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back to article Samsung rolls out ultra high-speed microSD cards

Samsung has launched a four times faster microSD card for tablets and LTE smartphones. The UHS-1 (ultra high speed) interface card stores up to 16GB and pumps data out at up to 80MB/sec. It is built from 20 nanometer-class, 64 gigabit toggle DDR 2.0 NAND. The UHS-1 interface has been seen on full-size SD cards, as used in …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    four times faster?

    or "up to" 4 x faster?

    And then, faster than which currently available product?

    and then, x times faster while transferring which type of files?

    and then... if they go for cloud storage and do away with any card slots, this is going to be very, very bad news, cause it "strengthens the new and exciting revenue stream" of well, data-streaming (and who pays the bill, eh?), and gives them control over supposedly "my" data.

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    1. Steve Knox
      Reply Icon
      Paris Hilton

      Re: four times faster?

      "and then, x times faster while transferring which type of files?"

      Why should file type affect transfer rate?

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      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: four times faster?

        Random I/O versus sequential?

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  2. Craigness

    Class 4 good enough for me

    Class 4 SD is 4MB/s, which is 14.4GB/h. In other words, you can read the data from a DVD in less than 20 minutes. I doubt there would be any buffering when watching a movie on a phone.

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    1. nigel 15
      Reply Icon

      Re: Class 4 good enough for me

      HD streaming from the likes of netflix is generally in the 10Mb region, so as you say the the 32Mb from a class 4 card is plenty of room.

      LTE, tablets and the like are obviously not the real story, it's copying files to and from your computer. burst shots on digital cameras require fairly high speed but there is no reason why they would be micro SD.

      the story here is something that has been getting faster for years got a bit faster again.

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      1. Dave 126 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Class 4 good enough for me

        Indeed, most cameras take standard-size SD cards, but some people will find a Micro-SD card in an SD sized adaptor gives some flexibility- the microSD can be popped out and images uploaded/emailed using a phone or tablet via wi-fi. Also, a Micro-SD to USB adaptor (tiny little things that live on a keychain) are handy when encountering a computer that doesn't have an SDHC card reader.

        Admittedly these are niche uses, but sometimes handy!

        Now, Samsung should make microSD cards in lurid high-vis colours so that one can spot the tiny little buggers!

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    2. Fuzz
      Reply Icon

      Re: Class 4 good enough for me

      The point of faster cards is to speed up data transfer to/from the card.

      e.g. when you put a faster card into a digital camera it generally won't make the camera faster, however it will make it faster to get the pictures off of your card onto your computer.

      The same is true here, a faster card should make it quicker to copy your DVDs onto the phone, very useful when you're trying to grab a few movies to watch on a trip when you should be walking out the door.

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  3. Thomas 4
    WTF?

    ......

    "[The UHS-1 interface] allows consumers to enjoy high-quality images and video playback directly from the memory cards."

    So where the fuck have I been watching stuff stored on my memory cards before?!

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    1. Stuart Halliday
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: ......

      Try putting on it a HD movie of 6GB and see how fast it works...

      I'm amazed at how little knowledge people have about class speeds when they use SD cards.

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  4. nigel 15
    WTF?

    the picture?

    wtf is the card in the picture?

    class 10 UHF 1 I 640Mb/s

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WRITE SPEEDS

    Are where SD cards suck. read speeds are already good enough for most applications these days.

    WHy aren't Samsung quoting those?

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  6. Me-eyes
    Meh

    Yeah, but how much faster is this Class 10 card...

    ...than a regular Class 10 card?

    "Is this thing on?"

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    1. Stuart Halliday
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      Thumb Up

      Re: Yeah, but how much faster is this Class 10 card...

      The SD standard only goes up to class 10. That is 10MB/s.

      This card should be called class 80 if we lived in a rational world!

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      1. admiraljkb
        Reply Icon
        Coat

        Re: Yeah, but how much faster is this Class 10 card...

        @Stuart - Rational world? Where the heck have you been lately? :) Thumb for your rationality though.

        I agree Class 80 only makes sense though. Not sure why they stopped at 10. Maybe they hadn't seen Spinal Tap and realized they could at least get to 11?

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  7. Gordon 10

    More importantly

    How do we know our existing micro-sd toting electronics have the hardware/firmware to enable UHS?

    There is no point in paying the premium if for example the Nook firmware only supports class 6 speeds.

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    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: More importantly

      I think if your SDHC or SDXC device doesn't list UHS in its specification, it won't take advantage of UHS, but it will work with compatible cards using the slower protocol.

      Wikipedia on "Secure Digital" says,

      "Cards that comply with UHS show UHS-I or UHS-II on the label, and report this capability to the host device. Use of UHS requires that the host device command the card to drop from 3.3-volt to 1.8-volt operation and select the 4-bit transfer mode."

      Given precedents with USB, watch out for weaselly product specifications that say something like "Compatible with UHS-I and UHS-II cards", since a device with no UHS features apparently is still compatible with UHS cards, it just won't use the UHS feature. Obviously.

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      1. admiraljkb
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Re: More importantly

        But I think that in spite of the Burst mode data transfer being lower in compatibility mode, normally sustained DTR should still be higher. I saw that doing some low end server testing when put newer SATA2 drives with higher data densities on older SATA1 interfaces. The DTR nearly doubled in spite of being on an aged/slow interface. I think we need real world benchmarks here.

        Regardless, getting that much theoretical throughput for a MicroSD card is pretty exciting. I'm concerned about all the "weaseling" as well, since not all SDHC and SDXC interfaces have proven equal without adding "Compatible" claims on it.

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        1. admiraljkb
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          Re: More importantly

          responding to myself. I did find some benchmarks on Toms. My quick takeaway is that USB2 is their big holdup with UHS cards, so they went to USB3 for their desktop reader. The fact that the card readers on on phones/tablets are tied to the USB2 interface kills any chance of faster performance than USB2 is capable of. Looks like for write speeds it might still translate into faster xfers, but for reads it will not over a good Class10. Would UHS still be worth it? Possibly, but some of the Class10 cards are also pretty quick.

          So if trying to figure out if one of these would help in an individual case, Benchmarks on the specific device would be required. At least until USB3 gets to the phones/tablets.

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  8. Ru
    Meh

    "If cloud data streaming becomes the norm"

    Sir, surely you jest?

    Physical storage is not going to go away any time soon. Outside of urban centres, wifi and 3g coverage is patchy at the very best and where it does exist it is slooooow. And after all that, you're faced with either paying per megabyte or running into fair* usage limits because no operator is going to offer you unlimited* bandwidth that's good for HD video streaming any time soon.

    Oh, and then you go abroad on holiday or business, and find that there's only the boring, conventional sort of cloud visible from on the plane even if you were allowed to use any sort of radio networking, which you generally are not. And when you get to your destination bandwidth costs are a mockery.

    Give it 10 years and a bunch of regulators willing to kick telcos in the balls until they sort their service out, and maybe SD cards will be only occasionally useful, instead of nigh on essential like they are now.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "If cloud data streaming becomes the norm"

      And if your phone doesn't have a micro SD port, where else could your data come from ?

      'But all phones have a port', you say.

      Not any more, see the review of HTC's One series here on the Reg.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heh

    I came up with the idea of direct-from-memory-card video playback a while ago.

    At the time the highest speed >2GB cards were only Class 2 which were nowhere near fast enough.

    This could be very handy for "drive by movie downloads" and suchlike, just set up your *Phone to automagically do the transaction as you drive past say McDonalds etc and you can watch the movie at your destination etc.

    Only problem here is that the DRM would be a pain.

    AC

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