GadgetByte Nepal

These days most of the smartphones don’t have a microSD card expansion slot. It’s a great feature to have in a smartphone, yet manufacturers keep on avoiding it. There are few reasons why companies do it. Here are some of them:

1. To earn more money 

   Most often what smartphone manufacturers do is they launch several versions of the product. One comes with a lower storage while the other comes with a higher storage. Customer will have to pay $50 to $200 extra if they wish to buy a higher storage. They don’t include a microSD card slot, so we will left with no choice other than to pay an extra to get the higher version. This was primarily the strategy of Apple’s iPhone, which was followed by other manufacturers like Samsung and Xiaomi.
   

2. Poor Performance of MicroSD cards
   

   According to Xiaomi’s VP Hugo Barra, MicroSD cards are vulnerable to failure and in a most cases malfunction in various conditions. Some of the issues caused by microSD cards reported by Android smartphones users are app crashing and loss of data.
   Also, Considering that there are lots of low-quality microSD cards available in the market that can lead to poor performance. If you are a tech savvy, we suggest you invest on Class 10 microSD cards.
   

3. Cloud Storage as a solution
   

   When your internal storage run out, the only solution is to backup your photos and videos on Cloud. By removing the microSD card feature, it will be a lot easier for cloud storage provider (some of which are smartphone manufacturer) to market their product to consumers. Although most of us here in Nepal don’t pay for the cloud storage because of egregious internet speed, there are substantial customers in the west who pay a monthly fee to enroll for a cloud service.
   

While buying an SD card, we only look at the storage capacity, for instance, 8GB SD card costs more than 4GB SD card. We often overlook other aspects of the SD cards, which could play a bigger role during a day to day performance. With so many SD cards in the market, it’s important to understand which SD memory card works best with your device. Here are the top six markings of the SD cards you should know before you buy one:

1. Storage:
This is the most common thing about SD cards. This indicates the total storage of the SD card. It can range from 1GB to upto 512 GB. More the storage, more you be able to store photos and videos.

2. Write Protect Logo:
The logo represents if the button on the left side is plugged in downwards or upwards.

• If the button is plugged upwards, you can erase and write all your files and folders.
• If the button is plugged downwards, erasing or writing the data is impossible.

3. Read Speed

It represents the maximum read speed that the SD card can spit out. It is based on the manufacturer’s internal testing. Usually, the write Speed of the SD card is typically lower than the read speed. The circle marking in this photo shows the read speed of the SD card. It says 95MB/s, but usually, it is much lower in real time usage.

4. Formats
There are currently three SD factors:

5. Speed Class
Speed class denotes the minimum write speed of the SD card. There are currently 4 Speed Classes that is defined by the SD Association –Class 2, Class 4, Class 6, and Class 10.

As the name suggests, Class 2 means minimum write is speed is 2MB/s, Class 4 means 4MB/s and so on. Usually, Class 2 SD card is used for video recording, Class 4 and Class 6 SD card is used for Full HD video recording and Class 10 SD card is used for HD and Full HD video still consecutive recording.

UHS Speed Class was introduced in 2009 by the SD Association and is designed for SDHC and SDXC memory cards. UHS memory cards have a full higher potential of recording real-time broadcasts, capturing large-size HD videos and extremely high-quality professional HD.