New flash storage standard opens the way for 8K video capture on smartphones

Photo by veeterzy

Storage speeds on smartphones, Chromebooks, VR headsets and automotive devices are about to make a huge leap forward. Standards group JEDEC has announced the new UFS 3.0 flash storage standard, which doubles the theoretical speed of the current UFS 2.1 standard to 2.9 GB/s, all while lowering power consumption and allowing for operation at a greater range of temperatures.

This theoretical maximum likely won't be achieved by production devices, but the standard does require the host device to use hardware that supports these blistering fast transfer rates.

What does this actually mean for smartphone cameras? If you are only capturing still images, you won't see much of a difference; but for video shooters, this could be huge. The new standard allows for 4K video capture at 60 frames per second or even 8K resolution without putting nearly as much stress on your device.

In combination with larger storage capacities—Samsung, for example, has promised to include 512GB modules in its upcoming smartphones—this new standard could make ultra high-resolution video recording on mobile devices standard. If you later want to transfer the recorded footage to another device or computer, the faster speeds help with that, too.

And, finally, the new standard also offers lower power consumption and increased reliability in a wider range of operating temperatures.

As usual, it's not clear when we will see the first UFS 3.0 ready devices; the new standard will probably take a while to implement on a wider scale. But given Samsung is by far the biggest NAND memory module manufacturer, there is a good chance the Korean company will be among the first to offer the new standard in its smartphones. Something to look forward to in the Galaxy S10, perhaps?

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New flash storage standard opens the way for 8K video capture on smartphones was originally posted by proton T2a