Why does the UK not receive higher storage variants in tech (laptop, phones etc)?

Posted by peachconoisseur@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 12 comments

And what are the realistic options for those interested?

So my question might seem a bit niche but I did not know where else to direct it.

For example with phones and laptops many companies do not release their higher storage variants in the UK, e.g. Motorola razr ultra 60 is only available upto 512gb in the UK. Same for the Oneplus13.

This is also happening in laptops for example the Asus Rog flow z13 was not available with more than 32gb in the UK (64 and 128gb ram models were simply not purchasable or ever listed on any retailer or the official website).

I get that not everyone in the UK is going to buy 1tb phones or need laptops with 128gb of ram but that being said I can't imagine the same is not true in other market places. Yet the higher storage options are still available.

I have been trying for months to find an alternative but for example with mobile phones when they are imported they do not always have official warranty and they do not support over the air software updates, both of which can be an absolute pain, especially if you are having to pay even more, having to pay for a more expensive variant of a device as well as shipping and customs/duties only to not have any warranty or software updates seems completely stupid.

When emailing support for these companies, you normally just get a cookie cutter default response "not available in market place" with no alternative solutions given. So what does a person in this situation do?

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CodeToManagement@reddit

Niche. Not many people need those higher memory and storage options.

I mean you can easily buy laptops with 32gb ram and 1tb plus storage. But going over that is expensive and not many people actually need them. It’s such a small pool of consumers that it’s barely worth selling them.

HenshinDictionary@reddit

The PC I'm writing this on has 32GB of RAM, and I specifically put that amount in because I knew it was well above what I ever use, even in gaming. So the average user has absolutely no need of 32GB of RAM, and likely won't for a long time.

Yea exactly. I’m a software engineer - if I were to build a pc I’d probably go 32gb but maybe 64gb. Realistically though you’re looking at people doing like video editing and stuff like that as the few that want more than 32gb.

More than 32 just isn’t going to be used for the average user. And it’s kinda worthless trying to be future proof because when you eventually do need the extra memory your stuff will be so outdated anyway you’d want to upgrade anyway

kristianroberts@reddit

Are you confusing memory and storage?

peachconoisseur@reddit (OP)

I specified one but it applies to both, for example some models are 12 GB ram and 512gb storage but the 1tb variant also has 16gb or 24gb ram so actually the variant is higher in both memory and storage, I think it was quite clear what I meant but thanks for clarifying

Mainstream products have more options.

I’m constantly keeping myself up to date with mobile technology and I can barely remember the razr2, the only reason the razr stays in memory is because I was a teenager in 2004(?).

08148694@reddit

If you’re enough of a power user to want a terabyte of storage on a phone then you’ve probably got a home NAS set up as a free personal cloud with a few dozen TB of storage instead

Of you want 128GB of RAM on a computer, a laptop is almost certainly the wrong form factor for it

The whole reason for the storage and portability is that not always connected to the internet and not always at home

63_rats_in_a_coat@reddit

Just to cut a lot of these comments short,

It appears you've taken Memory and Storage to mean the same thing

Unfortunately they aren't,

Memory is a tool with which a computer (or in this case phone) does processes. High end computers have 64GB-128GB, mid-range ones have around 8GB

Storage is the room that you have to save things in, Phones can have anywhere from 32GB to 254GB, sometimes even more if you're fancy

If you're super concerned about storage space, I would recommend a cloud solution like OneDrive or Google Drive as I would hate for you to lose documents and pictures just from having so many on your phone

Hope this helps!!

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