As phones get more powerful, as their cameras get more sophisticated, as the apps that run on them get more complex, consumers often forget that storage becomes more and more of a problem.
Because cameras have gotten more advanced, most modern flagships are able to record 4K video, and a minute of that, at 30 fps, consumes as much as 375 MB. Also, power translates to being able to run far more CPU-intensive apps, some of which have huge file sizes. Sure, microSD cards offer expandable storage, but those are separate purchases on top of the phone. Users want to be able to buy a device and never run out of space to put things in.
An average flagship has 64 GB of storage, and that's plenty enough. But Samsung wants to push that further — 512 GB further.
Samsung Unveils World's First 512 GB Universal Flash Storage
Samsung has begun mass producing what it claims as the world's first 512 GB embedded Universal Flash Storage, or eUFS. With this module, future Galaxy phones will be able to hold double the maximum storage current ones offer. Phones with this amount of storage can store up to 130 4K videos that are 10 minutes long each.
But it's not just about size, of course. Read and write performance has been given a boost as well. The new chip has sequential read speeds that reach up to 860 megabytes per second (MB/s), while write speeds reach up to 255 MB/s. This is not such a huge increase over the previous 256 GB chip, but it's fast enough to transfer a 5 GB video to an SSD drive in around six seconds, which is more than eight times faster than a typical microSD card.
"The new Samsung 512GB eUFS provides the best embedded storage solution for next-generation premium smartphones by overcoming potential limitations in system performance that can occur with the use of microSD cards," said Jaesoo Han, executive VP of Samsung's Memory Sales & Marketing unit.
When Will We Start Seeing This Storage Option?
Samsung pitched previous versions of this new chip to the automotive market, presumably because as cars get more advanced, they need more space in which to put high volumes of sensor data. But the South Korean electronics company says it's better to implement this into smartphones and tablets for now, and it also promises to "steadily increase an aggressive production volume" to meet the rising demand for mobile storage.
Per its own indication, Samsung could begin offering 512 GB storage options by the time it unveils the upcoming Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus flagships, which are rumored to launch in January next year.
What would you do with 512 GB of storage? Tell us in the comments section below!
