SanDisk has just announced their new “Extreme” microSD cards. They say the cards can hit 80 MBps, and they’re not joking. The guys over at Android Police tested the 64GB model, and they managed to achieve 78 MBps using a dedicated card reader. It’s when they shoved the card inside a phone that things went to hell. When tested in a Galaxy Note II, the card only got 15 MBps read and write speeds. That’s faster than SanDisk’s older 64 GB microSD card, by almost double, but it’s still a fraction of what the card is capable of achieving.
Why? The UHS-1 standard, which is for these faster speeds, isn’t supported by most smartphones and tablets. In fact, there’s only one Android device I can think of that can handle UHS-1, and it’s the Exynos 5 Octa powered Galaxy S4. When will more devices handle this newer standard? Your guess is as good as mine. I would like to think that future flagships using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 can handle UHS-1, but that’s just a guess on my part.
