An SD card is perhaps one of the most useful components of a smartphone. For the past decade, mobile phone makers have relied on the technology for storage. While Apple is firm with its non-use of the SD card, most OEMs add card slots to their products for obvious reasons. Some even dared to removed such but it seems the Android community isn’t ready yet. We don’t know if an SD card-less future is possible even if memory components become smaller. We just know bigger storage space will be needed.
Who knew that we’d ever have 256GB storage when the smartphone game began almost a decade ago? Technology definitely has improved and another ten years from now, we won’t be surprised if memory size is almost ten times or more. Recently, the SD Association announced that it is releasing a new guideline. The SD Specification 5.1 is scheduled to roll out as a new app performance class for cards will also be released.
The idea of using SD cards as extra storage has greatly improved especially since Google added a special feature on the Android 5.0 Marshmallow that allows apps to run from an SD card stored on one device. When Android 6.0 Lollipop came, adoptable storage was then added. Users can now merge the microSD with the internal storage. This is one way to solve the speed problem since microSD cards are slower compared to the internal NAND flash.
The SD Association is introducing the new SD Specification 5.1. This App Performance Class 1 requires cards to be certified. They must be approved and meet performance requirements like sustained sequential performance 10MB/s, random write IOPS of 500, and random read IOPS of 1500. This is simply a new standard for the SD card which we all know will only continue to be enhanced as OEMs also commit to produce devices that are of the highest quality.
Future cards may see that A1 card logo on the SD cards. Yes, it’s a new standard for the SD cards that are also good for other storage especially media files.
related: https://www.sdcard.org/consumers/choices/application/
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DkrwfY2jw4
