Should we use mirco SD cards on note 10+ or not?

dario12v

Well-known member
Nov 30, 2014
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Now that we have ufs 3.0
Is using a micro sd going to slow our phones down and deplete our battery, compared to ufs 3.0 by itself ? Ufs 3.0 is 5 times faster in sequential reading and 20 x faster in random reading and it's also 45% more battery efficient
If I watch a movie from my SD card , is it going to deplete my battery faster than watching it from my ufs 3.0 storage?
 

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I would say yes but as to how fast it will deplete your battery will vary on many factors.
 
I personally wouldn't worry about it. I doubt you'll see any appreciable difference in performance if all you're doing is watching movies and such. I also just prefer keeping personal files like that on an SD card. That way if/when it's time to change phones, it's a simple card swap vs waiting for those files to copy via USB transfer or downloading a cloud backup.
 
i haven't used a micro sd card in years. i prefer the cloud storage for a lot of stuff.
 
I personally wouldn't worry about it. I doubt you'll see any appreciable difference in performance if all you're doing is watching movies and such. I also just prefer keeping personal files like that on an SD card. That way if/when it's time to change phones, it's a simple card swap vs waiting for those files to copy via USB transfer or downloading a cloud backup.

Well I've seen a couple of YouTubers say that the sd card will slow the heck out of phone (Jaime Rivera pocketnow)
And that started to worry me
I pre-ordered the aura blue 256gb thinking I'm gonna use my 512 sd card on it , now not sure
 
It's individual needs but personally never needed SD cards for years so I'm not going to use it. But it doesn't hurt if it's the, you never know when it'll be useful.
 
I mean if you're only using to watch already downloaded movies or listen to music I wouldn't be too worried.
 
I mean if you're only using to watch already downloaded movies or listen to music I wouldn't be too worried.

Well , I use my phone for everything , the movie thing was just and example , I meant in general, will a sd card slow my note 10+ down , will it consume more battery than ufs 3.0 by itself?
 
Well , I use my phone for everything , the movie thing was just and example , I meant in general, will a sd card slow my note 10+ down , will it consume more battery than ufs 3.0 by itself?
Even if it does use more power, consider how often you'll be accessing the card. Chances are, it won't be often, unlike apps, which access internal storage almost constantly.
 
The screen being on while watching a movie will suck down battery life more than the micro sd card will. This will be ok.

I only put media on my sd card in my Note9. Important documents and apps are on the internal memory.
 
Even if it does use more power, consider how often you'll be accessing the card. Chances are, it won't be often, unlike apps, which access internal storage almost constantly.

Well , every time i take a picture or look at one , every time I read a book or watch a TV show , movie, Netflix , I live in NYC take the subway every day
(No signal so most of my content I download so I can use in the subway ) my SD card is full of movies , tv shows , pictures, books, so my phone is constantly reading from my SD card
 
Well , every time i take a picture or look at one , every time I read a book or watch a TV show , movie, Netflix , I live in NYC take the subway every day
SD cards are rated in write cycles. You can read it until a 1TB card is too small to be useful.

But apps have to constantly save their current state, so it the app is a game with constantly changing scenery, the card isn't going to last long. (The game will spend about half its time running the game and half writing the "new state" - maybe one blade of grass creeping in from a corner. That's virtually a constant write as far as the card is concerned, and destroys it.)

But WORM - write once read many - is fine. I have cards from the early 90s that I've been reading from for almost 30 years with no problem. (WMRO - write many read often - is what kills them.)

The original question was SD vs. UFS. @dario12v, there are no microSD-form-factor UFS cards yet - that's the internal storage in the phone. You'll still be buying SD for a while (if not forever - I have no idea whether SanDisk or WD has any plans to make UFS cards). But an SD card is useful for more than just storing all your pictures, videos, etc. There are ways (especially with Samsung) of booting a "dead" phone using an SD card. And it's faster, in many cases, to copy a file to an SD card, then to the target (depends on which way you're copying, of course) than it is to use USB file transfer.
 
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SD cards are rated in write cycles. You can read it until a 1TB card is too small to be useful.

But apps have to constantly save their current state, so it the app is a game with constantly changing scenery, the card isn't going to last long. (The game will spend about half its time running the game and half writing the "new state" - maybe one blade of grass creeping in from a corner. That's virtually a constant write as far as the card is concerned, and destroys it.)

But WORM - write once read many - is fine. I have cards from the early 90s that I've been reading from for almost 30 years with no problem. (WMRO - write many read often - is what kills them.)

I see, Interesting , thanks for the info
 
What cloud storage do you use for your phone?? I think this time around I won't use an SD card.
 
@YaniCruz, the phone comes with a Drive account (15GB) and a Samsung cloud account. Between them you should have enough space. You can also use Dropbox (2GB), Mega (50GB, I think), Box (10GB) and a few others. You should be able to find 50GB for free with a few minutes of looking. Or just look at https://www.whizlabs.com/blog/best-free-cloud-storage/ - I see about 102GB of free storage.
 
I am using my SD card. I have so many photos that I've kept from previous phones that it would take forever to transfer them between devices. Just moving the SD card from one device to the other is so much easier.
 
Be mindful that the wattage in the screenshot is the maximum consumption. If it ran at max power the entire time, a 4100 Watt battery would deplete in something like 7 hours assuming nothing else is running (processor, screen, etc.). The reality is it runs at much lower power. At idle, per is messed in a few hundred micro-amps. If you think about how much per your screen and processor are using already, the actual per consumed by the storage had to be quite small. So even if the SD card used twice the power, the contribution to overall per consumption would still be very small. Unless you're on the ragged edge of making it through the day, it's just not worth worrying about.

As for speed, surely, it can make a difference. But only when your device actually needs to read or write at high speeds. If you can watch a movie fine now, having faster read write speeds aren't going to make a difference.
 
SD cards are rated in write cycles. You can read it until a 1TB card is too small to be useful.

But apps have to constantly save their current state, so it the app is a game with constantly changing scenery, the card isn't going to last long. (The game will spend about half its time running the game and half writing the "new state" - maybe one blade of grass creeping in from a corner. That's virtually a constant write as far as the card is concerned, and destroys it.)

But WORM - write once read many - is fine. I have cards from the early 90s that I've been reading from for almost 30 years with no problem. (WMRO - write many read often - is what kills them.)

The original question was SD vs. UFS. @dario12v, there are no microSD-form-factor UFS cards yet - that's the internal storage in the phone. You'll still be buying SD for a while (if not forever - I have no idea whether SanDisk or WD has any plans to make UFS cards). But an SD card is useful for more than just storing all your pictures, videos, etc. There are ways (especially with Samsung) of booting a "dead" phone using an SD card. And it's faster, in many cases, to copy a file to an SD card, then to the target (depends on which way you're copying, of course) than it is to use USB file transfer.

Good points all , it's good to have knowledgeable people like you in here SD has it's advantages
But I'm still undecided
Hope we'll soon have some test on this ,
ufs 3.0 vs ufs 3.0 +sd on the note 10+