Samsung Electronics has announced an all-new, high-capacity, high-speed microSD card that can store up to a whopping 256GB of data. The 256GB microSD card is part of Samsung’s growing ‘EVO Plus’ line of flash storage cards that was launched last year by the South Korean company. According to the press release from Samsung, its latest release “offers the highest capacity for a microSD card in its class” and can not only store up to 12 hours of 4K videos and 33 hours of Full HD videos, but is also capable of storing “graphic intensive multimedia like virtual reality (VR) and gaming”. Samsung currently sells 128GB Pro Plus microSD cards in the market, but companies like SanDisk are already commercially marketing 200GB microSD cards for the past few months.
According to Mr. Un-Soo Kim, Senior Vice President of Brand Product Marketing, Memory Business at Samsung Electronics, the company’s new “V-NAND-based 256GB microSD card solution … will provide consumers with large capacity, and high read and write speeds”. Samsung claims that the device can offer read speeds of up to 95 MB/s and write speeds of up to 90 MB/s in theory, which certainly sounds interesting, although, real-life speeds are likely to be substantially lower. Samsung says that it will start selling the cards from this June in over 50 countries, including key markets like the USA, Europe, and China. The company says that it will offer a 10-year limited warranty on the product, which will come with an MSRP of $249.99.
Some commentators on social media last year pointed out the irony of Samsung launching its high-capacity microSD cards in the same year its smartphones had stopped including expansion slots in them. This year, however, the company has re-introduced microSD card slots with its Galaxy S7 line, much to the delight of Android aficionados worldwide. Even though most devices do not officially support 256GB cards just yet, it should be only a matter of time before flagship smartphones start incorporating support for such high capacity microSD cards. The one thing that now remains to be seen is whether the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 becomes the first-ever smartphone to officially support 256GB microSD cards.