Do we really need microSD in our phones?

MicroSD cards are serious business, or at least that's the impression given by the uproar surrounding any major android smartphone that doesn't include a slot for one. But are they really necessary?

There's no denying that they can be appealing. Regardless of how much storage a smartphone has, a microSD card can boost it even up to 128GB. That can certainly be useful for anyone who wants to jam their phone full of media, but even if you don't, it's comforting to have that safety net, knowing that the storage is there if you need it. But do you need it? Really?

Recently Infinix launched their Infinix Hot S and it generated some hot debate because though the phone has a 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM but users talked more about its hybrid SIM. You might argue that there's no downside to having a microSD card slot even if it's not likely to get used, but that is not entirely true.

A microSD card slot is not necessarily desirable even when it can easily be included. Because while microSD cards sound good on paper in reality they can hugely impact a phone’s performance. So Infinix did a smart thing by providing a hybrid option in their Hot S, meaning you can use either a dual SIM at once or a SIM and an SD card.

According to a study at the Georgia Institute of technology, using a microSD card in your phone can cause it to become sluggish, with even basic tasks like web browsing suffering as a result. Overall performance can often drop by between 100% and 300% and in one case the study found that there was an incredible 2000% decrease in performance. Do you still need that SD card?

The reason for the performance loss is simple, microSD cards themselves are not fast enough. They can't keep up with the power and speed packed into modern smartphones. Though some are better at this than others and the brand and class of card you choose will have a big impact.

An average smartphone user in Nigeria uses on the average 8GB of internal memory on his/her mobile device. It then means that having a phone like the Infinix Hot S with 2GB RAM and 16 or 32GB ROM (internal memory) is more than enough.

Given the rate that storage has increased so far in phones like the Infinix Hot S and Hot 4, will that be the death of the microSD card? Well, that is likely to happen sooner rather than later and when it does microSD cards will become a lot less desirable.