While much of the attention the Google and Samsung Nexus S receives today will go to its innovative screen and new operating system, we can’t help but take notice of what’s gone missing. While the handset has 16GB of native storage, that’s as much as she’ll ever carry, as the phone will ship without a microSD slot for expansion.

One of the many major splits between iPhones and Android devices has been the availability of expanded storage options for the latter. Maybe it’s a part of the open-source mindset that attracts some to Android, with a closed platform going hand-in-hand with closed-off storage. That’s why it’s a bit of a shock to see the new Nexus S revealed with no way to augment the 16GB it will ship with.

To be fair, few of us are likely to hit that limit very soon, and larger files tend to be movies or shows that wouldn’t really need a permanent home on a smartphone, anyway. Even still, the ability to swap out up to 32GB at a time was very appealing for the Nexus One, not requiring you to sit through lengthy USB transfer sessions.

This is the latest in a recent trend of apparent expandable-memory-backlash, following the odd Windows Phone 7 treatment of microSD cards as non-removable storage. We’ve got to wonder about Google and Samsung’s motivations; would including a microSD slot have caused big problems for their design, or is there something else behind the decision?

What do you think of the Nexus S and its non-expandable memory? Is it a step backwards? Will it impact your decision to pick up the phone? Or, is 16GB more than enough and this is really a non-issue?

Source: Google

Via: Android Police