Samsung on Wednesday announced that it’ ready to mass-produce 1TB UFS 2.1 storage for mobile phone, which is a huge deal. As always with these announcements, they come just before the launch of a brand new flagship from the company. In other words, Samsung is seemingly suggesting that the 1TB Galaxy S10+ model you’ve seen featured in various rumors will happen.
Just last year, Samsung announced its 512GB UFS storage for smartphones, and while those chips didn’t make it into the Galaxy S9, a 512GB Galaxy Note 9 version did launch months later. The same thing might happen this year too, and the 1TB storage module could only equip phones launching in the second half of the year.
But you know what’s different this year? The Galaxy S10 happens to celebrate Samsung’s tenth Galaxy S anniversary, and Samsung is pulling out all the stops for it. Everything is getting better than before, from design to specs, to camera, and battery tech. At least, that’s what all the rumors say. So it makes sense to assume that the 1TB eUFS flash memory will be ready in time for the store launch of the handset. And let’s not forget that reports say only a limited number of Galaxy S10+ versions should ship with 12GB of RAM and 1TB of built-in storage on board.
Add to that the fact that Samsung had a grim year when it comes to flagship smartphone sales, and we have one more reason why seeing a 1TB Galaxy S10 versions in early March makes sense.
Samsung released 1TB UFS2.1 flash memory, which is used in the top version of Galaxy S10+. pic.twitter.com/lfuByu6hIB
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) January 30, 2019
Long-time Samsung insider Ice Universe also said that the new 1TB UFS 2.1 flash memory module would be used in the top version of the Galaxy S10+.
Samsung explained in its press release that not the 1TB module comes with “exceptional speed, allowing users to transfer large amounts of multimedia content in significantly reduced time.” The module delivers twice the sequential read speeds of a typical 2.5 inch SATA SSD drive, which is impressive. Come to think of it, this is the kind of storage that we might one day see on ultra-portable, possibly foldable, tablet/laptop/smartphone devices.
To give you an idea of how fast the new storage standard is, Samsung posted the table above, that compares the various storage solutions available on mobile devices. There is one downside to Samsung’s announcement, however. We’re still looking at UFS 2.1 technology, which implies the Galaxy S10 won’t get the faster UFS 3.0 storage, as some reports said.
Samsung said it’ll expand the production of the 512Gb V-NAND memory used inside the 1TB storage module throughout the first half of the year “to fully address the anticipated strong demand for the 1TB eUFS from mobile device manufacturers around the world.” That’s an exciting detail right there. Even if the Galaxy S10+ won’t get 1TB of storage, it’s likely other vendors will want to launch 1TB mobile devices this year.
Separately, The Investor reported on Wednesday that the Galaxy S10 went into mass production, saying that the most expensive version of the Galaxy S10+ will feature 1TB of storage.
