WD SanDisk And Micron Launch First 1TB microSD Cards For Massive Mobile Storage

The storage needs of smartphone users are not diminishing, they are only expanding with the advent of high resolution photography and 4K video. To account for this, Micron and Western Digital (through its SanDisk subsidiary) announced the industry's very first 1-terabyte capacity microSD storage cards for consumers.

While both solutions offer the same amount of capacity, Western Digital's has the higher read performance rating——the 1TB SanDisk Extreme UHS-I microSDXC card is rated to hit read speeds of up to 160MB/s, whereas Micron's c200 1TB microSDXC card is rated to read data at 100MB/s. Rated write speeds are similar between the two at 90MB/s for Western Digital/SanDisk and 95MB/s for Micron.

"Micron’s technology leadership in 3D NAND with CMOS under the array and 96-layer QLC has been instrumental in developing and launching the world’s first 1TB microSD card," said Aravind Ramamoorthy, senior director of NAND solutions for Micron's Embedded Business Unit. "The new c200 1TB microSD card gives consumers the freedom to capture, share, store and enjoy more content while supporting their mobile-centric lifestyles."

These cards arrive as smartphones start making a push into higher storage tiers. Samsung, for example, maxes out the storage on its Galaxy S10+ Performance Edition at 1TB. By adding one of these card's to the phone's microSD card slot, a user would effective double the effect storage, and more than double the usable storage (since a portion of the phone's storage is taken up by the operating system and other bits).

This amount of removable storage does not come cheap though. SanDisk's 1TB microSD card will be available in April for $449.99. That is more than double the cost of a 512GB that will also debut in April, at $199.99. Both are available to pre-order now on SanDisk's website.

Micron did not announce pricing, only saying it will be "broadly available" in the second quarter.