Palm nixed microSD on Palm Pre for all the right reasons

It’s not often that we actually we condone a phone manufacturer purposefully leaving particular features by the wayside. Actually, we don’t condone the lack of a microSD card slot in the Palm Pre, but the reasoning behind Palm’s decision to nix the expansion card slot makes sense enough. Palm apparently needed to ensure that their sleek and intuitive Palm Pre met their hardware and software design philosophies, and the microSD card slot just didn’t jive with Palm’s vision.

Palm’s Product Manager Matt Crowley has addressed the Palm Pre’s glaring lack of a microSD card slot in his open Facebook discussion about the Pre. Crowley states that the microSD card slot, as small as it would be, was conscientiously left off the Pre in order the preserve the Pre’s clean, curvy lines and svelte profile. The microSD hardware would have been too much extra bulk near the Pre’s rounded edges.

But, it’s not just hardware considerations that moved Palm to design the Palm Pre with 8GB of on-board storage but no microSD card slot. The Web OS was designed to be at once powerfully flexible and highly intuitive. Unfortunately, the finger-friendly Web OS UI would have come up against Palm’s aim to make the Palm Pre as intuitive as possible. In speaking with Palm VP Software Product Management Pam Deziel at CES Las Vegas 2009, we learned that the addition of expandable storage capabilities would had added unwanted complexity to the Web OS. We’re not so convinced that Palm couldn’t have worked out a UI-flow that incorporated expandable storage cards, but we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt with the super-slick Web OS.

So, are we sad that the Palm Pre lacks a microSD card slot? Damn skippy, we are! Do we blame Palm for putting design and usability ahead of cramming in more hardware? Not if the Web OS and Palm Pre prove to be as powerful and enjoyable to use as we think it will be…

Hardware concerns addressed on Facebook

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

b00st3d

they could have put it behind the battery like on the bb curve?
NET9

Weak excuse for leaving out microSD to me. I don’t see 8GB of built-in storage enough to make this a “future” device. Sure it’s enough for photos and some music, but large amounts of video has no place here. Palm is behind the times with this one. Even being an Internet focused device, the Pre is stuck being just a “nice phone” while companies like Nokia, Apple, Sony, etc. are moving towards the “mobile multimedia computer camera gps gaming and everything else you can think of” devices.
HereAndNow

The Pre looks like a great device but, the expandability would be a major obstacle, for me. Perhaps they intend to follow a similar product strategy to the iPhone, with 8G, 16G, 32G, etc. models.
ColdReality

It’s a bit bizarre to cite the iPhone as “leaving Palm behind” due to multimedia and SD card slots when the iPhone lacks the ability to record video and, like the Pre, has no SD card slot.
Dave Beck

I assume that they will not be able to provide a GSM version of the Pre then as it will require a SIM card which is just a bit bigger than a MicroSD card and would have all of the same physical characteristics regarding a slot. Sounds like male genitalia to me.
Keith Green

Hmmm Form over function… sounds like apple. If I wanted apple, i’d buy the iphone. I want a palm thats better than apple…

Every palm phone since idk when has had expandability. It is one of the things we palm lovers beat up our iPhonatics about.
Along with the availability of more apps, and video recording, and physcical keyboard.

But the only thing Palm let us keep of these iphone criticisms was the keyboard….
No backward compatibility (goodbye to all your beloved apps)
No recording video (its 2009…HELLO!!!)
No microSD (form over function is why we didnt switch to iPhone)

And while we’re at it… where’s the flash capability… if this is a WebOS it should be full-functioning

But the lack of MicroSD is purely for future sales…. just like apple… they want us to all need to trade-in earlier for a bigger capacity. Its insulting and I HATE IT.
Fred

So I have my treo 680 backup to an sd card every 2 hours. What happens when this thing crashes and screws up all my info. I have no way to back up the device if away from a computer to sync. This is a bad idea to leave this out. I think this phone also not being able to shoot video makes it a loser. I will stick with the 680 they where on the right track but fell asleep at the wheel now trying to play catch up they have made a big piece of useless junk. GSM you guys really CDMA will kill this from day one
Gen

I’m still in Treo 650 land. I waited to upgrade, especially when all the buz about the Pre started. Now, me being a lover of Palm for years, I am disappointed with the following:

- unable to record video
- no SD card
- no color coding for month veiew of the calendar (the older calendar was so robust, especially the month view and ability to color code categories (you can get the older Palm calender using the classic view/application, though…so I was happy to learn that)

…unfortunately, I will probably purchase a HTC Touch Pro instead.
Frank Hill

I had assumed that the device had an SD slot (because of course, why wouldn’t it?)and went looking for it. Sadly, I see that they didn’t incorporate it into the device and even more sadly, because they valued form over function??? well, back to the BlackBerry Bold I go, 8gb just isn’t enough.

