takes-to-G-for-Q-A-SD-cards-are-confusing-for-users_id36117

Frankly, Matias Duarte answer is just rubbish.

If Duarte thinks SD card storage is "confusing" for user, then wouldn't Cloud storage like Google Drive be just as "confusing"?

Google has this idealistic belief that the entire world should be awashed in internet connectivity. We should be able to connect to the internet to access our cloud storage wherever and whenever we want.

However, the reality is this:

• internet connectivity is spotty at best. The telcos are not able to erect cell towers for 3G/4G coverage in many places. When you have no internet, you cannot access your documents in cloud storage
  
• internet connections via 3G/4G or expensive. Telcos have exorbitantly priced data plans, and the affordable ones restrict you to a mere 1 GB of data transfer per month. Even if Google provides 5 GB of cloud storage in Google Drive, it will cost you a tidy sum if you need to access that 5 GB over 3G/4G internet

Unless one is as rich as Google, it is simply not cost effective to use cloud storage as compared to Micro-SD cards (last week, I bought a 32 GB micro-SD card for just S$24). And Android devices are really commodity products targeted at the 99% of the population, unlike iDevices which are "luxury" products aimed at the rich and affluent 1%. Unfortunately, Duarte's answer seems to indicate that Google is now becoming infected by Apple too.

One of the reasons why HTC, despite having a great Android handphone in its One series, could not do well  in the market while its Samsung counterpart did extremely well with its Galaxy S3, could be simply attributed to the fact that Samsung has a removable battery and a Micro-SD slot, while the HTC One had none. The people who buy Android phones are not fools, and they know that a device with a Micro-SD slot is more capable than one that doesn't. Unfortunately, HTC bought into Apple's thinking, and removed such a useful feature from their new flagship phone. No wonder HTC sales dropped a whopping 75%. People who used to support HTC, like one of my friends who always upgraded his handphone to the next HTC phone, switched to the Samsung Galaxy S3 simply because the Samsung phone has a Micro-SD slot.

Unfortunately, Google and many other manufacturers don't seem to realise that people are now using handphones and tablets like PCs. In fact, many people are buying smartphones and tablets instead of PCs. But they still need the large storage capacities of PCs for their mobile devices. A mobile device with just 8 GB or 16 GB of storage is not adequate. Heck, even 32 GB won't cut it nowadays. If Google wants to eliminate the Micro-SD slot, I think their devices should come with a minimum of 128 GB of storage. Tablets should definitely come with this amount of storage in a tiny SSD disk on the motherboard.

Until the day when internet connectivity is as ubiquitous as electricity, cloud storage is just an expensive nicety and not a best-value proposition. Currently, having a Micro-SD card slot for expandable storage is best for the public. Of course, that is provided Google wants to benefit the public, and not their own coffers.

Pulse 3.0 and Unnecessary Changes

I recently updated the Pulse app on my Asus Transformer Pad from version 2 to version 3, and immediately regretted my decision.

Sure, the new Pulse 3 looks nice and dandy. But the update has removed all the fantastic usability features that had made it great. There are just so many things bad about this new version, that it appears that the developers did not ask users whether they wanted these changes in the first place. This is exactly the same problem I face with Microsoft Windows 8: implementing features that no one had asked for, and removing usability in its stead.

1. Removal of navigation bar at the bottom of a story page

In version 2, as you read to the end of each story, a navigation bar will come up from the bottom of the page showing the story icons. It is very easy to swipe through this navigation bar and click on the icon of the next story that you wish to read.

This has been removed in version 3. Now, when you reach the bottom of the page, that's it. You have to click the top left corner to go back to the main menu page, which contains a screen full of story icons for all the various channels that you have subscribed to. This is very bad. It is exactly the horrible feeling I get with the new Windows 8 Start screen with all the tiles.

