Your Next Phone Could Have a Whole 256 GB of Storage
New
chips are coming and they are bigger than ever before.
It’s super annoying when your phone runs out of storage
and you have to go around deleting apps before you can take a few pictures or
download a podcast. And even if you want a ton of space, the most you can get
is 128 GB. Not for long. Samsung has just announced the world’s first 256 GB
chips, and they could be coming soon to a phone near you.
In the past few years, solid state hard drives have
gotten ridiculously big, up into the multiple terabytes ( 1000 GB) and
climbing. But phones tend to use a different, faster kind of memory-Universal
Flash Storage- that hasn’t been growing in quite the same way.
Samsung’s new 256 GB
means that phones and tablets will no longer be capped at 128 GB max
(plus an extra SD card on some Android phones), and while that may sound like
an absurd amount of space, you could conceivably need it if you’re recording 4K
video or downloading apps for VR.
And yes, more storage is good, but you’ll probably have
to pay out the nose for it. Smartphone makers (Apple specifically) has set a
precedent for charging RM 422.41 ($100) extra every time you double the
storage, so a theoretical 256 GB model could cost RM 422.41 ($100) more than
the current 128 GB versions, RM 844.82 ($200) more than the 64 GB, and a
whopping RM 1689.64 ($200) more than the 16 GB base model.
Of course none of this is for sure –
Apple might not even adopt the chips-but you can bet that whenever these start
showing up, they won’t be particularly cheap. Maybe just move to the cloud
instead.
