Samsung's UFS 4.0 flash storage will double the speed of next-gen phones

[midian182]

Something to look forward to: Samsung has pulled back the covers on its next generation of Universal Flash Storage: UFS 4.0. The newest JEDEC standard specification offers several improvements over the current UFS 3.1, including double the speeds, improved power efficiency, and reduced size.

Samsung says UFS 4.0 offers speeds of up to 23.2Gbps per lane, doubling the performance of the current UFS 3.1 standard. The 7th-generation V-NAND technology will enable sequential read speeds of up to 4,200 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 2,800 MB/s. For comparison, UFS 3.1 tops out at 2,100 MB/s sequential reads and 1,200 MB/s sequential writes.

Samsung says the extra bandwidth offered by UFS 4.0 will be perfect for 5G smartphones that require vast amounts of data processing and is also expected to feature in future automotive applications, VR, and AR.

It's not just speeds that are improved over the previous generations. UFS 4.0 will also see better power efficiency than its predecessor. The sequential read speed of 6.0MB/s per milliampere (mA) marks a 46% improvement over UFS 3.1, meaning users of smartphones and other devices should experience better battery life.

Finally, UFS 4.0 will come in a smaller package that measures 11mm x 13mm x 1mm—a 512GB UFS 3.1 module measures 11.5mm x 13mm x 1.0mm—which means more efficient use of that precious internal smartphone space.

Mass production of UFS 4.0, which will be available in a variety of capacities reaching 1TB, is planned to begin in the third quarter of this year, so we should see it arrive in late 2022 or early 2023. That probably means the latest storage solution will get here too late for the Galaxy Z Fold/Flip 4 that are set to arrive this summer, but will likely be part of next year's Galaxy S23 series.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/94455-samsung-announces-ufs-40-flash-storage-double-speed.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I have no issue with current flash storage. My issues really come down to the processing power of the CPU for doing laborious processes such as finalizing 4K video on the phone. The speed at which that video is stored isn’t an issue.

 

[Dimitriid]

Why? Why would I need such fast storage on a phone? I honestly cannot think of a SINGLE USE that would benefit 99.99% of Samsung phones.

If you're a masochist and want your entire workflow to depend on just your phone using something like Samsung Dex to get desktop mode and some apps to do actual workloads that could benefit from the speed like video editing then sure you could benefit a tiny bit, but it's still a phone: I really don't think you're going to be running Premiere on your phone. You technically could: it certainly has the specs but I don't think Adobe will ever bother.

The only other thing I can think of is the memory using less power by bursting in and out of usage and being on idle longer because of the faster read times but I doubt they'll have anything significant to show for that couldn't be accounted for with 200-300mAh of extra battery.

This really is just wasting tech to be marketing on a specs sheet with absolutely no practical uses in reality.

 

[Steveb8189]

Why? Why would I need such fast storage on a phone? I honestly cannot think of a SINGLE USE that would benefit 99.99% of Samsung phones.

Store some apps on your SD card and see what happens to load times and usage. This will be a similar step forward. Loading a game could go from 10 seconds down to 5 which for an average use of a couple of minutes is noticable.

 

[Revolution 11]

Why? Why would I need such fast storage on a phone? I honestly cannot think of a SINGLE USE that would benefit 99.99% of Samsung phones.

If you're a masochist and want your entire workflow to depend on just your phone using something like Samsung Dex to get desktop mode and some apps to do actual workloads that could benefit from the speed like video editing then sure you could benefit a tiny bit, but it's still a phone: I really don't think you're going to be running Premiere on your phone. You technically could: it certainly has the specs but I don't think Adobe will ever bother.

The only other thing I can think of is the memory using less power by bursting in and out of usage and being on idle longer because of the faster read times but I doubt they'll have anything significant to show for that couldn't be accounted for with 200-300mAh of extra battery.

This really is just wasting tech to be marketing on a specs sheet with absolutely no practical uses in reality.

This might even increase power consumption. The bandwidth is double that of the previous standard but the power usage per MB/s is only 46% better.

 

[Dimitriid]

Store some apps on your SD card and see what happens to load times and usage. This will be a similar step forward. Loading a game could go from 10 seconds down to 5 which for an average use of a couple of minutes is noticable.

That's a false dichotomy right there: I didn't say "Go back to SD card speeds' now did I? I'm not objecting to the use of fast internal storage, but how fast matters a lot specially under power constrains: If you go from 10 seconds down to 5 that's ok. But if you can go down from 10 seconds to 6 seconds by just using a slower and more power efficient but still nvme grade drive then what's the downside?

Diminishing returns matter a lot on super constrained power and heat characteristics like a phone. That 1 extra second faster is not going to be meaningful enough to anybody day-to-day but it costs a lot of money, a lot of R&D and because is a premium feature it costs the most when is translated into a phone that could end up costing 1000 USD that now sells for 1400 or 1500 because it's 1 second faster to load the same apps than the phone the year before, while potentially decreasing your overall battery life in the process anyway but at the very least, is an improvement that nobody asked for and nobody needed.

 

[Revolution 11]

As a base feature in a few years, this is quite good. Less area used for the storage, more bandwidth, less power (per bandwidth). I am sure they will also optimize this further over time.

Buying a phone for this premium feature today is just not worth it.

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

Hopefully they'll be on phones without all these cameras. That looks horrid