Universal Flash Storage(UFS) used to be a storage system only reserved for high-end smartphones. However, as time passes, technology matures and becomes cheaper, leading to it slowly being introduced to middle range devices and then even to a few entry-level smartphones.
At the moment, UFS 3.1 is the fastest flash storage solution in the Android market. However, Samsung has just announced UFS 4.0 whose performance will blow UFS 3.1 out of the water.
BREAKING: Samsung has developed the industry's highest performing Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 4.0 storage solution, which has received JEDEC® board of director approval. What is UFS 4.0 and what does it mean for the future of storage? Read on to learn more. pic.twitter.com/4Wxdu0J2PD
— Samsung Semiconductor (@SamsungDSGlobal) May 3, 2022
For starters, UFS 4.0 offers a speed of up to 23.2 Gbps per lane, which doubles UFS 3.1’s speed of 11.6 Gbps. The read and write performance of UFS 4.0 also sees a big upgrade from the previous generation, with the South Korean company promising sequential read speeds of up to 4,200 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 2,800 MB/s.
The company credits its own 7th generation V-NAND and a proprietary controller under the hood for the huge increase in the sequential read and write speeds.
You would be forgiven for thinking with the improvement in performance, power efficiency will suffer. This could not be farther from the truth as Samsung claims UFS 4.0 is also significantly more power-efficient, offering 46% improved power efficiency over the previous standard.
Samsung claims the super-fast speeds in UFS 4.0 make the standard perfect for 5G smartphones which require huge amounts of data processing as well as being an option to be used in future automotive applications, AR, and also VR.
“Last but not least, UFS 4.0 will come in a compact package with a maximum dimension of 11 mm x 13 mm x 1 mm for more effective space utilization and design convenience, and will come in a variety of capacities ranging up to 1 TB,” the Samsung Semiconductor account shared on Twitter.
Capacities of up to 1 TB opens up opportunities for more phones to be released with different variants offering different storage and RAM configurations at different price points.
Mass production for UFS 4.0 has been scheduled to start in the third quarter of the year, meaning we might see the technology in the Galaxy S23 series and the next Galaxy foldables if they get released in Q4 or early 2023.
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