In hardware manufacturing, particularly with consumer electronics, there's a phenomenon called hardware lottery. If you understand what Forrest Gump's iconic mantra "you never know what you're gonna get" means, you might already know what hardware lottery is.
Hardware Lottery
But here it is in a nutshell, in case you didn't know: not all devices are created equal, even if they're different units of the same product, the same brand. The hardware lottery refers to the way in which consumers will inevitably end up with different, but subtle configurations of the same product.
Case in point: some Nintendo 3DS units have IPS display panels, some have TN. This is a well-known phenomenon among 3DS owners, and some are frustrated about it. These 3DS units are priced the same, and yet someone will eventually end up with a TN panel, which is seen as the lesser variant of the two. But it's not only Nintendo. There's also Huawei, which recently confirmed that the P10 or P10 Plus could either come with LPDDR3 or LPDDR4 RAM — at random, of course.
Now, it seems Samsung is also playing the hardware lottery game.
Galaxy S8 Units Have Either UFS 2.0 Or UFS 2.1
Apparently, both the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus could come with either UFS 2.0 or UFS 2.1 technology for storage. This is notable because Samsung had earlier heralded its pair of flagships with UFS 2.1 for storage, but now it seems Samsung is trying to correct that.
An XDA senior member spotted it first. The user found out that Samsung quietly removed all mentions of UFS 2.1 of the official pages of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, and for good reason. Users are now reporting different sequential read speeds on their devices. Those with UFS 2.1 get between 700 to 800 Mbps, while those with UFS 2.0 only get between 500 to 600 Mbps.
As is the case with hardware lotteries, there's no possible way to determine which version you'd end up with.
UFS 2.0 Or UFS 2.1: Does It Even Matter?
The difference looks significant on paper, but is it really such a huge leap? A read speed of 500 to 600 Mbps is already quite fast, and it should fare well for your day-to-day activities. It won't affect load times for songs, apps, videos, documents, and others. It also won't affect the performance of the operating system by any means.
Whichever version of UFS you get, both are already leaps and bounds faster and more efficient than eMMC 5.1, which some phones still use today — and they're not that bad.
The only possible downside to UFS 2.0 is getting slower speeds when transferring gigantic files to and from your Galaxy S8 or S8 Plus. Still, it won't give a stark difference, and you'd probably still be able to transfer files sans any hiccup.
But of course, that's not to say that the frustration of Galaxy S8 owners is invalid. After all, Samsung originally advertised UFS 2.1 for its newest flagships, and not following through with that promise definitely deserves criticism. But the most important thing to learn here is that hardware lotteries need to stop.
