Smartphones could soon sport significantly faster flash storage (Image source: Notebookcheck)
The latest UFS standard is here and could result in smartphones with significantly faster flash storage in the future. With data rates up to 10.8 GB/s, the maximum bandwidth has nearly doubled and should meet the requirements of complex AI applications.
Since 2011, the industry association JEDEC has been standardizing flash storage for devices like smartphones and tablets that rely on Universal Flash Storage (UFS) instead of PCIe. UFS 4.0 was adopted back in 2022 and offers transfer speeds of 2,900 MB/s on one lane or 5,800 MB/s with two lanes. Now, UFS 5.0 is nearly final and once again promises more speed.
Specifically, JEDEC speaks of a maximum speed of 10,800 MB/s. For comparison, fast PCIe 5.0 SSDs like the Samsung 9100 Pro (from $128 on Amazon) can hit around 14,700 MB/s. While smartphones still lag behind the fastest laptops, the gap is getting much smaller. According to JEDEC, this faster storage will be necessary to meet the steadily growing demands of AI applications.
UFS 5.0 is also expected to be more reliable thanks to a signal integrity enhancement. It’s also supposed to be easier to integrate into devices due to a separate power supply for the signaling unit and storage subsystem, while inline hashing improves security. As usual, it will likely take several years for the new UFS standard to hit the mass market, and even then, UFS 5.0 is by no means a guarantee for higher storage speeds. For example, the Google Pixel 10 Pro with 256GB of storage or more utilizes UFS 4.0, but in our in-depth review, the smartphone only showed relatively slow data rates of up to 1,492 MB/s, while competitors are typically more than twice as fast.
Since 2009 I have written for different publications with a focus on consumer electronics. I joined the Notebookcheck news team in 2018 and have combined my many years of experience with laptops and smartphones with my lifelong passion for technology to create informative content for our readers about new developments in this sphere. In addition, my design background as an art director at an ad agency has allowed me to have deeper insights into the peculiarities of this industry.
Translator: Enrico Frahn – Managing Editor Accessory Reviews, Tech Writer – 5453 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021
My fascination for technology goes back a long way to the Pentium II era. Modding, overclocking and treasuring computer hardware has since become an integral part of my life. As a student, I further developed a keen interest in mobile technologies that can make the stressful college life so much easier. After I fell in love with the creation of digital content while working in a marketing position, I now scour the web to bring you the most exciting topics in the world of tech. Outside the office, I’m particularly passionate about motorsports and mountain biking.