New Samsung Tech Will Give Cheap Phones Tons of Storage

Cheap phones like the Moto E have tradeoffs compared to pricey ones. With Samsung's latest drive, storage capacity won't be one of them. Motorola

They may not be as sassy or chamfered or as pixel-packed as the iPhones and Samsung Galaxys of the world, but there are some excellent, affordable smartphones out there these days.

Take the Moto G, which packs a quad-core chip, an ample 5-inch display, a microSD slot, and customizable shells for less than $200—without a contract. Or the step-down Moto E, which squeezes a decent phone into a $120 package—again, no contract required. The same goes for the $80 Lumia 635, and a whole fleet of capable sub-$300 off-contract handsets. If you don’t care about the handheld horserace and just want a solid, budget phone that works, options abound.

But there are certainly reasons you pay less for these discount devices. They may not run the latest version of Android. They don’t have the greatest cameras or screen resolutions. And they generally don’t offer a lot of onboard storage, which can be more important than you may think. The $180 Moto G, for example, has a scant 8GB onboard. The cheaper Moto E skimps even more, with just 4GB. And although you can pop a microSD card into both of them, the camera and video specs are capped (in part) to stretch their limited storage a bit further.

The reason for this, as you’ve likely assumed, is that storage is expensive, but relief may be on the way. Samsung just announced a new embedded flash storage drive that aims to bring high-end storage capabilities to lower-end phones. The company claims its 128GB NAND-based eMMC 5.0 integrated storage will help future generations of cheap phones and tablets meet our ever-growing storage needs without driving up the prices into luxury territory.

So what keeps this new high-capacity storage drive cheap? Surprisingly enough, new developments on the high end. Samsung is also trotting out a new Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 2.0 drive, intended for high-end phones, tablets, and possibly even laptops, that the company says will kick mobile read/write speeds into overdrive. According to Samsung, the new UFS 2.0 drives offer significant advantages over eMMC, including the ability to read and write data at the same time, and offering better multitasking performance. Meanwhile, Samsung is also producing mobile flash drives based on a new eMMC 5.1 standard that was approved earlier this year, which means that the company will wind up with three tiers of mobile storage: A high-performance UFS 2.0 drive, a mid-range eMMC 5.1 drive, and a low-end eMMC 5.0 drive. This means eMMC 5.0 is a generation behind in the eMMC game, and even further behind the higher-end mobile market’s UFS 2.0 future. It also means it will be available for relatively much cheaper.

Cheap or no, more storage is certainly better than less storage, and odds are, you won’t notice the performance difference between these inexpensive high-capacity drives and the current market. It may be slower than eMMC 5.1 and UFS 2.0, but it’s faster than a microSD card for sure. Plus, the kind of cheap phones for which this new storage is intended likely won’t be able to do things like shoot high-bitrate, higher-resolution (4K) video anytime soon, so you may not need the lightning-fast performance of UFS 2.0 anyway.

The big picture is that the new wave of cheap phones will provide even more bang for the buck. While the next generation of cheap-but-good handsets may not have the tack-sharp screens, high-end cameras, and other accoutrements of the fancy phone set, at least they’ll have plenty of space to stash all your digital stuff.