Less plastic being manufactured? Sounds good to me. :)
I respect the sentiment, but is the amount of plastic in an SD card really that significant? There’s probably more in just the packaging alone.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
This is more like taking the first step, getting distracted by a cool bug, finding an interesting stick, and going home to show Mum your cool stick.
An SD card lasts for years, and the amount of plastic in one is negligible. It’s just not an issue.
Any reduction in plastic is a good thing.
Very nuanced view of the world you have.
An SD card lasts for years, and the amount of plastic in one is negligible. It’s just not an issue.
Hark! The ghosts of countless generations of short-sighted polluters cry out in complacent, rationalizing unison!
It’s not about expecting one model of memory card to save the Earth. It’s about moving away from needless production of toxic materials, everywhere.
And if you don’t care, nobody’s going to force you to read The Lorax, but please don’t go around shitting on people’s appreciation for even the small things.
Worrying about the plastic in an SD card just feels like bike-shedding to me, but keep up the good fight, I guess.
Yeah it’s the equivalent of finding two dollars on the ground and getting excited because at this rate you’ll be a billionaire soon enough. There’s less than 2g of plastic in an SD card - the buttons on your shirt probably weigh more.
Likely far more energy and pollution needed to manufacture this though so overall a loss for the earth.
But most steel is recycled and most plastic is not.
You still need a lot of energy to recycle steel. Less than mining by far but still a lot.
But compared to plastic from virgin fossil fuels?
We as a society are going to need memory cards.
What do you think they should be made out of?
Need to be examined on e case by case basis but plastic often comes out aheadi
If you penny pinch and don’t want to pay the environmental cost, sure plastic might come out cheaper.
But when you take into account the triple bottom line, plastic comes out behind.
Plastic in a landfill is a lot less harmful than co2 in the atmosphere.
In a sustainable world, energy can and should be cheaper than raw materials. We are only harvesting a tiny fraction of the solar energy hitting the earth, to say nothing of wind and geothermal power. Rolling out more renewables and energy storage and using some of the surplus power to switch from extracting new resources to recycling our waste would greatly lower our footprint.
You can swap out centralized energy sources (relatively speaking) overnight as greener sources become cheaper/more available compared to retooling whole industries away from plastic
It’s the same thing with electric cars, yea it might plug in now to a dirty energy source, but that energy source could be a green energy source tomorrow without you ever knowing and importantly not having to buy a new car or change any other infrastructure to take advantage of it
A power line is a power line, it doesn’t care if the electricity going through it was derived from a dirty power plant or solar or nuclear
Seriously. Let’s light a fire under this trend. I will spend twice as much on a thing if it’s metal instead of plastic.
While we’re at it, let’s get back to all metal phones! Screw this glass back shit.
For the “Wireless” charging people:
It’s a gimmick, nothing of value is lost
Wireless charging rocks, dude
True wireless charging would definitely, the kind where your phone being in the mere vicinity of the “base station” allows it to start charging. From an actual distance larger than a handful of centimeters. That would be a feature worthy of the sacrifice of a metal body and being stuck with glass
The “Wireless” charging marketing gimmick is just as bad as the “Hoverboard” gimmick vs a real Hoverboard a la Back to the Future.
Its basically just a plug shifted from a socket to the back of the phone, but worse. It’s almost always slower and saves a second or 2 at most from having to plug/unplug it. Some minor pros, but not worth having to be saddled with annoying and fragile glass backs. You still need to take it out of your pocket, place it in a designated spot, and can’t use it all that well while in the designated spot and still have it charge.
It’s a gimmick so companies could say their phones totally have wireless charging so they didn’t have to spend the R&D money to develop actual wireless charging and you bought into it hook, line and sinker.
There were some promising developments on real wireless charging, but ever since the fake gimmick caught hold it’s been awfully quiet. Another victim of marketing I suppose.
I use a magsafe charger in both the vehicles I drive on a regular basis, and a charging mat at home, both are extremely useful.
You’re talking absolute nonsense.
