Samsung Introduces World’s First UFS Cards: The Next Evolution in MicroSD Technology

Samsung has made waves in the world of data storage with their recent unveiling of the planet’s first removable Universal Flash Storage (UFS) cards, boasting storage capacities ranging from 32 to a staggering 256 gigabytes. These UFS cards are a leap forward in technology, potentially representing the next generation’s answer to the MicroSD card we currently regard as standard.

What differentiates these Samsung UFS cards from traditional MicroSDs is a significant enhancement in read speed, touted up to 530 megabytes per second (Mbps), effectively five times faster than average MicroSD cards. In more relatable terms, this amazing speed lets you read a 5GB Full-HD movie in roughly ten seconds, while a conventional UHS-1 microSD card might take over 50 seconds to accomplish the same task.

This superior speed performance doesn’t stop at just sequential read speeds. At a random read rate of 40,000 IOPS, the 256GB UFS card delivers a 20-fold increase in random read performance compared to conventional microSD cards, which only offer approximately 1,800 IOPS.

In a world increasingly demanding high-resolution gadgets, Samsung had placed UFS memory internally in its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. The company has wisely taken it a step further by developing a removable variant that can potentially be used in a variety of other gadgets in the future. Although there are currently no devices supporting UFS as removable storage, this revolutionary advancement by Samsung is a promising indication of what the future holds for data storage.

Despite the lack of compatible devices at present, adoption of this faster and higher capacity storage technology should be imminent. With Samsung’s record of innovation, it won’t be surprising to see slots for UFS cards in their upcoming products.

This debut of UFS cards is just the latest highlight in Samsung’s ongoing advancements in the field of storage technology. Earlier this year, Samsung had launched a business card-sized 2TB external hard disk, known as SSD T3. Setting new benchmarks in speed and security, it offers a transfer speed of 450MBps and comes along with in-built AES 256-bit encryption.

This year also saw competitor SanDisk, now a part of Western Digital, announcing the world’s largest microSD card with up to 200GB of storage. It supports data transfer at a speed up to 90MB per second.

The UFS card by Samsung and the large capacity microSD by SanDisk points to an exciting future for storage solutions, where speed and capacity are continually expanding, catering to the increasing demands of new-age devices.