Western Digital arrived at the latest iteration of Mobile World Congress (MWC) to introduce its newest microSD card, the 256GB SanDisk Extreme microSDXC. The company’s latest offering was specifically designed for contemporary Android smartphones with the goal of improving launch times of apps. Western Digital’s in-house survey showed that a significant portion of users isn’t satisfied with how long their apps take to load as over half of all interviewees said that they’re experiencing issues with apps that are loading in a sluggish manner. Based on its findings, the company opted to develop a new addition to its A1 compatible lineup of offerings in the form of the 256GB SanDisk Extrene microSDXC card.
The new memory card is even faster than the Ultra-series product that Western Digital debuted at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last month as it supports the Application Performance Class 1 (A1) UHS-3 standard. The card allows 1,500 input/output operations per second (IOPS) when reading and 500 IOPS when writing, the company’s official press release states. Dinesh Bahal, Western Digital’s Vice President of Product Development and Client Solutions said that the A1 standard marks an important step forwad for the memory card industry as it represents a significant improvement over existing technologies. The firm’s new card allegedly boasts stellar performance when it comes to accessing and writing audio and video recordings and was developed in collaboration with a number of third-party technology companies, Western Digital said.
The 256GB SanDisk Extreme microSDXC memory card is currently slated to be released next month. The product still doesn’t have a firm release date attached to it, but the wording of the announcement suggests that SanDisk’s newest offering might be hitting the market in the first half of March. Manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of the 256GB SanDisk Extreme microSDXC amounts to $199.99, though that price will likely drop in the near future, as is customary with memory cards. The A1 standard supported by the card is currently used by a number of popular original equipment manufacturers in the industry including Huawei, Lenovo, and HTC. More details on the availability of this card are expected to surface soon.