Smartphones are getting ever more capable, now coming with 4K screens and multiple cameras. Streaming high resolution movies can quickly eat up mobile data allowance, and even generous built-in storage could soon fill up with photos, videos and other top quality entertainment. Happily, there are still some mobile devices that allow storage expansion via a microSD slot, making the announcement of the world's fastest 1 TB UHS-1 card very welcome indeed.
Flash memory has come a very long way in a short amount of time. It was just over a couple of years ago that SanDisk revealed a prototype 1 TB (full size) SDXC card, and today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the Western Digital-owned brand has launched a 1 terabyte SanDisk Extreme UHS-1 microSDXC card.
The company says that users can expect read speeds of up to 160 megabytes per second and write speeds of up to 90 MB/s. Thanks to Western Digital's proprietary flash technology SanDisk boasts that consumers will be able to transfer a thousand hi-res photos and 30 minutes of 4K video footage in less than 3 minutes.
Users can also look forward to launching and loading apps faster thanks to support for the A2 class specification. And the cards should also live up to the Extreme name, being shockproof, temperature-proof, waterproof and X-ray-proof.
The Extreme microSDXC card is up for pre-order now for US$449.99, though lower capacity variants are also available – including a 512 GB version for $199.99.
Product page: SanDisk Extreme microSD cards