Samsung Sure Seems Ready To Sell Us 1TB Smartphones

Samsung Sure Seems Ready To Sell Us 1TB Smartphones

Even though base storage on phones has increased from 8GB to 16GB to even 64GB on some newer handsets, with the ever increasing size of photos, videos, and apps, sometimes it still feels like there’s never enough room.

To help address the situation, Samsung announced that it has created the world’s first 1TB embedded flash storage (eUFS) 2.1 module for smartphones and other mobile devices.

Previously, while there were a handful of phones with 1TB of storage like the relatively unknown $1805 Smartisan R1, the price and difficulty sourcing the parts to put that much storage in the phone made such devices incredibly niche.

On its new drive, despite having the same 13 x 11.5mm dimensions as smaller flash drives, Samsung says its new 1TB module boasts sequential read speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps, twice that of a typical SATA-based laptop SSD. Additionally, random read speeds are allegedly 38 per cent faster than on an equivalent 512GB flash drive, with random writes speeds as much as 500 times higher than a high-performance microSD card.

Those increased write speeds should be particularly useful as Samsung says its new drive is now fast enough to record 960 fps super slow-mo, which previously required the use of special DRAM modules to act as a middleman between the device’s image sensor and permanent storage when recording high-speed video.

Samsung hopes that by making abundant high-speed storage available in phones, users will have more room to stash things like 4K video, both downloaded from a video service, or perhaps captured on the device itself. Personally, I’m just looking forward to having more room to squirrel away high-quality movies for watching offline during plane flights and subway rides.

Also, the announcement of Samsung’s new 1TB flash drive adds even more credibility to rumours that one or two models of the upcoming Galaxy S10, including the 5G-ready S10 X, will come with 1TB storage options.

Look, in a time when a typical laptop configuration comes with 256GB of storage, putting 1TB of storage in a phone might seem like overkill. But for people who love taking high-res pictures and images, or simply don’t want to stash tons of stuff in the cloud, having the option is nice, especially if your phone doesn’t support microSD.


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