SanDisk is launching a pair of new memory cards today. The marketing department went wild with the product names. They’re officially called the “SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I” cards. What makes them special? They let you capture photos and videos at up to 90 megabytes per second, which is bananas considering that most folks have a broadband connection at home that delivers less than 20 megabits per second; that translates to 2.5 megabytes per second. And as for the read speeds, they’re slightly faster at 95 megabytes per second, which isn’t going to max out a USB 3.0 connection (625 megabytes per second) anytime soon, but it’s still incredibly impressive. The 8 GB card will cost $60, while the 16 GB card will go for $100. Both should be in stores quite soon, and if you can’t wait you can buy them straight from SanDisk’s website today.
Now all that being said, we have to ask the question that no one wants to ask: Who buys memory cards these days? Most smartphones don’t have microSD card slots anymore. Hell, just look at the United States, where half the smartphones sold are iPhones! We’re not saying expandable storage is a bad thing, it’s just that these days the device you have in your pocket is likely to have at least 8 GB of storage. How much do you really need in a world where you can stream music and videos over a 3G or 4G network? Sure, photos and videos take up a lot of space, but chances are your phone’s battery will run out of juice capturing 1080p video long before the storage chips inside get filled up with footage of your cat doing stupid things in the kitchen.
Look, we love that SanDisk is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, but it’s a bit too late when you stop and think about how we use our phones today.