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Looks like SanDisk’s streak of pushing the boundary of microSD card storage has come to an end. One manufacturer attending the Computex tech show in Taiwan has revealed a 512GB microSD card.
That company is Microdia, which is a fairly unknown name when it comes to flash storage. They’re promising a UHS-2 card that has read/write speeds of 300 megabytes per second. We’re not sure we can believe that claim as even SanDisk has yet to achieve those speeds on their smaller range of cards.
But that’s the claim, and we definitely can’t say otherwise until we give it a spin ourselves. The card was built on the microSDXC standard, so it stands to reason that it should work with any phone that can support those cards (which tend to list lower maximum storage capabilities even though higher capacity cards work just fine).
There’s one other uncertainty. Well, it’s less of an “uncertainty” and more of a “holy crap, that’s a very good reason not to buy this card”: it’ll retail for $1,000 once it’s on store shelves. That’s absurd for mobile flash storage from an unproven company that might not even last you that long. Do yourself a favor and spend $30 on a portal 512GB hard drive, and pocket the rest for something actually worth the coin.
[via CNet]
I predict price to fall to a price of under $300 in 6 months and under $125 sale price in a year
And early adopters will be pissed off at the resale price, and the fact that their first-run cards burn out and die fairly quickly… :/
Why do First-Adopters not expect this? I bought my M8 when it first came out and I actually expected it to mess up. It was the first batch. Things like that happen with the first.
If you can’t afford the loss, wait until the second batch. I laugh at their suffering.
#DarkHumor
Yeah, I find it hard to sympathize with early adopters when they complain about price drops and/or bugs. You should realize that going in.
Here’s the thing, they should both EXPECT it, and NOT HAVE TO expect it… What people should have to put up with and what actually happens in reality are two different things…
The only time I’ve been an early adopter was with windows phone 7… I regretted it at first until the mango update, but actually I had no hardware issues.
I guess that’s a different kettle of fish as I was an early adopter of software not hardware.
Reasonable prediction.
I agree with this prediction and will take it one step further by saying they will sell very very small amount of these at any price! The name isn’t well known and I know I won’t plunk down cash like that on an unknown.
Sweet! I can’twait to put one of these in the Galaxy Note 5 to have my entire music collection and some movies at my fingertips. I travel all day for my job to lots of places without a decent Internet connection so expandable storage is crucial. Oh wait, I forgot, samsung engineers are a bunch of idiots now who don’t give a crap about important things that consumers love like battery life, expandable storage, sound quality and water resistance.
I much prefer having local files vs. relying on the cloud. While I have learned to love cloud storage, for backup purposes, it will never be a truly viable option for me until we are in a world that cloud functionality is just as fast as local file access, including streaming content. Even at my house, where I average between 150-200mbps on wifi, streaming is still so inconsistent as compared to locally stored files. Now, as far as this 512gb microSD is concerned, I will probably wait until it is at a more reasonable price point. I jumped on upgrading to 128gb microSD’s for my devices, once there were sales for 99 or lower, but considering SanDisk only has the 200gb available through certain outlets (pre-order through Best Buy and backordered at B&H), I’m figuring that it’ll be a while before the 512gb will truly be in an “affordable” range. That said, I hope that my future upgrade phone still has a microSD available to me. I too don’t care for the direction that Samsung is going with the removal of the microSD card slot. I’ve stuck with my Note 3, since the Note 4 wasn’t quite a big enough upgrade (and it was bigger physically) and am still enjoying it, but realized that I’ve saved enough additional files that I only have 8gb remaining. In the meantime, if the 200gb card by Sandisk goes down to $99, I might pick that up.
If you are actually pulling 150+mbps internet speed (are you sure that isn’t just your connection speed to your Wi-Fi?), and you are still getting stuttering or buffering issues, the problem isn’t your internet speed. It’s either throttling by your isp(most likely), a problem with the website/video provider servers, your Wi-Fi connection having a problem(doubtful with that high of internet speed), or your device you are trying to watch on maxing out resources(processor or ram).
LOL…Why would I even B.S. that? No reason for me to. I am on a 300mbps TWC internet plan, due to a TWC upgrade that was issued throughout L.A. last year. I have a custom wifi setup, which was done by my IT guy at work, so that I have 2 Asus RT-N66U routers on the same SSID network with 2.4 and 5ghz channel. On 5ghz, the average on my Lenovo PC (running i7 quad processor w/ 8gb of RAM) is 150mbps. The Max Ping was 215 at one point, but obviously that’s not going to be the standard. And yes, it likely is throttling that’s the issue. But again, that’s only at home and it’s still not reliable enough for me to be confident in just using cloud for media exclusively. That was my main point. You can doubt it all you want, as far as my wifi speed, but it’s the reason that I’ve had absolutely no complaints about TWC. FiOS isn’t offered in my area, so I used to hate my wifi speed at home. And of course, those are download speeds, not upload. Upload averages around 15-20mbps, which is completely fine since I don’t really upload a lot of content via internet connection.
