Animus404
You guys don't get it. If these companies allowed the customer to add more storage via SD card then nobody would buy the overpriced versions with more storage.
We, or at least I, do get it. They offer a product I want at a price I'll pay, and I'll buy. But for a tablet, for me, doing without a card slot is as much use as doing without the screen. For me, it's simply a non-starter, and that's that.
I get why companies offer feature-restricted products to protect the market of ‘premium’ devices. And don't care
why they do it, merely that if they do it (by omitting the card slot) it's not a product that interests me.
It's about what I need or don't need from a product. For instance, if buying a TV, I don't give 3/4 of 5/8 of a rat's dropping about whether it does 3D or not. If the basic model doesn't and the premium model does, I buy the basic. I wouldn't, literally, pay 50p for 3D. I might pay for Freesat HD receiver, but not 3D. I might well not buy if the number of connectors was too small, but don't care about 3D. I do need a certain number of connectors, and don't need 3D. I do need a card slot in a tablet, and without that, I'm not buying any tablet at any price …. unless it has a stupidly high fixed RAM, way higher than any current models. 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, whatever? Not enough. Start talking TB, at current prices, and like my Kindle e-reader, memory is sufficient that a card slot becomes unnecessary, but short of that, for me, no card slot simply equals no sale, no matter why they did it. Oh, and I'm not paying silly money for the premium products either. They aren't worth that to me, so I'd go tablet-less first.
But the fact that other makers (Samsung, for instance) have tablets with card slots mean I don't have to choose between slot-equipped versus slotless, but between Amazon and Samsung.
Hence, Kindle for an e-reader, and Samsung for a tablet, for me.