If you’re always running out of storage for your music, movies, photos, and apps, a new microSD could be just what the doctor ordered, especially when it brings more space to your smartphone than anything else before it.
Not all smartphone manufacturers support upgradeable memory — we’re looking at you, Apple, Google, and now even Samsung — but those that do know why people love it: when you run out of space, a microSD slot means you can fix that in a jiffy, adding to what you have with a number you can choose to spend up or down on depending on what you want.
You might have a 16GB phone, but while 16GB iPhone users are stuck with that paltry amount, phone owners with a microSD slot on-board can boost the size dramatically, with 32, 64, and even 128GB.
But what if 128GB just doesn’t cut it, what then?
In that instance, you might want to go with something higher, and a SanDisk announcement at Mobile World Congress is for you.
This week, SanDisk is improving on its 128GB microSD cards with the announcement of a 200GB card, a move that will bring laptop-sized storage to phones for the first time.
“We continue to push technology boundaries to deliver record-breaking solutions that transform the way consumers use their mobile devices,” said Dinesh Bahal, Vice president of Product Marketing at SanDisk.
“By focusing on achieving new capacity and speed milestones, we are able to deliver trusted mobile memory solutions that give consumers the freedom to never stop capturing, saving, or sharing – with the benefit of fast speeds to transfer it all quickly.”
The SanDisk 200GB microSD card is rated at UHS-1 and Class 10, meaning it should be ideal for capturing and playing back 4K video, which will be convenient given most flagship phones with the microSD slot will have Ultra HD capture included in their cameras.
Pricing, however, hasn’t been announced locally, though with a US price of roughly $400 when it becomes available in the next few months, we don’t expect it to be lower than $500 when it arrives in Australia. That said, memory pricing does drop relatively quickly, so you can probably expect 200GB cards to fall in price later this year, just like how you can currently find 128GB microSD cards from SanDisk’s competitor Lexar.
