TOKYO – Three manufacturers of memory cards, Sandisk, Sony and Nikon started thinking about the future of the Memory card. All three agreed to propose a new format memory card into the CompactFlash Association.

According to all three, the standard storage media contained in CF6.0 specification will be abandoned. Average data transfer speed in a memory card, according to these standards is 167 Mbps.

But all three plan to propose new standards, where data transfer should reach 500 Mbps. In addition they also requested the Association to allow producers to make memory cards with capacities up to 2 TB.

As reported by Endgadget, the three official recently proposed a new memory card format switch from PATA to serial PCI Express to reach data transfer speeds up to 500 Mbps.

Proposal submission is the proposed standard because, according to all three, in the future manufacturers will soon be facing ‘explosion’ picture RAW format which has a large size as well as High definition video requires a large storage media as well. Of course, memory cards needed in the future should also support mainly to transfer their data more quickly to the computer.

“Compact Flash Association said it would study the proposal,” said board chairman CompactFlash Association, Shigeto Kanda.

Future world of professional photography and video applications will require faster memory cards ‘read’. Development of new high-performance standard card with a new interface will meet the needs of the industry for years to come

With more and more people nowadays using their mobile phones for recording large media files the need for a high speed memory solution has never been greater.

Up to maybe 2 or 3 years ago most mobile phone users would only use their memory card to store small data files such as their address book and contacts. The largest files that were being saved we’re low megapixel photos. In the past couple of years technology has made big advances and now the modern smartphones can do pretty much everything that a home pc or laptop can achieve. This means bigger files which in turns means that more memory is needed. The big difference with these larger files is that they take more time to process. The best solution to minimise the risk of video or music playback lag is to use a high speed memory card. There are two main benefits of using a high speed Micro-SD memory card in your phone. The first is faster write speeds which means you have less time to wait when uploading a large file to the memory card and less time to wait for the phone to process large photo and video files. The second benefit is faster read speeds. This means that media files will be played back smoothly and efficiently without the risk of the files crashing or any delay in playback.

The fastest Micro-SD card available in the UK is the Sandisk Micro-SD Ultra. This has read and write transfer speeds almost double that of any other card in the market. It also comes bundled with a Sandisk Micromate USB card reader to allow easy upload/download of files to and from your PC.

We currently have a promo on the Sandisk Ultra Micro-SD cards and are selling them at 1/2 the usual rrp price. View the 4GB version     View the 8GB version

You may have seen Class 10 SDHC memory cards in stores recently. Up until now there have only been 3 speed ratings for SDHC memory cards, these being:

Class 2
Class 4
Class 6

The number in the Class rating refers to the minimum sustained read and write speed requirements in mb/s. So a Class 4 card should never operate below 4 mb/s. All devices that use the SDHC memory format can use either Class 2 , 4 or 6 speed cards.

Recently a new speed class was released for the new generation of digital devices. This is the new Class 10 rated cards. These have a minimum sustained read/write speed of 10 mb/s.  It should be noted that these cards will only operate at the full 10mb/s in the very latest devices that operate using the new SD 3.0 specification. Panasonic were the first to release SD 3.0 devices and their latest range of digital cameras and camcorder will take Class 10 memory cards and will operate at the full 10 mb/s minimum.

Users who purchase a Class 10 SDHC memory card can still use them in any SDHC device but if it is not produced to the SD 3.0 specification the card will not perform to it’s full capabilities so in these circumstances we would recommend the use of a Class 6 memory card that will operate at the full 6mb/s minimum speed.

At present there are only a handfull of devices capable of using Class 10 sdhc cards but you will start to see over the next few months most of the major manufacturers will be releasing SD 3.0 compatible devices. Most of these devices will also be compatible with the new memory card format SDXC which start at a massive 64GB.

You can view our Class 10 Pretec SDHC memory cards here.

SanDisk has announced it will begin shipping what it claims is the highest-capacity removable memory card for mobile phones – 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card.

SanDisk is mass producing the new cards based on its third-generation 32nm X3 (3-bit-per-cell) technology, which makes a 32GB capacity possible in such a small form factor.

The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card has not been released in the UK yet but we will be amongst the first UK retailers to stock them. They are due into us in late May 2010.

A 32GB Micro-SD memory card will allow you to store huge amounts of data on the latest mobile handsets and will be twice as much storage as the largest capacity i-phone.