As reported on Engadget.
By Stefan Constantinescu
No one likes waiting for a file transfer to finish, and thankfully SanDisk is doing something about it. The company’s new “Extreme” line of microSD cards (16GB, 32GB, 64GB capacities) promises to deliver speeds of up to 80MBps. Benchmarks done by Android Police have the 64GB card hitting 78MBps when used in a dedicated card reader. Putting the card in a smartphone, however, yields far different results. Most smartphones, save for the Exynos 5 Octa version of the GS4, don’t support the newer UHS-1 standard for increased transfer speeds. When tested in a Galaxy Note II, SanDisk’s new card “only” achieved 14MBps read speeds and 14.6MBps write speeds — that’s still between 50% and 100% faster than a previous generation 64GB SanDisk microSD card. So now we just need phones to catch up, and for handset makers who are averse to microSD cards altogether to change their tune.