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Samsung Unveils World's First UFS Storage Cards, Could Replace MicroSD (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has unveiled the world's first UFS card that could one day replace microSD cards in devices. The UFS card is based on the Universal Flash Storage 1.0 Card Extension standard and will be available in capacities from 32GB to 256GB. With a UFS card, users will be able to read 5GB of data, or a full resolution movie file, in 10 seconds, Samsung claims. For comparison, a UHS-1 microSD card would take 50 seconds to do the same. UFS cards will be able to fit into a wide range of devices like smartphones, tablets, cameras, and drones, but the devices will need a specific UFS card slot, which could take some time. Samsung claims the 256GB UFS card has a sequential read speed of 530MBps. The random read speed is 20 times faster than a microSD card. The sequential write speed is about 170MBps, which Samsung estimates is two times faster than microSD cards. The random write speed is 350 times faster than microSD, Samsung claims. The Universal Flash Storage 1.0 Card Extension standard is intended to replace the eMMC standard, which is used in low-cost laptops and Chromebooks. Samsung didn't disclose pricing or availability for the UFS storage cards. It's worth noting that Toshiba does also make UFS storage cards, but they have yet to release any based on the UFS 1.0 Card Extension standard.
Samsung has unveiled the world's first UFS card that could one day replace microSD cards in devices.
Great. Another incompatible storage card standard... Just what everybody was asking for.
UFS cards will be able to fit into a wide range of devices like smartphones, tablets, cameras, and drones, but the devices will need a specific UFS card slot, which could take some time.
Of course if can fit into a lot of devices if those devices are designed for it. Would it have killed them to make it backwards compatible with the hardware that already exists? I'm sure it has all sorts of lovely features but is it really too much to ask for the designers of this shit to think about future proofing their designs as well as backwards compatibility?
They do.
MicroSD slot is back in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.
Looks like they realized dropping it in the S6 line was a mistake.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
A quick back of an envelope calculation suggests that something in the order of 100 million people use underground railways in big cities every year. Until those underground railways have universal wifi coverage, that's a lot of people wanting to listen to music when they're out of range of the internet.
Yeah, my phone plan gives me 1 GB/month. That's down from 2 GB/month that my plan originally offered. But that's okay. I don't use a lot of data beyond occasional web browsing. To get 5 GB, I'd have to pay an extra 25 bucks per month. Streaming my music library is out of the question. Or I could take that 25 bucks and get a very large SD card as a one-time purchase. Luckily Samsung realized that this is important to many, many people and brought it back with their latest line. Sorry, but your claims are ridiculous.
In my opinion, what has made it SD cards niche is Android's crappy storage model which makes using your external card more complicated than it ought to be.
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For the unaware, SDHC maxes out at 32GB. You then have the option of using SDXC which maxes out at 2TB but there is a problem, SDXC specification mandates the use of exFAT which [surprise!] is restricted by patent by Microsoft. What this means is that memory controller may be optimised for exFAT I/O modes which may result in undefined behavior or brick it if you decide "i'll just format this to EXT4". UFS on the other hand, does not specify even needing a filesystem, so it's more like a SSD than a memory card.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.