Samsung announces 256GB NAND flash chips for phones and tablets that use the faster Universal Flash Storage 2.0 interface
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after Samsung introduced a 128GB 3-bit NAND chip aimed at middle and low-end smartphones, it is doubling embedded capacity and moving up the interface ladder at once: 256GB parts built on Universal Flash Storage 2.0 rather than the slower eMMC standard most phones still shipped with. The move lands in the middle of a storage race — SanDisk had just countered with a 200GB microSD card aimed at the same high-capacity-phone buyer.
The announcement also reads, in hindsight, as an early rung in a ladder Samsung has kept climbing: by 2019 it was mass-producing 512GB eUFS 3.0 chips at up to 2,100 MB/s, and by 2022 it unveiled UFS 4.0 claiming double the speed of UFS 3.1.
First-order effects
- Phone and tablet makers gain a drop-in path to 256GB of soldered storage with faster read/write speeds than eMMC, letting flagships ship double the base capacity without adding a card slot.
- Samsung's UFS 2.0 parts compete head-on with SanDisk's 200GB microSD card for the same premium-device capacity tier, but as fixed internal memory rather than removable expansion.
Second-order effects
- Rivals shipping eMMC-based phones face a two-front gap — capacity and interface speed — forcing them to either license UFS or concede the high-end spec sheet to Samsung devices.
- As embedded flash absorbs the capacity role, the market for removable microSD cards shifts down-market toward budget phones and cameras, squeezing suppliers like SanDisk out of flagship bill-of-materials.
Third-order effects
- If each UFS generation keeps roughly doubling what the last one shipped — 128GB, then 256GB, then 512GB eUFS 3.0, then UFS 4.0 — embedded NAND becomes the primary differentiator in phone specs, and control of NAND supply becomes a structural advantage for vertically integrated makers like Samsung.
- The pattern points toward removable storage fading from premium phones entirely, with capacity tiers set by whatever the dominant NAND manufacturers choose to embed.
The trend: Mobile storage is ratcheting upward through successive UFS interface generations at a cadence set largely by Samsung, pulling capacity from removable cards into embedded NAND.