In 2024, UFS 2.2 Storage Just Doesn’t Cut It For What We Expect In The Midrange
Let me start with an example so you’ll understand me, and not think of me as some old man shouting at the moon. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a mid-range device but it has very solid specifications. For instance, how many midrange phones do you know that come with a 144Hz display, 125W wired charging, and 50W wireless charging? Very few, because those tend to be flagship specifications.
But while the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a fantastic device, there’s one single spec that lets it down for me. You can get it specced with as much as 512GB of storage, but you only get UFS 2.2 storage. Yep, despite all the other wonderful things the beautiful phone has going for it on the spec sheet, that storage standard just lets it down.
I wrote about the UFS standard recently and with UFS 2.2 storage, you get a maximum speed of 600MB/s. For reference, with UFS 4.0, the flagship standard, those speeds go up to 2,900MB/s. That’s nearly five times as fast. The thing is, I don’t expect midrange devices to have UFS 4.0, but UFS 2.2 just doesn’t cut it anymore, especially for upper-midrange smartphones.
Chipset Support Is The Limiting Factor, But UFS 3.0 (Or Even UFS 3.1) Is A Better Compromise
If UFS 2.2 isn’t enough and UFS 4.0 is too much, you must be asking me, what’s the sweet spot? Well, I think the answer is UFS 3.0. It’s the perfect middle spot. I had a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ before my current device, and that had UFS 3.0 storage, despite coming out in 2019. UFS 3.0 gives you more than double the speed of UFS 2.2, at 1,450MB/s.
Back to the Motorola Edge 50 family as an example. The Edge 50 Pro has UFS 2.2 storage, but the Edge 50 Ultra leaps up to UFS 4.0. Why not take advantage of the massive chasm between the two, especially for a phone that pushes the envelope on so many other specifications?
The thing is, the choice of UFS storage is dependent on what the chipset supports. For instance, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 supports UFS 4.0 and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 maxes out at UFS 3.1 — but this shows that the Edge 50 Pro could have had UFS 3.1 storage if Motorola cared enough.
So, it makes it a bit more clear that using slower storage is an intentional choice and all I can say is that I really hope that manufacturers start making the superior choice. Let’s leave UFS 2.2 for the budget range, or simply leave it for good.
