Phone manufacturers are finally moving past the basic 16GB models that have dominated the smartphone market, but for those obsessed with picture-taking, book reading, or just about any form of media consumption, the paltry 32/64GB included in most phones still isn’t enough.
That’s where SanDisk is stepping in with their new series of microSD cards that promise to not only give you extra storage space, but also make your phone faster when you use the microSD card as adoptable storage on your phone running Android Marshmallow or above.
So what makes the SanDisk A1 so much faster than previous versions of microSD cards? According to SanDisk, the card can manage random read input-output access per second of 1,500 and write IOPS of 500. That means it’s faster at loading games and large apps that include lots of audio, graphics, and saved profiles. Once it’s slotted into the phone, you’ll see a noticeable decrease in loading times for apps that are installed on the new card.
SanDisk expects the new A1 256GB card to be available worldwide sometime in January with an MSRP of $199.99. The new card is also compatible with the SanDisk Memory Zone app that’s available in the Google Play Store, giving users an easy way to manage and backup content on their device.