I wasn’t doubting it, I just was trying to help you solve your problem. Why would you love your isp if they are throttling you? What good is 150mbps if they only let you use 2mbps for streaming video? Uverse drove me crazy trying to solve my problems then Netflix and Amazon paid them interconnect fees and boom problem solved, no more throttling. Also 15-20mbps is an insane home upload speed I’m jealous on my 18down/1.5 up uverse connection. I’m all for local storage in the short term, but really we need drastically upgraded bandwidth pipeline if we want computers to keep progressing at the peace they have been
Cuz there isn’t anything that will come even close to that, even when they throttle. And the throttling isn’t anywhere near as bad as other areas I’ve heard, where they don’t have a large population.
FiOS, not available. U-verse, not available. DSL – Fastest offered is 3mbps…LOL…And prior to all the TWC upgrades, it was awful. That’s where I was saying that I didn’t really care for them. Now, I can’t complain at all. The throttling, if any drops the speed by 30mbps, so I’d see something inbetween 110-120, but even that would stutter from where it’s pulling the files from (cloud storage connected to networked drive). Odd thing is, not as much problem from streaming sites.
But, I digress, I just really prefer not having to worry about that. And I stream a lot of stuff at home, when I’m there. It’s a combination of my professional and personal work needs that media is so huge and until I’m streaming content stutter free, like I would a locally stored file, I’ll still prefer the latter over the former.
A 215 ping…damn that’s terrible..makes me appreciate FiOS so much more.
Here’s a screenshot, after I had initially installed my router setup. This was the average of all the speedtests I did http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/drexappeal/Mobile%20Uploads/16781_10152387299261533_8560187921785121246_n.jpg
After not refreshing the routers and/or modem for a while, speeds go down (and also not including TWC throttling), but average is around 150mbps.
Let’s hold off giving up hope until September.
*Some consumers
The lovely thing about Android is Samsung isn’t the only thing out there. Everyone that loves Full Qwerty keyboards in phones are staying silent. We are patiently waiting for one to be released. That was something consumers died to have.
It’s a good thing there are choices for people who desire a full Qwerty keyboard…..
*cries a little inside*
wont be long til we got terbye sd cards in our phones :)
12 years ago when I was in school, I was sitting at the nerd table in the library, which I often sat at, for … Some reason :P … and we were discussing computer technology, and I suggested that probably in a few years we would have terabyte hard drives in our PCs, and the response that I got was “No way, the read/write laser would have a hell of a time trying to read data from that! If we need that much storage, we will have several hard drives installed.” At that time, I had an old (even then) Windows 95 with a 1.85GB hard drive and most PCs had around 20-40GB.
Sigh, how much things have changed… I have three 2TB, physically small, USB drives and they’re not even the latest thing.
I can see that I’m not as old as you, but we had this computer running Windows XP. It was made in 2000. It has 2GB of RAM and a 20GB Hard Drive. Clock speed was like 2Ghz (I’m aware it’s more than just clock speed).
I think the phone that surpassed that computer was the… eh…? I wanna say the M7… And what I mean is more, RAM, storage space and the clock speed was higher. I say clock speed only to give the computer a fighting chance. LoL!!
It’s amazing. I never thought I would see a computer in my life time get surpassed by a phone. Also, I mean a computer I’ve owned that was so awesome at the time.
It’s one reason I like sticking with mobile technology. I LOVE watching technology grow. Ugh!! It’s so amazing!! Makes me feel old, though. =.P
My first PC had a 20MB hard drive (megabytes, not gigabytes), 512KB of RAM (kilobytes, not megabytes or gigabytes), and the processor ran at 8MHz (megahertz not gigahertz).
In a couple decades the specs of today’s PCs and smartphones will seem just as absurd.
o Moore’s law you magnificent bastard
We bought one of those. Probably cost us $1,000 at the time plus that whopping 36K Baud rate over the phone.
With the rate things are going, it feels like it won’t be a *couple* of decades… Heck, I feel within the next few years something amazing is going to happen. I’m just so hyped right now!! This trip down memory lane!!
I remember when I couldn’t use the internet because someone was on the phone. I remember having a different section for Incoming and Outgoing text messages and the war was who’s phone can hold more text messages. LoL!!
it’s even crazier when you look at a top of the line phone vs how long ago that would have been a laptop for instance my 7 year oldwhat was top of the line laptop ran Vista / Windows 7had a dual core 2.0gigahertz 2gb ram(upgraded to 4gb), in 160 gig 7200rpm spinning hard drive 1680×1050 screenand sucks down 7200mah 9 cell 1.1pound battery in under 2 and a half hours. vs my g3 which is a year old has a quad core 2.4something ghz, 3gb ram 32solid stateplus with an SD card can get up to 150 gigabyte with a 2560×1440 screen until the last almost 4 hours on only 3000 mah, and this years flagship match or exceed most specs of a 3-5 year old laptop further narrowering the gap not only that but for a significantly lead cheaper price before you can account for the carrier subsidy
This is not the case at all. Without getting into computer architecture, clock speed can only be used to compare processors that are otherwise identical. A 1.6GHz dual core ultrabook is much more powerful than a 2.5GHz quad core smartphone
I always wish there was a better way than clock speed to compare processors, but I feel like even benchmarks start to get too complicated, and use case specific. I’ve never totally understood is the main difference heat management and throttling? Or is there actually a huge difference in how the average program is handled on an architecture basis? I guess I should have mentioned that laptop was a core2duo no hyperthreading.
