If you carry your media library with you, shoot a lot of 4K video, or are looking to download a few seasons of a TV show for a lengthy flight, expandable storage is essential. Thankfully, there’s no shortage of options available. The Galaxy S10+ is the obvious choice considering the sheer number of features it packs in, but there are a lot of budget options as well if you don’t want to spend $1000 on a phone.
Phone of the year (so far)
Samsung Galaxy S10+
Staff pick
Few phones are as well-rounded as the Galaxy S10+. It touts a huge 6.4-inch screen with an in-display fingerprint sensor, along with a fancy new Snapdragon 855 chipset. The triple camera system around back is super versatile, and its 4100mAh battery is almost impossible to kill in a day. Add to that IP68 water resistance, Android Pie, and of course, microSD expandability, and the S10+ suits almost anyone’s needs.
$890 at Amazon
Great for one-handed use
Samsung Galaxy S10e
Samsung’s Galaxy S10e is perfect if you want a compact phone with high-end hardware. It’s a 5.8-inch version of the S10+, with all the same specs and features that make its larger counterpart great, albeit with a smaller 3100mAh battery and without the telephoto camera. The phone is surprisingly small and comfortable to use in one hand, and it’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than the larger S10 variants.
$620 at Amazon
Excellent for content creation
LG G8 ThinQ
The LG G8 is a great phone for content consumption and creation. With standard and wide-angle cameras and a myriad of manual video controls, not to mention a huge 6.1-inch display, it’s great for shooting professional-quality video on the go, and you can expand its base 128GB of internal storage by up to 2TB with a microSD card. It’s also one of the only phones with a high-quality Quad DAC for wired audio.
$850 at Amazon
Maximum productivity
Samsung Galaxy Note 9
The Galaxy Note line has always been catered to power users, and the Note 9 is no different. Even though the S10+ is newer, the Note 9 still has a few advantages — namely its more reliable rear fingerprint sensor and the mighty S Pen, which now works over Bluetooth for remote functionality. You also get a Snapdragon 845, 128GB of storage, and a huge 4000mAh battery.
$709 at Amazon
5G for cheap
Moto Z4
The Moto Z4 is a decent mid-range device on its own, with a large 6.4-inch OLED display, Android 9 Pie, a 48MP camera with pixel binning, and 128GB of expandable storage, but it’s made even better with Moto Mods. The 5G Moto Mod allows the Z4 to connect to Verizon’s UWB network in cities where it’s available, making this one of the cheapest 5G-compatible phones around.
$495 at Amazon
Best budget phone
Nokia 7.1
The Nokia 7.1 epitomizes HMD Global’s efforts as of late. The phone combines Nokia’s classic industrial design with robust hardware in the form of a Snapdragon 636 chipset, 5.84-inch FHD+ display with HDR10, excellent rear cameras, and a microSD slot for up to 400GB of expandable storage. With the phone running Android One, you can be assured that it’ll be one of the first to receive major software updates.
$300 at Amazon
MicroSD isn’t dead yet
With more flagship phones moving away from expandable storage (and some brands like Huawei switching from microSD to their own standards), you might think the format is becoming a dying breed, but don’t panic just yet. There are still plenty of great phones with microSD support, ranging from budget offerings to some top-tier flagships.
If you want the absolute best of the best with expandable storage, look no further than the Galaxy S10+. With every spec under the sun, it makes no compromises, and that large 6.4-inch AMOLED display coupled with stereo speakers is ideal for viewing multimedia content. The triple camera array is also incredibly versatile, so you’ll want a lot of spare storage for all of your future memories.
If you plan on creating and consuming content, though, the LG G8 might be a better choice; even though it only has two lenses, LG has outfitted the G8 with powerful manual video controls so you can get exactly the right shot. And if you live in a 5G test area like Chicago or Minneapolis, the Moto Z4 is one of the most affordable ways to try it for yourself — it’s a good thing it has a microSD slot, since you’ll be filling up storage quickly with those ultra-fast downloads.
