You seem to think that a microSD slot is an unambiguously bad feature. You seem to have a list of downsides which are quite flimsy:
1) I replaced the sim slot card on my old S1 the other day (by myself, because it's actually not that difficult to do and cheap to do as well) because it had been abused and broken -- no longer reading a sim. The SAME BOARD hosted the microSD slot. It's not really a bulk issue then, is it? It's a tiny 0.5x(square dimensions of sd card) mm cubed "bulk".
2) It was on the same board. I bet it must have added around 0.5c cost.
3) The sd card slot didn't die -- the sim card slot did. Reliability of the sim slot seems to be more pertinent.
4) No-one is going to try to wedge battery in there. Not at the space it takes. Not in the place it's at. A good place to put more battery would be where that stupid fingerprint scanner is or where the NFC chip is since contactless payment is a giant fail and I've yet to see a truly innovative use for NFC. I certainly don't miss it when I swap out my S3 battery for a higher-capacity one which has dropped the NFC chip. But that is my preference, of course.
5) Depends on the model -- all of the Samsung phones I've seen (s1,s2,s3,s4, note2) have the sd card slot behind the back cover, Pretty sure the HTCs I've had contact with were the same, but I could be wrong as I didn't deal with them that long. Indeed, I don't know offhand of any modern phones which have the slot exposed like they used to, though I'm sure some exist. The point is, they don't have to.
6) The majority of Apple's devices are "third party hardware". Again, issues with sim card slot, not sd card slot. That same phone had an issue with the main board earlier on (replaced under warrantee) -- but never with the sd card slot. Odd hey?
7) True, consumers tend to choose the cheapest. Though most who are savvy enough to buy a card, shop around for one which says "fast". Or they ask a friend, like they did when they were buying other technical stuff.
8) How so? If you have a *nix-style filesystem (as do Androids and I'm pretty sure so do iPhones), then the card is mounted in somewhere into another folder. Meaning that if nothing is mounted, the folder is just a folder on the original filesystem. How is that any more complicated than any other folder on the filesystem? And if it's mounted, the fact that it is is transparent to anything casually observing the fs.
9) Preference is a fair point, but not a downside. If you prefer smaller storage and wireless sync, go ahead. Unless you're in a really first-world area though, storage of larger files becomes an issue you have to face as you can't just stream everything all the time. So it's valid to have a preference for more storage and, beyond that, the ability to expand that storage as requirements are raised, in accordance with available finances.
10) Only in the same way that USB drives, SSDs, DVDs... indeed *all* storage media are "modern day floppy disks". In the way that they are all means for storing data with variable amounts of portability. I think we do need storage media for our data, but I could be way out on a limb here. Behind the cloud is some kind of storage. Also it's quite rare to find people popping their sd cards in and out of their devices on a regular basis, so the "floppy" analogy is a bit flawed on that point and immediate access to the card is also not a priority.
I'm particularly amused that you instruct the prior poster to "stop trying to tell everyone that they are stupid because they don't care to do things just like you would" after having basically done just that. Some people want storage. Some people prefer wireless sync. It's all about preference, but you've simultaneously told another poster that their preference is stupid and that they shouldn't tell anyone else that same message.
On one point we can agree though: that poster should probably get out of the Apple camp and find a device where the makers are more interested in the needs of the user than in serving their own agendas and trying to crowd the world's landfills with discarded, fully-functioning electronic waste after collaring their obedient sheep into buying the next iteration of the same thing they did last year, only this time with most of the features they shot down in competitor products two years before after realising that their blind followers were starting to wake up and smell the coffee.