My comment mentioned why the SD card was removed. To paraphrase Linus, they’re the cheapest form of NAND storage and are extremely unreliable.
Your comment mentioned why you personally don't like using SD cards, though I disagree that it's a reason to remove the functionality completely, which is why I wouldn't buy a phone without a slot. If you're having such reliability issues, you should buy a higher quality SD card. They're objectively more reliable than cloud storage though, should you ever go somewhere where network connectivity is an issue. And 128 GB is almost nothing, kinda proving my point that this is more of a use case point than an argument against the feature.
Also if they hadn’t removed the jack I doubt we would have seen as much progress with truly wireless earbuds.
Given that they're still using Bluetooth, which is still terrible with any interference, low bandwidth, and has the same tedious connectivity problems it's had for the past decade...I'd argue we have yet to see that progress where it matters.
the market has moved on.
If that were true, there wouldn't be so many people vocally expressing why new products aren't adequate without these basic features.