Smartphones evolve from year to year, but one thing hasn’t changed: Naturally, if you want more storage, you have to pay a high price. Internal memory is expensive, but Android manufacturers thankfully have the pleasure of offering a solid alternative.
Frankly, we’re talking about micro SD card support, which is still ongoing for most manufacturers. With these little monsters, all you have to do is insert a small card into your phone so you can store even more photos and videos.
However, there are subtleties in this industry that are useful to master. Not all cards are the same for all uses. While Android now lets you defrag SD cards and internal storage, we’ll explain what makes the cards different and why it’s important to know.
Don’t believe what the package says for SD cards
Let’s start from the beginning. All the SD cards available on the market are mentioned on their packages (or their pages on the internet if you live in 2017) like “an incredible read speed at 30 Mb/s” and other delights.
Let’s put it this way: You can completely ignore these conversations, it’s all marketing. In fact, on the one hand, write speed is just as important as read speed, and these two speeds can be vastly different.
And on the other hand, the numbers given by the manufacturers are, of course, numbers that you will not find on your phone, produced in the laboratory under extremely precise and controlled conditions.
Don’t be fooled if it’s a good indicator of the actual quality of the material. It’s not really the read speed that you should look at first: it’s the write speed that comes first.
How to choose your SD card well?
Note that you will be prompted for a micro SD for your smartphone. It is a commercially available SD card size, not to be confused with Mini SD and standard SD. Fortunately, mini SD isn’t really common anymore: so it’s hard to crash.
Storage capacity of your SD card
When looking for an SD card, we tend to think of the first terminology without knowing what it is: SD, SDHC, SDXC… In reality, these names simply represent the storage capacity of the SD card.
- SD cards: up to 2GB storage
- SDHC cards: up to 32GB storage
- SDXC cards: from 32 GB storage
So an SDHC card can (theoretically) be more efficient than an SDXC card while having less storage capacity.
Speed of your SD card
The performance of your SD card depends on two factors: read speed i.e. how long does it take for the SD card to open a file and write speed i.e. how long does it take for the SD card to save a file.
reading rate
There are several categories that allow you to see the certified read rates of an SD card at a glance. These are as follows:
- DS: Up to 12.5 MB/s
- HS: up to 25MB/s
- UHS-I: Up to 104MB/s
- UHS-II: up to 312MB/s
- UHS-3: from 312mb/s
Why is the only UHS-3 that doesn’t use Roman numerals? Only God knows. Still, these categories will give a good appreciation of a card’s read speed, keep in mind of course that these are theoretical rates found in the lab by the manufacturers.
write rate
Frankly, if you’ve followed, you know that reading isn’t everything: it’s writing that interests us first and foremost. And since that’s not complex enough, there’s another scale for write rates that almost mixes with read speed to further confuse the buyer.
It was created in a class system where you should be especially careful:
- Class 2: Up to 2MB/s
- Class 4: Up to 4MB/s
- Class 6: Up to 6MB/s
- Class 10: Up to 10MB/s
But beware: we are also changing the terminology to move to UHS from 10th grade onwards. Which happens:
- Class U1 (or Class 10): Up to 10MB/s
- U3 Class: Up to 30MB/s
Fortunately, this is a little more understandable: class directly corresponds to typing speed. So, when U3 = 30mb/s, class 10 = 10mb/s. In the future, if you see a U6 class spawn, you’ll know it’s a write speed… We’re not really cheating… 60MB/s, absolutely.
Why is it important to have a good SD card for your smartphone?
By seeing these little cards, it can easily be said that these details don’t really matter. After all, data is usually barely a megabyte, and it’s just about storing it. However, this would be wrong.
for the picture
Indeed, all this may not matter if your sole purpose is to store your photos. Apart from that, your SD card is very important for the operation of your device, if you use your card directly as a storage memory.
Indeed, the typing speed will affect the behavior of your device. Understand: a camera is equipped with a buffer. When you take a photo or video, the data from it is temporarily stored in this super-fast buffer before being saved to your card.
If the card is too slow, this second recording will take longer, forcing your camera to continue processing before you take a new photo or video. This is even more true for video, which requires a lot of information storage.
Also, if you’re shooting 1080p videos, a class 10 (U1) or better SD card is more than recommended. If you’re shooting 4K video, the recording is more direct, so a U3 SD card is required to work well.
For applications
As you know, it is possible to move certain applications or certain application data to your memory card. With Android 6.0 Marshmallow, it’s even possible to combine storage memory and SD card to create a global phone memory.
That’s all well and good, but you should know that your phone’s internal memory is fast. It is very fast whether you are reading or writing. That’s why apps are used to running at this speed and running them on a low capacity memory card is not the best idea in the world.
Fortunately, most everyday apps only carry small, easy-to-read files. But for a 3D game, for example, you’ll definitely need a very fast memory card to even manage to calm down as much as possible the slowdowns that can occur when files are stored on an SD card.
For large applications it is best to opt for internal storage memory. For small apps, SD card is totally recommended: be sure to get a fast card or your phone will be slow. That’s why we recommend a 10k class minimum and a U3 class for the best.
Choose SD card
Now you know exactly how to recognize SD cards and the capacities between them and what they are used for in your smartphone and how they work.
Having a clearer vision does not mean knowing how to choose. We have repeatedly repeated during this file that the read rates shown on the boxes of our SD cards are of little value.
Now you know the classifications and certifications for SD cards. You should make your choice based on these, not the package itself. And this choice should be made according to your usage.
To be honest, SDHX and SDXC class 10/U1 cards are not so expensive anymore. Therefore, we recommend that you at least always refer to this class, which will allow you to store your files and photos without any problems.
However, if you are someone who shoots tons of videos per second and 4K appeals to you, we recommend you to head for the U3 class to gain recording speed and not experience slowdowns.
It is best to turn to well-known brands such as Sandisk, Samsung or Kingston so that the suggested read and record rates do not differ too much from the actual rates offered by the cards. If the small Chinese cards found on the Internet are always attractive because of their price, their performance is too random to recommend.
Click here to discover SD cards for smartphones at affordable prices