Oh well, I’ll just see if the iPhone 32gb model is all it’s chalked up to be

Nice try though Palm, love the UI, just can’t live with a phone that has so little memory.
Yvan

Palm 700p user… Love my 700p just wish it had an update for the browser since I can’t access certain websites. I also wish the 700p was thinner and didn’t have a stub antenna. Oh yeah, thats why the Palm Pre was made. I tested the phone 3 different times at Sprint but I can’t bring my self to purchase the phone due to it not having a memory card slot. I am annoyed more than anything that Palm would allow a device to be pushed out with out expandable memory. I’m a long time palm OS user had the Kyocera 6035, Samsung i500, then to Palm 700p(going on 3yrs) how can I go back to Palm OS without a card I felt slighted then and will fell the same now.
Mike

I’ve been drooling over this phone for a while, I had the palm Centro and loved how you could do so much. 8Gb my not be so bad if there is a way to use ftp or ssh and copy files between a remote server. even e-mail attachments between Google wouldn’t be bad if it let’s you do upload and download attachments like the Centro did. But I agree we are seeing too many companies go from function to visually pleasing. I would rather have some thing ugly that worked great and did everything that a really great looking paper weight.
ernie

palm pre-historic. loved form of pre had the foo foo looks, but when I found out it lacked function ie no exp. mem, they moved three steps back in technology and 1 step forward in foo foo looks. who’s going to buy something that just looks great but limited in brains? we need data storage. this is just to pre-historic obsolete junk. they should fire the team who designed this phone without a card? can’t believe they rather go for looks than functionality
Mark

The best solution would be to place the micro-SD card under the back cover like what Blackberry did on the 8900. That keeps the “clean” outside design, protects the card from the elements and gives needed flash memory expansion for music, video, etc.
Joseph

Ugh, I cant believe the Palm Pre is such a big step backwards over not only previous models, but other Smart Phones as well. I was just testing a Moto Droid and it comes with 16GB and has the ability to add up to another 32GB in the expansion slot. I loaded 4 movies on it with a whole pile of MP3s, and a bunch of PDFs I reference pretty often and I still had plenty of room to go. Moto put the SD slot under the battery cover too (just like the Blackberrys), a solution which allows for the presence of a slot without affecting the aesthetics of the device. What a shame Palm. When you think about it though, I see a trend here: Choosing to launch with Sprint makes about as much sense as leaving out an SD slot. By the time Verizon starts carrying this device, 4 more phones even more useful and updated than even the Droid will have come out, ensuring that the only people who would have bought the Pre to begin have even more options to choose from. Are they going out of their way to fail?
Paul

I do not understand their logic. I am hoping they know what they are doing, but I’m really starting to wonder. I have been waiting since I first discovered this phone in June. At that time I was waiting for a Pro in GSM form but I could only find it as CDMA in Canada. Now again waiting for Pre but again it only available CDMA in Canada??? Getting a little frustrated. I sent Palm an email but they ignored me. I dont get it, why CDMA? I am contemplating switching to Bell (CDMA)but I really like the freedom of flipping sim cards back and forth between my phones. I too am a long time Palm and Treo user. I’ve had a Palm Pilot and three Treos. Currently using a 750. I actually prefer the 650 but mine is so used up. Just to comment about the missing memory slot, I remember going from 650 to 750. I experienced similar feelings as people are now with the Pre. Some things were improved but other things were downgraded. I felt like I bought a brand new Porsche with brakes from a 1971 beetle. Perhaps the name “Pre” suggests there will be a future device perhaps the “Post” which may address all of these concerns or maybe not. And why is everything a big secret?
Paul

Sorry guys, I have just a couple more comments. For me 8GB internal memory is probably enough. More would be nice but I just enjoy using Palm smartphones even with these issues. In between my 650 and 750 I tried an Iphone for a couple of months. I liked the new style of user interface but I just could not get into that keyboard. I gave it to my wife. She liked that keyboard. I got myself a 750 but was not completely satisfied. I guess I caught the multitouch bug. I also missed the wifi. I purchased a wifi on a micoSD card. I also purchased a GPS which was also microSD. I never needed or even thought of using the expansion slot for memory. Typically I kept the GPS card installed and swapped cards if I needed wifi. For me not having an expansion slot means I will probably not be able to add whatever new device comes along, and I am going out on a limb here but I suspect new things will continue to appear. Anyhow I am still hoping to get Pre regardless. I seem to have a great deal of patience but ,I swear, I refuse to start waiting for the next generation Palm. If I cannot get a GSM Pre at a reasonable price soon I will probably give up.