1TB microSD cards are here, and it’s insane that the technology has reached this point. Western Digital, Samsung, and Micron have announced 1TB cards at Mobile World Congress.
The new SanDisk card can record with 90MB/S write speeds with up to 160MB/s read speeds. Western Digital says the card can transfer files with twice the speed of standard UHS-1 microSDs. That’s paired with 1TB of storage, designed to expand the memory of a smartphone or to manage large files in action cameras and drones. The card will also launch in a 512GB version.
Check It Out: 1TB MicroSD Cards Are Here And It’s Insane
What is depressing is that there is no way this will be of any use to iPhone/iPad users unless Apple abandons its tiered pricing model (aka « (over)charge for storage ») which seems extremely unlikely since it’s been the iOS business model since the original iPhone. At least they’ve upped the lowest iPhone/iPad storage tier to 32GB.
I used to use the SD card slot in my MBP and found it very nice to have the extra/auxiliary storage and backup capability, even if the speed of the internal flash storage left it in the dust.
Oops, I spoke too soon. You can still buy a marginally functional 16GB iPhone 6 apparently.
Moore’s Law may be a thing of the past, but digital storage never ceases to amaze. My first computer with a hard drive had a seemingly bottomless 20MB of storage.
Rotating magnetic storage isn’t dead yet either, which is astonishing. You can still get an 8TB hard drive for less than the price of a 1TB microSD card, although the card is obviously much smaller and more rugged. The 1″ microdrives from IBM/Hitachi/Seagate were also remarkable engineering achievements – a tiny disk platter about the diameter of a quarter – and it’s kind of amazing to remember that the original iPod and iPod mini actually had (1.8″) hard drives inside (as did the iPod classic.)