Samsung is building 256GB memory chips for smartphones

[wyattzx]

Quote

Your smartphone may soon have as much storage as a typical PC. Samsung has announced that it's mass producing 256GB embedded chips, double what it had last year, using the Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 standard.

Source: engadget

 

While this comes as no surprise, I always enjoy seeing improvements and optimizations made in the field of technology. Phones with 256GB of flash storage could be a reality for flagships in 2017, and that's certainly a welcome addition. The article goes on to mention how the chips will have read-write speeds in excess of 850MB/250MB. While that is much faster than a comparable SATA III SSD, its write performance is near half. However, it should be noted that phones do not write the amount of data that PCs do, so this should be a non-issue going forward.

 

Thoughts?

[Jon Trollston]

Sounds great but they'll probably use it as a reason to get rid of micro sd card slots on phones which will be annoying and inconvenient. 

[QueenDemetria]

2017: *Samsung unveils 256GB flash for mobile*

Samsung: Today is an exciting day, the new Galaxy S8 will include 256GB of storage, in like two markets, while the remaining markets will come at a standard 32GB.

[wyattzx]

Just now, Jon Trollston said:

Sounds great but they'll probably use it as a reason to get rid of micro sd card slots on phones which will be annoying and inconvenient. 

If a phone has 256GB of onboard storage, the only inconvenience would be either if you max it out (unlikely unless your phone is used as a DSLR replacement, or if you listen to nothing but .FLAC files) or if you cannot use a micro-USB cable to manage the data on the phone from your PC. Most phones (if not all of them?) don't support external storage over 128GB / 256GB anyways.

[TheRandomness]

'As much storage as a typical PC'

*cough* (And yes I know some ordinary PC might have 500~GB or more of storage but that's still more)

[wyattzx]

2 minutes ago, TheRandomness said:

'As much storage as a typical PC'

*cough* (And yes I know some ordinary PC might have 500~GB or more of storage but that's still more)

Based on market share, typical PC likely refers to Chromebooks, Ultrabooks, and low-end office PCs where this is likely true. "Gaming" desktops make up a very minuscule portion of the PC market share.

[Jon Trollston]

1 minute ago, NonaHexa said:

If a phone has 256GB of onboard storage, the only inconvenience would be either if you max it out (unlikely unless your phone is used as a DSLR replacement, or if you listen to nothing but .FLAC files) or if you cannot use a micro-USB cable to manage the data on the phone from your PC. Most phones (if not all of them?) don't support external storage over 128GB / 256GB anyways.

I enjoy being able to save files to my micro sd card and just giving that to my dad or my friends without having to go through a pc or any settings. 

[SaladFingers]

Wake me up when they add a proper controller to those, like Apple has. We keep getting the same old phones as "new" models every year it has become boring...

[Minzo]

Who needs 256GB in their phone really?

[HatsuneMilku]

Jeezus Christ we've come a long way.

[suicidalfranco]

52 minutes ago, Minzo said:

Who needs 256GB in their phone really?

i do and it still wouldn't be enough

[AxelRantila]

Yay. Hopefully we can have this on more phones ASAP

[CTR640]

This will be a reason for samsung to jack up the prices to the sun solar system.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, SaladFingers said:

Wake me up when they add a proper controller to those, like Apple has. We keep getting the same old phones as "new" models every year it has become boring...

The S7 is by no means the same phone as the S6. They are very, very different.

The LG G4 and G5 are worlds apart. 

 

I would like faster storage on phones though. I was hoping it would come with the S7 but I guess we will have to wait another year for that. 

[zacRupnow]

The S7 ads during tonight's Academy Awards (Chris Rock was the worst host in Oscar history) had someone say they could hold all 140 of their movies... Is the S7 getting a 256Gb version? Cause that's not enough for 140~ movies if they are even half decent copies.

[SaladFingers]

Just now, LAwLz said:

The S7 is by no means the same phone as the S6. They are very, very different.

The LG G4 and G5 are worlds apart. 

 

I would like faster storage on phones though. I was hoping it would come with the S7 but I guess we will have to wait another year for that. 

