Folks who appreciate local storage are typically the most vocal supporters of microSD card slots on Android phones. We've seen a lot of unrest in the forums about it, but one post in particular stood out when it came to dealing with local backups. It's just plain convenient to be able to load 60gb of music or movies onto a single storage device and move it from place to place to suit your needs, and if you're regularly on the go or you don't have the best Internet connection in the world — to say nothing of a mediocre data plan — local storage is everything. News that the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will be cranking up the internal storage in exchange for a profile that makes removable storage wildly impractical sounds like a huge bummer to local storage folks, but the truth is there are plenty of options out there for you still.
Check out our Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge hands-on for more details!
You greatest ally in the never ending struggle for convenient local storage is USB-OTG support. The ability to put something in your microUSB slot and use anything from input devices, infrared cameras, and of course removable storage makes for a powerful feature. Fortunately for you, almost every Android device supports this function nowadays, and it's super simple to use. OTG card readers are incredibly cheap and usually support multiple local storage systems, most commonly SD, microSD, and USB. If you thought using a microSD card was convenient, using a full-sized USB thumb drive from your laptop to your phone and tablet means you can keep everything on your keychain and often take advantage of significantly higher storage capacities.
If having something that you have to connect and disconnect from your device is off-putting, you also have the ability to go with a different kind of wireless. Kingston, for example, has a series of devices called MobileLite Wireless, and the whole point of these devices is to create a local Wifi network to access files you have stored on this secondary device. The battery baked into these devices make it possible for you to stream multiple movies, entire days worth of songs, and even allow you to share your local data with multiple users across several platforms. You can keep this in your bag and turn it on when you want to access local media, and the capacity is just about infinitely expandable.
There's no reason to give up on local data just yet, and it's really not as big a hassle as it may seem to have you data on a separate portable device. Samsung may not think there are enough local storage fans out there to justify supporting with removable storage, but with these alternatives there are still options well worth considering.
