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Samsung's new 512GB flash chip is twice as fast as its predecessor

The company has started mass producing the embedded UFS 3.0 chip.

Samsung's future phones, including the Galaxy Fold, will have read and write speeds comparable with snappy ultra-fast laptops. The Korean tech giant has started mass producing what it says is the "industry's first" 512GB smartphone chip in line with embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) 3.0 specifications.

Samsung first debuted a 512GB eUFS back in 2017, but that one has sequential read and write speeds reaching 860MB per second and 255MB per second, respectively. This option more than doubles that sequential read speed to 2,100MB per second and ups that write speed to 410MB per second. Even the UFS 2.1 chips Samsung launched in January are only half as fast as the 3.0 model.

According to the company, the new storage solution's read speeds are 20 times faster than a typical microSD card and are even four times faster than a SATA solid state drive. Theoretically, a user will be able to transfer a Full HD movie to a PC from a phone equipped with the new UFS chip in as fast as three seconds. Samsung also expects those speeds to be able to help provide a seamless user experience in "future smartphones with ultra-large high-resolution screens."

The new 512GB eUFS chip is launching this month, along with a 128GB version. Samsung plans to start manufacturing a 1TB and a 256GB model in the second half of the year, as well.