Samsung Electronics has announced the mass production of a 1 terabyte embedded universal flash storage chip for mobile applications. Which is good news for Galaxy S10 fans looking for ultimate specifications in the new handsets, because I expect the chip to be paired up with 12 GB of RAM at the very top end of the S10 portfolio.
It’s unlikely to be available across the range of devices - Samsung will no doubt want a good mix of storage and memory options to be reflected in a wide price band - and restricting the big numbers to the big handsets gives Samsung an attractive slice of lust to sell to the faithful.
In which case expect the 1 TB / 12 GB to be restricted to the physically larger Galaxy S10 Plus handsets and (when it appears in your territory) the S10 5G handset.
Samsung is happy to share its base numbers in its press release, illustrating the practical benefits of more storage in a faster chip:
Within the same package size (11.5mm x 13.0mm), the 1TB eUFS solution doubles the capacity of the previous 512GB version by combining 16 stacked layers of Samsung’s most advanced 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND flash memory and a newly developed proprietary controller. Smartphone users will now be able to store 260 10-minute videos in 4K UHD (3840×2160) format, whereas the 64GB eUFS widely used in many current high-end smartphones is capable of storing 13 videos of the same size.
While the Galaxy S10 will no doubt be the first handset to carry the chip I expect Samsung Electronics to be promoting its benefits behind closed doors at Mobile World Congress in February. That means more 1TB smartphones during the rest of 2019 at the very top end of the market.
Now read more about the three key features in the Galaxy S10…