What a weird think to insult someone over. It does what it says it does and I don’t get why you’re drawing the line on what “true” wireless charging is when I’m not plugging a wire into my phone. You think I “fell for a marketing gimmick” despite using the feature almost exclusively for the past 12 years? How is it a gimmick if I get value out of it?
I like having a clean desk and not accidentally yoinking my phone off. I like not adding wear and tear to the USB port because it sucks when they break. I like that I’ve had a dozen or USB cords die but never once had to toss a wireless charger.
You aren’t the arbiter of what’s useful. You not finding value in wireless charging doesn’t mean it’s a useless gimmick. Get off damn your high horse
Lol never said it was useless, only the value doesn’t outweigh the sacrifices. Gimmicks can have some usefulness and utility and still be gimmicks.
The gimmicky part is that smartphone companies got you hooked into a product that barely fills just enough peoples value thresholds that they could avoid developing real wireless charging.
In a world where this fake shit didn’t take hold we could have had real wireless charging by now, if you think the “wireless” charging is good now, just think what true wireless would be like. You could walk into a room and your phone just starts charging with 0 effort. None.
But all the major companies stopped their R&D on it because consumers like you lapped the gimmick up and continue to. All that’s left are a handful of startups working on it, so it’s going to be years still.
From your first comment:
It’s a gimmick, nothing of value is lost
You’re right, you didn’t say it was useless! You said it was valueless. My bad, huge difference…
“All right team this is the single most dropped item in the history of mankind we need to make this thing tough what are we gonna manufacture the backing out of?”
“Glass?”
“…….Brilliant!! You’ve got upper management written all over you, Jacobs!”
ah yes, so you can get a card that will die before you manage to use all of it
Cool
Why tho
Personally, id choose them over plastic ones if not just to save plastic
doesn’t metal manufacturing use quite a lot more energy?
But it has the benefit of not breaking down into micro plastics and getting into every part of everyone.
True enough. Though I wonder, as a thought experiment, what would be the actual better option in the long run. Some type of resin maybe?
I guess using renewables for the energy needs of metal production would work too
Uranium
that’s…
I somehow doubt that.
Uranium baseball cups. Not physically possible to throw a baseball hard enough to damage the goods, plus it helps combat the effects of overpopulation.
“Honey, I accidently digested our SD card again”
Good thing heavy metal toxicity isn’t a problem.
Steel or stainless ain’t gonna give you metal poisoning
Stainless steel leaches nickel and chromium.
Better toss all your cookware then
Maybe extreme weather conditions for trail cams? That’s the only reason I would think about using one but never actually buy one for lol.
ROG Ally
Steam deck modders rejoice
Doesn’t the steam deck use micro SD cards, I don’t think that these full-sized ones are going to be much help for those guys. Unless of course they come out with stainless steel micro SD cards but that doesn’t seem likely for obvious reasons.
Maybe you can just trim them!
Everyone thought 1tb+ microsd is impossible, but here we are
I guess if they made the chips small enough that the MicroSD body is just a shell, same thing happened with full sized SD cards (there was a time the whole space inside them was used, now it’s usually a small part of the front and the rest is just the body shape for compatibility).
So what?
Woah boy, Elon is gonna be super jealous.
Unironically a good idea. I can see these really helping to increase the chances of memory survival in camera applications where the camera has a high chance of being physically destroyed. Also a metal body reallllly helps conduct heat out of the flash, which will increase their lifespan in continuous-write applications.
Stainless is extra bad at conducting heat considering it’s a metal, but it’s still way better than plastic. I hope they make an aluminum version at some point.
How strong is aluminium compared to steel again? Oh right, its butter…
Yes, stainless is “bad”, compared to other metals. But like you also mentioned, it’s loads better than plastic.
I’d doubt they make an aluminum one, it’s probably not worth the tooling.
When dealing with only 100-200mW, even a small change in thermal conductivity will make a big difference.
All the comments are fun and games but they could’ve used aluminium which is way cheaper. It’s nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
Aluminium corrodes, and is a relatively soft metal.
