Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus will support microSD cards with capacities of up to 2TB, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The South Korean phone maker still isn’t planning to advertise that feature, the source said. The company may have opted for such a move because 2TB microSD cards still aren’t available to consumers; SanDisk is presently offering the microSDXC UHS-I card with a capacity of 400GB for $250 and Integral Memory is expected to launch a 512GB offering by the end of the month at an undisclosed price, with the consumer electronics industry presumably still being at least several years away from delivering 2GB microSD cards.
Due to that state of affairs, it remains unclear whether the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus will truly be Samsung’s first smartphones to support 2TB of expandable storage. All of the company’s 2017 flagships including the W2018 flip phone are officially advertised as being compatible with 256GB microSD cards but the phone maker may simply be unwilling to tout a feature that users can’t take advantage of yet. Not all industry players agree with that approach, with HTC being boastful about the fact it created the world’s first smartphone with support for 2TB microSD cards back in mid-2015 when it introduced the HTC One ME. Some other manufacturers highlighted the same capability of their offerings in subsequent years; HP did so while promoting its Windows Phone-powered Elite x3 two years ago and TCL Communication followed suit in early 2017 with the BlackBerry KEYone.
As Samsung won’t be opting for such a marketing strategy, the official specs sheet of the Galaxy S9 lineup will likely only mention support for 256GB microSD cards. The company’s next pair of Android flagships has already been leaked and teased in an extensive manner and is scheduled to be announced at a new “Unpacked” event on Sunday, February 25. Recent reports point to March 16 as the global release date of the new products, whereas both phablets should become available for pre-orders no later than March 1. As was the case with all of Samsung’s Galaxy S-series devices launched in recent years, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus are likely to enjoy significant commercial success and outsell all of their Android-powered competitors released in 2018.