The problem is that the during the redraw of the main menu page, you may not remember the position of the story icon that you have just exited from. Sometimes, that icon will be in focus. But many a time, the story icon is not in focus, and I have to slide the icons on that particular channel's navigation bar to find my place. In fact, the program will sometimes reset the channel back to the left most story icon. If you have already read many stories in that channel, it is really infuriating for the channel bar to reset back to the leftmost story!

When I discovered this problem, I thought that I will simply dispense with going back to the main menu page to select the next story, and simply swipe from the right on the current story page to get to the next story. However, I discovered this wasn't possible. The program appears to cache only 4 stories, so once you swiped to the 4th story, that's it. You still have to go back to the main menu page to select the next story from the channel's navigation bar.

2. Scrolling is no longer smooth

After I had updated my Transformer Pad to Jelly Bean 4.1, navigating through Pulse 2 was extremely fluid - "buttery smooth" - to use the technical term.

Unfortunately, Pulse 3 has eliminated all the smooth scrolling, and returned the tablet's behaviour to that of Froyo 2.1!

Everything is "stuttering" now. Whether it is scrolling through the story icons in the main menu page, or scrolling up and down an article on the story page, the movements are now in fits and starts. 

In fact, I can say that in general, the speed performance in Pulse 3 is worse than Pulse 2.

3. Removal of Convenient "Open in Browser" Feature

Previously, when reading a particular story, it is possible to simply click the Settings button and click "Open in browser" to view the page in my preferred browser (Dolphin). 

This is no longer possible.

Instead, you must click Settings > Web Mode to first show the page in Pulse 3. Then, you click Settings > Open in Browser to open the story in the external browser. It now takes several more clicks to do something that was so easy to do in Pulse 2. Again, this reminds me of Windows 8, in which many activities now require more clicks or hand movements to accomplish.

This wouldn't be a problem if the Web Mode in Pulse 3 is good. But that isn't the case. There are many nice usability features in the Dolphin browser that makes reading web pages a breeze (such as opening related links in the web page on another tab). This is not provided by the Web Mode feature in Pulse 3, and thus, it's Web Mode feature is not a real contender for reading the original web pages against a bona-fide browser. 

Making it so inconvenient to open the story in my preferred browser is really a bad decision.

4. Pulse now always open to the "Home" section

Whenever I start Pulse 2, it always open in the section that I was viewing previously.

In Pulse 3, the app now always open in the "Home" section. I hate this because I now have to then select the section that I was previously reading.

Also, there seems to be no way to re-order the sections. Due to historical reasons, the first section in my Pulse configuration did not contain my preferred channels. I only added my preferred channels to subsequent sections. 

Because Pulse 3 now always open in the "Home" section, I would like to re-order my preferred section to be the first section. But re-ordering of sections does not seem to be possible.

5. Less Intuitive Interface

The font used in articles is very much smaller than the one in Pulse 2. I wanted to increase the font size, but could not find any place to change the font size! I went to the Pulse web site, but their instructions for changing the font size is for Pulse 2, and not their new fangled user interface.

I finally found it today. In Pulse 2, there was a very intuitive Settings icon where this could be changed. This icon is now masked and hidden under my name!!!

I didn't realise that I could actually click my name to display the settings page to change various settings, including the font size. Again, this is like Windows 8, where you have no idea whether something is clickable or not. In Windows 8, there is no way to tell if something is a button or a label. Pulse 3 has copied this behaviour.

Conclusion

All in all, this update has not really improved the app at all. Perhaps Alphonso Labs needed to change the interface to make it similar to its iOS or Windows 8 incarnations. Unfortunately, this new interface has simply removed all the great things about Pulse 2 that made it a must-have/must-use app for me. When you satisfy the lowest common denominator, you usually end up dissatisfying a large chunk of people.

I used to read in Pulse 2 for an hour or more a day. With the new version, I usually exit after 15 minutes. I just can't stand the slower performance, and the inconvenience of performing activities that were a breeze in the previous version.