Want To Know How Fast A Phone’s Storage Is? You Need To Understand Storage Standards
When buying a new phone, it’s a good idea to understand how fast its storage is going to be. You might have never taken note of storage speeds, but you can see how much of a difference faster storage makes when transferring files from one folder to another, trying to load large video files into your video editor app, or simply looking at the load times of apps or games.
Faster storage benefits your smartphone experience so if you want the very best device in the arena, you need the very best storage speeds. Let’s talk about the most popular types of storage you can see today: eMMC and UFS.
eMMC Is Dated, But There Are Still Many Phones Using The Latest Version
eMMC stands for Embedded Multi-Media Card. It’s a type of flash storage, which means it comes in the form of a small electronic chip that can be used to store your files. It’s the kind of storage that was used in pretty much every smartphone that was released before the dawn of UFS, the newer standard. However, back then, it was hardly specified because there wasn’t much to compare it to.
There are multiple versions of eMMC, but in 2024, you’re probably only ever going to see eMMC 5.1 storage in devices at the lowest tier of the budget realm. eMMC storage has a limit of 256GB and can support read speeds up to 250MB/s. Normally, that would sound fast, but these days, things go a lot faster.
A modern phone with eMMC 5.1 storage is the Xiaomi Redmi 13. Using eMMC is simply cheaper and it makes a lot more sense in the lower price tiers where there isn’t an unrealistic expectation of speed.
UFS Is The Standard For Performance, But It Depends On The Version
However, if you’re after fast storage, UFS, or Universal Flash Storage, is where the party’s at. Around 2015 or so, manufacturers started making the switch from eMMC to UFS. For instance, in 2014, the Samsung Galaxy S5 had eMMC 5.0 storage but the year after, the Samsung Galaxy S6 made the switch to UFS 2.0 storage.
First off, UFS storage supports much larger capacities. There’s a reason why 1TB storage is becoming more and more common, and the only reason that’s possible is because the standard supports it (and even higher). The standard also supports simultaneous read and write operations, which was something eMMC couldn’t do.
Starting from UFS 2.0, the standard also started to support a maximum of two lanes (though it would need to be implemented by the manufacturer). This means you can theoretically get double the bandwidth. However, manufacturers tend not to be explicit as to whether their storage is single-lane or dual-lane, so all you can really tell as a consumer is whether it is 4.0 or 3.1, and so on.
Unsurprisingly, you also get higher speeds. UFS 2.0 alone was much faster than eMMC 5.1, which explains why Samsung made the switch back in 2015. These days, flagship phones use UFS 4.0, which is insanely fast. Below is a table with the different UFS standards and their respective speeds per lane.
| UFS Standard | Bandwidth Per Lane (in MB/s) |
| 1.0 | 300 |
| 1.1 | 300 |
| 2.0 | 600 |
| 2.1 | 600 |
| 2.2 | 600 |
| 3.0 | 1450 |
| 3.1 | 1450 |
| 4.0 | 2900 |
Looking at the table above, hopefully, you’ll be able to understand why I get annoyed to see a relatively expensive mid-range phone “make do” with UFS 2.2 storage instead of UFS 3.1. Either way though, all of these are fast, but the faster you go, the better. Next year might bring UFS 4.1 to our doorsteps, and I’m excited to see that.
