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Thanks to the focus placed on specs like processor speed, RAM size, camera megapixels, the public has come to blame a smartphone's hardware for sluggish performance. According to a study done by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the type or brand of microSD card installed on the phone could be what is holding the unit back. Depending on the microSD card in your handset, performance of your phone could drop by 100% to 300%; in one case, the performance numbers dropped 2,000% as a result of a flash storage card.

The problem seems to be that the technology behind flash storage is not keeping up with the hardware of today's mobile devices, and can be traced back to the way that random I/O data is handled by the software. This is the theory espoused by Hyojun Kim, a doctoral student at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

A solution, according to Kim, would be to use phase-change random access memory (PRAM) which could be better at managing random data writing. The research shows that microSD cards can have better performance by reorganizing its file subsystem and keeping storage space neat and tidy. Ironically, benchmarking tests showed that some lower grade microSD cards performed better than some higher grade cards. As for naming names, Kim writes that Kingston's microSD card performs so badly that its results need to be removed from test data to get realistic averages. Transcend performs the best for random writes by as much as a factor of 100 compared to the competition.

Check the sourcelink for the dry as dust report. The bottom line is that the brand of microSD card you use in your device does make a difference in how fast it runs. Kim checked the launch time for eight popular apps including Angry Birds, Twitter and YouTube and found that Kingston's microSD cards offered up the slowest times for most of the apps. But there is hope based on the four suggestions listed in the report. First is that mobile devices need better storage media. Secondly, Firmware and device driver should be better at utilizing existing and upcoming storage devices. The mobile OS needs to be enhanced to prevent the bottlenecks from storage and offer new functionality. Finally, there should be changes made at the Application-level to use the supplied storage interface.

What is interesting is that some of the latest Android devices are not launching with a microSD slot which means that Kim might have to revisit this study using some of those devices. And for those who complain about how sluggish their Android model is, a change in the microSD card brand you use could make the difference.

Taken from here
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Posted: 2012-02-18 13:28:46
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This may explain why Google,SAMSUNG, Apple and Nokia use large mass storage on their flagships.
Apple dont even use MicroSDs.
I noticed with my GS2 that even though i have a 16GB MicroSD in it, it depends on the built-in 16GB mem more.
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Posted: 2012-02-18 15:28:27
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I just sold my 16gb card this week and will put in a monster 64 but now I am wondering although on XDA they have said it works just fine. The only solution would be for manufacturers to make all flagships at least 32gb internal.
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Posted: 2012-02-18 16:26:36
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I've always strongly believed that SE's pea sized internal memory solution was a big mistake that would eventually cost them big. SE devices are now known to be sluggish. This explains why they are now looking at bigger internal offering with Xperia S. A little too late if you ask me, and without the option for external storage wouldn't exactly make them popular either
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Posted: 2012-02-19 09:29:04
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Yes small internal memory I always thought was to blame. I have had the same 16 gig San Disk card for a year never find anything slow on it. Only sometimes the gallery does not load properly. It is only class 4. Phones I have had with no external storage have always been pretty fast thinking about it. The Samsung Nexus S, Nokia Lumia 800 all blazingly fast but no micro SD support.
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Posted: 2012-02-19 12:26:00
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I got this coming in a day or two
http://www.play.com/Mobiles/Mobile/4-/22145589/-/Product.html
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Posted: 2012-02-20 15:30:11
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Nice!
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Posted: 2012-02-20 15:58:53
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Wow that SD card has shot upto £39 in a day. I got it for £35
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Posted: 2012-02-21 15:09:00
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I've always favoured pea-sized internal storage and buy-your-own external storage (much like digital cameras).

It puts the power back to the people, allowing them to buy reasonably-priced storage from many different vendors in standard sizes and allows the use of the storage you paid for in future devices, not just locked inside the one device never to be re-used in the future. (ie. you can use MicroSD in a new phone in the future, or SD devices such as cameras and card readers when using a cheap MicroSD to SD adaptor). MicroSD can also be used as USB sticks with tiny MicroSD card readers and SD card readers too. The flexibility can't be matched and you get to use the storage you paid for any way you want; it's not just stuck to the one device. It also means replacement is easy if something goes wrong with the mass storage and it means things can normally be backed up and shared more easily too.

Most phones (and audio devices) that come with non-removable storage actually rip you off on the storage. Just look at the price difference between models of varying sizes of tablets and phones (and audio players) from many manufacturers; it's a crappy trend designed to milk you. It also means that if you don't want major (or minor fixed storage), you pay for it anyway; not good for price-sensitive customers.

All this said, I have tried many different brands of many different MicroSD over the years in many devices and can't say I've noticed any difference between brands in daily use (Kingston, Sandisk, Toshiba), nor with different sizes (2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB...). All Class 4.

Just because some student wanting to complete his studies says there is a difference doesn't make me accept that it makes any sort of real-world difference to me in daily use. Using Kingston 16GB and 16GB Sandisk now with absolutely no noticeable difference to the 8GB and 4GB and 2GB and 1GB Toshiba, Kingston and Sansisk cards I was using months and years earlier in the same devices (phone, camera, computer, audio recorders).

In other words, the bottleneck is clearly somewhere else in all the devices I've used; and if there is a difference it's certainly not enough for me to notice.



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Posted: 2012-03-03 17:20:04
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I agree with you totally. It is for those reasons why I am not keen on the Cloud although I have started using Box.com free 50GB of storage. I see some huge differences in price for tablets going at 16 and 32GB which I simply cannot understand.

Look at these prices on Amazon for 4gb, 8gb,16gb and 32gb micro SD cards. Then take a look at these ipad on Amazon with different memory
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Posted: 2012-03-03 17:36:17
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