1TB microSD cards are here and I irrationally want one

2025-04-28 05:57:30admin

Let's face it: Unless you shoot tons of video on your phone, you probably don't need a 1TB microSD card. And yet, you can now buy it from not one but two companies: Western Digital's Sandisk and Micron.

Both companies launched their variants of the 1TB microSD card at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and if you have a smartphone that supports them, you can get one and tremendously increase the phone's storage capacity.

SEE ALSO: Samsung ushers in the era of the 1TB smartphone

There are some differences between the two cards: Sandisk's is a little faster with up to 160MB/s read speeds and up to 90MB/s write speeds, while Micron's card can do up to 100MB/s and 95MB/s write speeds (note, however, that you have to take the companies' words for these speeds, they haven't been tested in the wild yet).

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Also, unlike Micron's card, Sandisk's 1TB card already has a price: $449.99. Yes, you can get a decent phone for that, but does that phone have 1TB of storage? No, no it doesn't. Alternatively, you could also get a 512GB variant of the same card for $199.99.

Credit: Micron

Personally, I've stopped pining for more storage around the time when most phones started coming with 64GB of built-in storage or more, but I still wouldn't mind having the possibility to shoot a 2-hour-long 4K video and not worry about storage. Note, however, that most phones don't support cards this big. For example, Samsung's latest and greatest Galaxy S10+, which is available with 1TB of internal storage, only supports cards with up to 512GB of storage.

Sandisk's 1TB and 512GB microSD cards are available for pre-order on the company's website, and they'll hit "select retailers" in April 2019. Micron's 1TB card will be available in Q2 2019, the company said.

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