Best Smartphone Memory – inbuilt, cards and drives

When shooting a lot of video on your smartphone, you are liable to run out of memory space at some point. The higher the resolution of the image you capture, the more memory space it takes up on your phone. So if your are shooting in 4K you will soon exhaust your inbuilt memory capacity, if you have a smartphone with 64GB or even 128GB memory.

The new top range smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ which ships with a giant 512GB inbuilt storage (if you choose to pay the extra $ – and if you’re shooting a lot of video, it’s probably worth it). The S10 and S10+ also have room to fit a microSD card, which gives you an extra 512GB – so a potential 1TB of memory in your phone.

The S10+ even comes with an inbuilt 1TB of memory option, if you have the cash to spare.

The iPhone Xs also has a 512GB inbuilt memory option.

Depending on your phone and your budget there are a number of other options to deal with video storage.

MicroSD Card

With smartphones, DSLRs and action cameras now capable of capturing 4K video, you need high performing microSD memory cards with high write speed to match.

A lot of manufacturers advertise read speed, typically around 45 to 150 MB/s. But when capturing video you need the write speed to be high. Bear in mind, cards with high read speed do not necessarily come with high write speed. There are some with slow write speeds of between 10-20MB/s.

A write rate for microSD memory cards that support 4K Ultra HD video capture is between 60MB/s to 90MB/s or higher.

When choosing a microSD card for video, you need to look for the UHS Speed Class Rating. A rating of U1 is given to cards capable of recording Full HD videos at 1080p or 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution.

For capturing 4K videos or Ultra HD 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution compatible with today’s high end smartphones and premium action cameras the card needs a UHS Speed Class 3 rating.

Note: not all microSDXC UHS ports are the same when it comes to read/write speeds. If your device only supports UHS-I then you want to buy a UHS-I U3/Class10 device for the best possible performance.

How to choose a MicroSD card for your smartphone

Do you want the highest speed, highest capacity MicroSD card you can get, for the lowest price? Of course!

Make sure to assess brand reputation, performance and reliability.

Beware fakes!

Make sure to check through the reviews. There are helpful tips on which cards are fake. Sadly, fake cards are relatively common.

SDHC or SDXC?

SDHC = Secure Digital High Capacity

SDXC = Secure Digital Extended Capacity

SDHC MicroSD cards range from 2GB to 32GB, while SDXC MicroSD cards can range from 32GB up to 2TB.

UHS and V class

UHS stands for Ultra High Speed, while the new V class is for video.

Best microSD Cards

The Samsung 128GB 100MB/s (U3) microSD gives you a great boost to your memory and the advantage of ultra-fast read & write speeds of up to 100MB/s & 90MB/s. Samsung Evo Select microSD cards are reliable and match the claimed speed and capacity classifications.

The equivalent ScanDisk microSD is a little more but comes with an adapter.

The SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-I Card – C10, U3, V30, 4K UHD – costs more but is designed for shooting 4K UHD video. Aimed at pros with fast read and write speeds. Read the fine print on SanDisk’s website and discover it requires proprietary technology to achieve the full 170MB/s read. Otherwise it maxes out at around standard UHS-I speeds of 90MB/s read, 80MB/s write – which is still fast.

The Lexar Professional 1000x microSDXC 128GB UHS-II/U3 claims up to 150MB/s read speed and up to 80MB/s write speed. The card is designed for “high-speed capture of high-quality images and extended lengths of 1080p full-HD, 3D, and 4K video”. It includes a micro SD UHS-II reader for high-speed file transfer from card to computer.

The Lexar range goes up to 512GB of storage.

External drives

Once your internal memory (inbuilt + microSD card) is filled up, you will need to move your video files off so you can keep shooting. Or you may want to back up footage you have onto a 2nd (or more) device. Having once lost half a day’s footage when my phone was stolen I definitely advise you backup your footage as as you get the chance!

For Android devices these SanDisk 256GB Ultra Dual Drive m3.0 have dual, retractable microUSB and USB 3.0 connectors. So flip one side out for your phone to offload and flip the other for your computer and drop them there. I’ve used an earlier version of these (32GB) and they are great. Very small and easy to carry around.

I also have 2 Samsung T5 Portable SSD – 1TB – USB 3.1 External SSD. These have 2 different cables (as opposed to the flip method): one for your smartphone and one for your computer. I find these drives are fast enough to use as my main drive to edit with.

Comparable is the SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable External SSD – USB-C, USB 3.1. This is more rugged than the Samsung, being water and dust-resistant (IP55-rated). It’s also shock-resistant (up to 1500G) and vibration-resistant (5g RMS, 10-2000 HZ).

Note: SSD stands for solid-state drive, a type of PC storage that’s faster than a hard drive. An SSD is able to read and write data much faster than a mechanical hard drive.

For iOS the AHNR 128GB Thumb Drive plugs into your lightning port and USB port.

The YOUNI 128GB is a 3-in-1 for Android or iPhone, with lightning + MICRO USB (but not Type C) + USB.

Wireless Drives and Flashdrives

With a wireless drive there’s no need to worry about physical connection issues.

With the SanDisk 200GB Connect Wireless Stick Flash Drive for example you connect using WiFi. When you want to transfer the files to your computer you can use the USB connector for better speed.

The downside with these devices is the transfer rates are quite slow (I had to transfer about 25GB of video via WiFi recently and had to leave it running over night). Plus you have power issues, with one more device’s battery life to worry about.

The AirDisk is another good wireless device, this one goes up to 128GB.

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