Sandisk Introduces App-Optimized Micro SD Card

Western Digital subsidiary Sandisk has announced a micro-SD card optimized for use in smartphones. The Class 10 UHS I card has a capacity of 256GB and a reading speed of 95MB/s, which means that apps should be able to start up quickly.

The manufacturer says nothing about the write speeds, other than that they are of course lower than the read speeds. According to the specified specifications, the write speed must in any case be higher than 10MB/s. According to Sandisk, the Ultra card is the first to meet the requirements of the 5.1 version of the SD Association specification.

The organization added the so-called App Performance Class, also known as A1, to the specification in November. This should indicate whether an SD card is suitable for running Android apps. The requirements are a minimum of 1500 iops at random read i/o and 500 iops at write.

According to the SD Association, the introduction of the App Performance Class was born out of consumer need. It is possible on Android and Windows Mobile to install apps on an SD card, but due to slow SD cards, apps can be used less smoothly than when they are installed on the internal storage. The Sandisk card is available worldwide from this month for a price of 199.95 euros.