Not as different to hint an upgrade though. This whole trend of releasing new stuff annually is milking manufacturers dry of ideas. The G5 is the only interesting new model this year, if you ask me. When are we going to get some Nvme controllers, for example? Why do most of them not have usb-c yet? Why the crappy battery life still? I mean... phones from 2-3 years back still are just as appealing as the current ones, minus some specs like less ram and older cpus (that perform about the same still....). The fact that they *have* to release something new year in and year out means there won't necessarily be any kind of innovation between the generations.

[Crowes]

2 hours ago, Minzo said:

Who needs 256GB in their phone really?

Everyone, for the sake of not being prudent in what we store on our phones. The future of mobile storage will be download what you want, when you want, and keep it for however long you want.

 

None of this shit:

 

[Thony]

Good move ! 

Shame it's gonna add more cost to the phone than a 128gb SD card would

 

Luckily I don't need more than 32gb anyway

[Sakkura]

2 hours ago, NonaHexa said:

While this comes as no surprise, I always enjoy seeing improvements and optimizations made in the field of technology. Phones with 256GB of flash storage could be a reality for flagships in 2017, and that's certainly a welcome addition. The article goes on to mention how the chips will have read-write speeds in excess of 850MB/250MB. While that is much faster than a comparable SATA III SSD, its write performance is near half. However, it should be noted that phones do not write the amount of data that PCs do, so this should be a non-issue going forward.

 

Thoughts?

Too much focus on sequential transfer speeds. Random read/write is more important. And low queue depths, not the usual QD32 crap. Most people don't run that kind of workload on their PCs, let alone their phones.

38 minutes ago, SaladFingers said:

Not as different to hint an upgrade though. This whole trend of releasing new stuff annually is milking manufacturers dry of ideas. The G5 is the only interesting new model this year, if you ask me. When are we going to get some Nvme controllers, for example? Why do most of them not have usb-c yet? Why the crappy battery life still? I mean... phones from 2-3 years back still are just as appealing as the current ones, minus some specs like less ram and older cpus (that perform about the same still....). The fact that they *have* to release something new year in and year out means there won't necessarily be any kind of innovation between the generations.

Well you're finally seeing some spec differentiation then. iPhone with NVMe, G5 with USB-C...

 

Fast update cycles just means you can skip a generation or two here and there. Just like you don't upgrade your desktop CPU every generation.

[SaladFingers]

4 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Well you're finally seeing some spec differentiation then. iPhone with NVMe, G5 with USB-C...

 

Fast update cycles just means you can skip a generation or two here and there. Just like you don't upgrade your desktop CPU every generation.

You're right about the generation skipping, it makes sense. Though I still find most manufacturers being hesitant about real upgrades to their devices which leaves a sour taste. Also, kudos to Apple for their NVMe controller, that was mostly what I was referring to, but I would like to see that beyond Apple's closed ecosystem. Why does everyone have to play the waiting game and not innovate a little bit? I get it, it's trendy to bash on Apple then copy them next year, but to the end user that doesn't help at all. I mean, I would expect Samsung to do NVMe before everyone else, and since they didn't, at least bring it a year later. But nope.

[Coaxialgamer]

And my phone only has about 3.5gb of usable storage + 16 gb on a class 4 sd card...

[spartaman64]

8 hours ago, NonaHexa said:

If a phone has 256GB of onboard storage, the only inconvenience would be either if you max it out (unlikely unless your phone is used as a DSLR replacement, or if you listen to nothing but .FLAC files) or if you cannot use a micro-USB cable to manage the data on the phone from your PC. Most phones (if not all of them?) don't support external storage over 128GB / 256GB anyways.

but you have to remember that the 256GB model is probably going to be much more expensive than the 32GB model and it would be great to have micro sd expansion of the 32GB model

[Doobeedoo]

All great for extra on board storage, specially now that they're reaching SSD performance. I'm aiming for top capacity for my next phone like Samsung Galaxy S7 but price for flash is still high so hopefully it drops faster.

[AHaskin14]

Good, now I can fit entire video library onto a phone