Not always, they are able to set a minimum standard thanks to proprietary storage. People tend to buy the most cheapest SD cards that are horrendously slow and wonder why their games take longer to load. Using the proprietary Vita cards meant Sony was able to keep control of the card specifications and as to not compromise the gamers experience
Happens all the time on Android, it's why Apple never bothered to put external storage on iOS.
Ah man, this is absolutely something worth bringing into the conversation. Some people are acting like microSD cards in 2012 were what they are today, that's absolutely not the case. I think the fastest card out at the time was UHS-1 and I don't think capacities were that large, either. And I bet they costed quite a lot of money, if you wanted quality ones.
There were probably security measures, as well, that might've informed part of the decision for Sony to go custom with the memory cards on Vita. That doesn't mean they made a good decision with pricing; the pricing was garbage. But I don't think their only intent was to price-gouge and people gotta remember what that type of tech was like in 2011/2012, the economics of it, etc.
Popping off the battery cover or removing the external sim tray are not the same as removing the chassis back on the phone. Go ahead and give that a try ifixit style and see what response you get regarding a warranty.
Without question there are some products where the manufacturer doesn't care about certain things. The oil filter in your car, etc. But, for the most part, warranty coverage ends if the product is unsealed or any internal component is changed. Including the PS5, LOL. It's got anti tamper stickers in several places. You can't even remove the fan to clean it. Sony is fine with the expansion bay, but absolutely nothing else. I never thought this would be a debated concept.
The size drive they use inside the console has nothing to do with anything for the consumer. Would not have changed the price they paid for the box. Sony could have used a 2280 in the PS5 also, at least it would have been replaceable and not soldered to the board. But, that wouldn't have any effect on the consumer either.
MS wanted the little hot-swappable cards for external storage and that's what they made. I guess they could always release a little adapter to allow 2280 drives to fit in the expansion slot, but that would just trigger a lot of additional testing and things like that. Seems like they wanted to simplify everything by ensuring that everyone was using the same spec drive. Sony made a different choice.
I'm just saying, I don't get why this is something to be a focus if we're just talking about using wider-market expansion storage vs. proprietary storage. You don't have to tear a system down to install an SSD, that's including the PS5, so there's nothing to where installing one would normally violate a warranty.
It's kind of a moot point of concern IMHO.