Samsung

Samsung makes some of the world's fastest storage, not just phones. And the company announced today that it's started mass producing 512GB mobile-focused flash memory with over twice the read speed and 1.5 times the write speed of the previous leader, the 1TB module announced last month at CES.

The V-NAND (PDF) memory is based on its embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 spec -- the 1TB is eUFS 2.1. Samsung says the 512GB memory can hit read speeds up to 2,100 megabytes per second compared with 1,000MB/sec of the 1TB flash; sequential write can hit 410MB/sec versus 260MB/sec. The eUFS 3.0 1TB memory is slated to arrive in the second half of 2019.

Given the timing, it's unlikely that the just-shipped Galaxy S10 models will incorporate the faster memory, but the Galaxy Fold will come with 512GB when it ships at the end of April, which means it's likely to use the module -- especially since Samsung is babying the sales of that phone.

This isn't just good news for Samsung phones, though. The eUFS memory goes into micro SD cards for extending storage in phones with card slots, too.