Its all architectural, nothing to do with thermal properties. It can be tough to understand the difference unless you do some research into it
With great architecture comes great thermodynamics.
Thanks dude, you’ve just made me feel old. Now it hurts to pee and I like snooker. It’s your fault :P
Thanks for sharing, old Xp, the first user accessible version of windows… Full of malware and uglier than Frank next door’s wife but finally you could get work done!
I remember the 10MB (not GB) Sider II hard drive for the Apple II was huge considering multiple apps and games can easily fit on a 140K floppy. 10GB then is probably equivalent to 4TB now. More amazing is phones even from a few years ago can emulate the top of line Apple IIgs much faster than the real thing with add-on accelerator card.
Crazy eh??
To be fair, app sizes now are ridiculous, an iPhone (or android equivalent) with 8gb in 2010 could run every app you want and still have space for music, photos etc – the facebook app, ebuddy app (for MSN messenger and similar ) and angry birds together took up only about 5mb…
We use such a ridiculous amount of storage today, but then, we have crazy storage available! It’s still strange to image how we got by with such little storage and so little power back then, and we still looked at our computers and gadgets with awe!
I remember reading an article discussing Moore’s law a few years ago just before smartphones, and basically they’d done studies and shown that even though you the average person was doubling processing power and ram and upgrading to a new Windows OS with each new generation off of they bought, that do to inefficient programming and bloat on software side you were lucky if you saw a 10-20% improvement in actual speed to complete a task. The software guys knew they’d have more power than they knew what to do with, shoo they just had no incentive to code efficiently and not add worthless features and graphics.
I friend of mine learned to write code about 12 years ago, and that’s exactly what he said. Today’s code is written so poorly because we have so much elbow room now.
Right, and the guys writing code in the 80’s and 90’s think your circa 2003 friend is a lush what with his mega and gigabytes. It’s gotta be frustrating for the hardware guys, you bust your ass to improve something 100% and the software guys show up and right code thats 80% more inefficient and most features are worthless. The crazy thing in their study was it didn’t matter what kind of program it was, even something like microsoft word and word processing was exponentially more inefficient, (look at how long it takes the last few version of word to even open….so you can type some basic text that’s essentially the same as a guy was doing 25+ years ago.
I’ll go the other direction, Danny, just to show you how old I am. In 1985, I was working for a Point-of-Sale company, and we sold to our customers 2K and 8K chips (yes, I said “K”!) for $50 and $150, respectively!!!
Similarly, I remember when my Dad bought me an Apple II+. It had 48K onboard memory and he got a “deal” to add another 16K for and additional $100. Woo hoo, I thought I was the king of memory!
Haha that’s insane! I mean, what could you even do with that? I guess it was good at the time, strange eh?
Yeah, but this was just keeping track of data (mostly # of items sold, total $$ sales, etc.) Back then, if you were a grocer, it was about $10K per lane to add scanning to your store! Now, a pc with a usb port can do it for about $500 plus the inventory file!!!
Hehehe, that will be crazy. Perfect for long trips in a car/plane. Put loads of TV Shows and films on it. Plus, if the device has a user-replaceable battery? Pffff! Have a couple extra batteries, you’re golden. Entertainment for hours. What’s a book?
I don’t need one of those…yet…
My first instinct: I want two of them right now! ;)
http://i.imgur.com/9fFqx6p.gif
Pretty crazy but I can’t think or anything I’d ever need one for. Maybe for people that have DSLRs OR HAVE TONS of downloaded music? Video cameras and action cams?
Pretty much. I’m thinking stuff like Black Magic cameras and high-end DSLR photography (think full-frame or even medium format at 50MP+)
Blasted 4k video recording can take up quite a bit of room. But, it’s noice to have that extra storage on a card when the internal is filling up. Record as much as I can, move those video files to external, keep recording. Win. Micro SD: You’re in control.
Kids on long car trips. Load up the card with movies and TV shows and let them watch what they want without having to fiddle with DVDs.
I can’t even fill up my 16 gig Nexus 5.
You’re fortunate that’s enough for you. Many of us snap tons of photos and capture lots of HD video with our mobile devices that we need the extra storage. Plus all the other media we prefer to have stored locally on board rather than be at the mercy of the cloud.
Oh god, I have seen thousands of those kind of “discussions” that are all the same: “I can’t even fill up 16gb” “thats enough for you but others do that and that”
its like a random greeting. “How are you” “I’m fine”
Why the quotation marks? What constitutes a discussion for you? That really bothers you?
I need more than 16 GB for the absurd amount of apps I have. I used to think I need just a few, but I have over 100 apps, and that’s me cutting back.
I want one!
Just as most manufacturers have abandoned microSD slots
THANKS A LOT UNIVERSE NOW I CAN’T WATCH MY 4K RESOLUTION “ADULT CONTENT” ON THE GO