I don’t understand how engineers can be so stupid enough as to make devices that use these SUB-STANDARD cards and that are incompatible with millions of SD cards out there .

By producing devices like the Moto Q (as well as most Motorola phones these days like the Rokr), the Qtek 9100, etc. using slots that are smaller than SD cards, you just can’t put any of these you most certainly already own:
- your digicam came with an SD card and you probably bought another one or two
- your PDA certainly has an SD slot and you probably bought one or two cards for it
- chances are your movie cam also came with an SD slot and and SD card and you also probably bought one or two cards for it
- etc.

Now NONE of them will fit a miniSD or microSD slot. I know the opposite is true but not this way around.

Plus, being smaller these sub-standard microSD and miniSD cards hold much less memory chips than a standard SD card.

But the most important question is: what are the ACTUAL advantages and disadvantages of these SUB-STANDARD (in every sense of the words) cards?

Compared to the size of the device they fit in, SD, microSD and miniSD cards are only A TINY FRACTION OF THE WHOLE DEVICE VOLUME!!

This is the only and virtually useless advantage: saving around a singly tiny percent of the whole device!! Even less than one percent in PDAs.

For what MANY DISADVANTAGES :
[list=1:ed22d59d9f][*:ed22d59d9f]much less capacity: at BEST 8 times less (microSD 512MB vs SD 4 GB)
[*:ed22d59d9f]much much lower transfer speed: your phonecam movies will take up to 1 min or more to be saved
[*:ed22d59d9f]much lower technology limits (sub-standard miniSD=4GB, standard SD=32 GB)
[*:ed22d59d9f]will not work in some very demanding devices like DVD quality moviecams: they require very high transfer speed since they store lots of data in real time
[*:ed22d59d9f]sub-standard slots obviously won’t accept ANY of your standard cards
[*:ed22d59d9f]much more expensive especially for higher cap cards (which are much lower than standard SD as we’ve seen)
[*:ed22d59d9f]much harder to find
[*:ed22d59d9f]etc.[/list:ed22d59d9f]

See here for more details AND a way to VOICE your concerns to manufacturers.