Great news for those who find that their 256 GB phone still doesn't have enough storage: Samsung just announced a chip that's 1 TB large.
The South Korean Electronics company will begin offering the world's first 1 TB embedded Universal Flash Storage, or eUFS, solution for phone manufacturers. Mass production is already scheduled, in fact.
What this means is that sooner or later, there could be smartphones that offer 1 Tb of storage right off the bat, using just a single flash memory chip.
Notebook-Like Experiences
In a statement, Samsung said expanding a phone's internal storage is crucial since sooner or later, people are going to be using their smartphones as full-fledged computers.
"The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices," said Cheol Choi, Samsung's Memory Sales & Marketing executive VP.
Supply Chain
The company also assured manufacturers that it will be able to accommodate orders for its new chip despite the fast-growing mobile market.
"Samsung is committed to assuring the most reliable supply chain and adequate production quantities to support the timely launches of upcoming flagship smartphones in accelerating growth of the global mobile market."
The chip itself is similar in size to Samsung's previous 512 GB unit and has read speeds of up to 1,000 MB per second. That's 10 times faster than the speed of typical microSD cards, according to Samsung. The company says it has achieved such a feat by combining 16 stacked layers of its most advanced 512-gigabit V-NAND flash memory and a newly developed proprietary controller.
For those unable to imagine just how big 1 TB is, Samsung offers some perspective: With 1 TB, a user will be able to store 260 4K UHD videos that are 10 minutes long. By contrast, a smartphone with 64 GB of storage can only 13 videos of the same size.
1 TB Phones
1 TB smartphones are technically already possible. In fact, Samsung last year promoted the Galaxy Note 9 as being "1 TB ready," but that's only if the user inserts a 512 GB microSD card into the 512 GB model. As such, the phone doesn't actually offer 1 TB out of the box. Samsung's new chip, on the other hand, will let manufacturers stack this much storage without inserting cards whatsoever.
It's not clear whether Samsung will use its new chip to release a 1 TB phone in the future. The notion doesn't seem far-fetched, especially that there are rumors suggesting the upcoming Galaxy S10 lineup will have a premium model that has 1 TB of storage. Time, of course, will tell. Samsung is expected to unveil the Galaxy S10 later this February.
