We don’t think a user who buy 1GB ram ROCK Pi X will need 128GB eMMC, in theory it’s possible but not practical. The lesson we learnt from ROCK Pi S/E which we provide many SKU but actually mostly users only want some certain ones.
The reason we solder the eMMC instead of the removable one is, current bios is not removable eMMC friendly. If we attach an empty eMMC to a board, install the OS, then some data is saved in the SPI flash(maybe the eMMC training info, we don’t know it yet). If we remove the eMMC module then power on the board without eMMC or we change to another eMMC module. The bios will detect the eMMC but not find the bootable image on the eMMC. We think this will cause some trouble for many users.
In summary, removable eMMC is not an issue as long as we install it and keep it is. Switching eMMC module will cause OS boot issue which we can not solve for now.
On the other hand, because we can not install the OS to uSD card, so eMMC is a must, if people are not aware of buying the eMMC as extra accessory is a must and found that they can not install the OS, they will just blame the vendor. (Installing OS to USB disk is possible)
At last, we think the user will be happy for the same price they get the additional eMMC storage(just because of the technical issue we can not solve), isn’t?