Your next smartphone may include 256GB of storage courtesy of Samsung

[Shawn Knight]

Samsung on Thursday announced that it is now mass-producing 256GB embedded memory chips for mobile devices.

The chips, based on Samsung's V-NAND technology, utilize the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard and are physically smaller than a microSD card. Capacity, however, is only half of the story as the new memory chips are also incredibly fast.

Samsung says they take advantage of two lanes of data transfer which allows for sequential read speeds of up to 850MB/sec. That's nearly twice as fast as the average SATA-based solid state drive. They're a bit slower on the write side as sequential writes check in at up to 260MB/sec.

Random read IOPS (input / output operations per second) are rated at 45,000 with random write IOPS at 40,000. For comparison, Samsung says the previous generation of UFS memory was good for 19,000 and 14,000 read / write IOPS, respectively.

The South Korean technology giant says one 256GB chip can store about 47 full HD movies. For smartphones that support USB 3.0, users will be able to transfer a 5GB movie in about 12 seconds. It'll obviously take a little longer to transfer, say, a 4K movie, but it'll still be much faster than what's available today.

It's refreshing to see companies continue to push the limits of local flash storage, especially when you consider microSD card slots are becoming less common on flagship phones. Cloud storage is a solid alternative but it's not a perfect solution as accessing it without a Wi-Fi connection will eat into your monthly data allotment (not to mention the fact that you can't access it at all if you hit a cellular / Wi-Fi dead zone).

Samsung said it will increase its production volume in line with increases in global demand.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/63917-next-smartphone-may-include-256gb-storage-courtesy-samsung.html

 

[oldikes]

A common thing with SSDs seems to be limited (albeit exaggeragetedly so) lifespan. How does that apply this type of internal memory? ELI5 plz. Just curious.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I can't even fill the 16GB on my phone, I still have about 50% free space left so I can't see myself needing 256GB anytime soon.

 

[p51d007]

Nice, but personally? Wouldn't need it.
My phone has 16GB onboard, and I use an SD card with 16GB.
of the 32GB, about half used up in almost 2 years of use.

 

[Trillionsin]

If you guys arent using it, why get a fancy smart phone? Or else, they are talking about people like myself who downloads everything. Videos, Roms for emulators, tv shows, movies... hell, sometimes I use my phone like a flash drive just to transfer files to and from place to place, even some photo and video editing. I dont really like cloud storage, though, I do use it for some things, but I also find that inconvenient.

 

[bmw95]

A common thing with SSDs seems to be limited (albeit exaggeragetedly so) lifespan. How does that apply this type of internal memory? ELI5 plz. Just curious.

Not so much anymore. I remember reading another tech blog who tested this with the 840 pro and some others. The best of them lasted until they wrote about 1.5 petabytes to the drive, so in the consumer market this isn't really an issue anymore. However in the enterprise market, you need to be careful in which drives to select for your server, as companies such as HP or Dell have SAS SSD's with different write tolerances for different use cases (also of course with very different price points).

 

[Arturo]

Good, Samsung!

 

[Tanstar]

They should've included this in their smartphones before dumping the micro-SD card. They've added the expandable memory back for the S7, but if they put these in the S8 they can leave them off again.

 

[Uncle Al]

For those that make extensive use of their camera's, especially as a part of their work, this will be a welcome addition to the phones, but be forewarned that if they keep just collecting photo's without ever downloading them, a damaged phone could present a mega-sized disaster should all those photo's be lost!

 

[Frank Barnett]

Just think the phone will only cost $1500.00 now

 

[Satish Mallya]

Those numbers sound SSD-competitive. Seeing as they are mass manufactured for phones, (and thus, I presume, cheap) why not have them in SSDs as well?

Or is it just a matter of time until someone comes up with a SATA adapter for these chips?

 

[cliffordcooley]

They should've included this in their smartphones before dumping the micro-SD card. They've added the expandable memory back for the S7, but if they put these in the S8 they can leave them off again.

That might be the idea they have in mind. Only time will tell.

 

[STbob]

I can't even fill the 16GB on my phone, I still have about 50% free space left so I can't see myself needing 256GB anytime soon.

This will be nice for phones but I want to punch the reviewer in face that mentions 4k movies.

They would want 4k on a wrist watch and swear the movie looks 10x better than 1080p.
They are the 4k drones, created and trained by USA media to hunger for 4k. They like the stereo *****s that pay 10k on a needle that don't sound as good as a garage sale CD player.

They are the hive mentality. I want my 4k, I want to say "hey does it come in 4k".

 

[costeakai]

Go sammy go

 

[costeakai]

Go sammy go

go mediatek, too

 

[DaveBG]

Cant wait

 

[Technician]

This will be nice for phones but I want to punch the reviewer in face that mentions 4k movies.

They would want 4k on a wrist watch and swear the movie looks 10x better than 1080p.
They are the 4k drones, created and trained by USA media to hunger for 4k. They like the stereo *****s that pay 10k on a needle that don't sound as good as a garage sale CD player.

They are the hive mentality. I want my 4k, I want to say "hey does it come in 4k".

Exactly, 16k or nothing. Seriously though you know just because the movie is on the phone doesn't mean you are forced to watch on the phone screen. Most phones have HDMI.

 

[Darth Shiv]

"Samsung says they take advantage of two lanes of data transfer which allows for sequential read speeds of up to 850MB/sec. That's nearly twice as fast as the average SATA-based solid state drive."
Well that is a little misleading as the SATA interface is the bottleneck there, not the flash.

 

[entrycoupling]

That's a great news! I guess, my daughter would love to hear that Samsung will have to include 256GB storage. Personally, our family would take advantage of that for downloading movies and others.

 

[Emexrulsier]

I can't even fill the 16GB on my phone, I still have about 50% free space left so I can't see myself needing 256GB anytime soon.

What a pointless comment, you do realise they aren't saying "you must have 256Gb"

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

What a pointless comment, you do realise they aren't saying "you must have 256Gb"

What a pointless counter reply. Do you realise they're releasing 256GB storage because they want people to buy it?