Micro SD Cards

[developer]

I want to buy two micro SD cards for my son's EE Kestrel phones.

Any reasons not to buy 32gb ones - reliability perhaps?

I note that there are various classes for sale (class 4, class 10, for example) - what's the difference and are any particularly suitable for mobile phones?

Thanks,

 

[V12]

Class 10 has higher speed than class 4.

In practise only copying large files to from a PC will Max out the speed of an SD card, in a phone it makes as good as no difference.

I have had a 32gb card in my camera for a long time and not had any issues.

 

[V12]

http://m.hotukdeals.com/deals/kings...ry-card-sd-adapter-for-19-99-zoombits-1908956

 

[markjay]

Class 10 has higher speed than class 4.

In practise only copying large files to from a PC will Max out the speed of an SD card, in a phone it makes as good as no difference.

I have had a 32gb card in my camera for a long time and not had any issues.

As V12 said.

In theory a higher class / faster card will allow photo images to be written quicker when using the camera, resulting in less delay before the next shot can be taken.

In practical terms this is more applicable to hi-res DSLR cameras than to mobile phones.

 

[markjay]

http://m.hotukdeals.com/deals/kingston-pack-2-x-32gb-microsdhc-class-10-memory-card-sd-adapter-for-19-99-zoombits-1908956

I must say that I had mixed results in the past when using Kingston memory devices.

 

[V12]

My 32GB card is a sandisk and has been faultless but I also have a 8GB kingston card which is many years old and hasn't caused any problems for me either.

 

[boxbrownie]

I bought a 64gb micro card and after found it can be used in hardley anything!

The card works great, but finding equipment that is compatible is almost impossible.

 

[Sp!ke]

Always get a branded card and don't buy one from eBay as many of them will be fake.

I now use class 10 64Gb Sandisk cards as the price point is now reasonable

 

[developer]

I bought a 64gb micro card and after found it can be used in hardley anything!

The card works great, but finding equipment that is compatible is almost impossible.

Many offer micro SD with an SD adapter.

 

[developer]

I'll be going the Scandisk route as we've used their USB sticks over the years, without a problem.

 

[BTB 500]

Not sure about phones but I know there have been compatibility issues with some cameras with the higher speed cards. As V12 said, class 4 should be fine (and a bit cheaper).

 

[kingdave]

With sandisk 32gb micro sd do be careful and buy new stock from a reputable supplier to guard against getting fake or even worse 'real' sandisk but from the wrong batch!

I've had 2 32gb sandisk micro sd cards fail.
SanDisk cops to malfunctioning Micro SDs in Galaxy S3s ? The Register

To be honest you're probably ok now, I bought my faulty ones both back in 2012 from amazon - hopefully that batch is exhausted. To sandisk's credit they have a 5 year warranty and the replaced the cards without quibble. Only problem was they demanded the faulty cards be returned to their Czech depot by tracked means which cost me £8 each - annoying they failed earlier this year about 2 weeks apart so I copped for the return fee twice.

 

[boxbrownie]

Many offer micro SD with an SD adapter.

Yes it came with an adapter, although I already have a few!

But I prefer to use SD cards in items that take them rather than a micro in an adapter.

Luckily my latest dashcam takes SD cards so I can use a 32gb in that I have knocking around.

 

[developer]

Yes it came with an adapter, although I already have a few!

But I prefer to use SD cards in items that take them rather than a micro in an adapter.

Luckily my latest dashcam takes SD cards so I can use a 32gb in that I have knocking around.

Off at a tangent, do you have any details of the dash cam?

 

[Messa]

It does make a difference with phones, especially the new smartphones with UHD video recording. If you get anything slower than a class 10 or a non-genuine card you are more than likely going to get a 'insert a faster card' warning.

 

[markjay]

It does make a difference with phones, especially the new smartphones with UHD video recording. If you get anything slower than a class 10 or a non-genuine card you are more than likely going to get a 'insert a faster card' warning.

Keeping in mind that a DSLR or dashcam will usually have only one memory card, but on phones there is usually a first/built-in SD card and slot for second/external card, the above will only make a difference if directing the camera output to write directly to the second/external SD card. Most people just leave the camera to write to the internal SD card and use the second card for music and movie storage.

 

[markjay]

Sandisk are not considered 'top brand' but I found their flash cards, USB drives, and SSD to be a very reasonable compromise between price and reliability, so I often use their products and can recommend them for general use.

As said this was not my experience with Kingston (although Dell used to supply Kingston memory in their servers and PCs, not sure if they still do).

Where customers do require 'top notch' SD cards we simply specify original Samsung SD cards.

 

[V12]

It does make a difference with phones, especially the new smartphones with UHD video recording. If you get anything slower than a class 10 or a non-genuine card you are more than likely going to get a 'insert a faster card' warning.

There was a big old thread about this between the super geeks on XDA developers. They downloaded a SD card benchmarking app and tested various top end phones with both class 4 and class 10 cards. Only 1 phone managed to read and write any quicker with a class 10 card.

This must have been about a year ago and I was only interested in the Samsung galaxy s3 results as I had that phone at the time. There was absolutely no difference between class 10 and 4 and they determined that the card reader was the bottleneck, not the card itself.

May be a different story now with newer high end phones.

 

[boxbrownie]

Off at a tangent, do you have any details of the dash cam?

PowerPC Panorama 2

It came out as one of the best tested in 2013 by Dashcam Talk

 

[BTB 500]

I only ever use class 4 cards in my airborne full HD (1930x1080, 18,000 kbps) video camera ... in fact they specifically state that there's no benefit in using class 6 or 10.