Samsung smartphone with 512GB storage to hit the market

It is expected that smartphones and tablet PCs that have storage of up to 512 gigabytes will be released as early as next year. Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday that it has started mass production of the world’s first 512GB embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) for the next generation mobile devices. The company’s flagship phones that have been unveiled so far have the storage of up to 256 gigabytes.

The Korean tech giant was the first to create the UFS market by launching 128GB eUFS for its smartphones in January 2015. A year later in February 2016, it launched a 256GB eUFS followed by the launch of a 512GB eUFS last month doubling the memory capacity in 21 months.

Its latest 512GB eUFS is composed of eight stacks of 64-layer 512Gb V-NAND and a controller. It has increased the memory by twofold but retained the same size as its 256GB eUFS that has 48-layer 256Gb V-NAND.

Ji-Hyun Kim jhk85@donga.com