Expandable storage has definitely made its way to smartphones, especially premium ones. Before, you could settle for a 64GB smartphone and fit a 1TB memory card in it for all your media and apps. That no longer happens. Once a staple of Samsung phones, the company no longer allows users to expand their built-in storage with microSD cards. The Galaxy Z Fold 4, despite being a small tablet like the Galaxy Tab S8 Plus with a microSD card slot, is no exception.
“Galaxy Z Fold4 only supports 256GB or 512GB internal storage; microSD cards are not supported,” says Samsung. There’s also a 1TB model, exclusive to the Samsung web store in select countries. With this in mind, what should you do about it?
How much should you get for storage?
Andrew Martonik/Digital Trends
As mentioned above, Samsung offers storage options from 256GB to 512GB for the Galaxy Z Fold 4. There is a dedicated 1TB model, but it won’t be available anywhere. The advice for that variant would be simple anyway: if you can afford it and buy it, anything you want will fit you.
The 256 GB and 512 GB models are quite large. It will be able to store an ever-growing number of Android apps, tens of thousands of photos, and one hundred to two hours of HD video (depending on model) for three years or more. While the 256GB base model should be enough for just about anyone, the 512GB model is for those who finally want peace of mind. It will probably fit everything, and you will probably never have to worry about its storage.
Are there alternatives compatible with the storage of the Galaxy Z Fold 4?
Andy Boxall/Digital Trends
With the Galaxy Z Fold 4 going up to 1TB, there is almost no alternative on the market. In the Chinese market there are competitors from Oppo and Xiaomi, but they do not cross borders, nor do they have microSD card slots. Folding cards are already fragile enough with many moving parts and the disadvantages of microSD cards we will discuss shortly. Simply put, if you want to be comfortable with the storage space on the Galaxy Z Fold 4, you have no choice but to buy the biggest one you can afford.
Think you want a microSD card? no you don’t
There’s a reason manufacturers stopped including support for microSD cards, and that’s because Google made it harder and harder to use them before it hit some sort of sweet spot (and we’re going through that current situation here). You see, people weren’t just using microSD cards for media; they were also used to store apps and app data. However, not all microSD cards are created equal. A slower microSD card would end up degrading your device experience, which could cause apps to lag and crash. Also, when the microSD card fails, you could lose data and interrupt your experience with the app and more. A more expensive memory card might solve some of these problems, but not all.
Also, microSD cards came in handy when we didn’t have huge internal storage and cheap cloud storage. It’s one thing when you only have 16 GB to play and you don’t have a memory card. Another thing is that you can have up to terabytes of storage, combining local storage and cloud storage.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn