back to article Time to reformat the old wallet and embiggen your smartmobe: The 1TB microSD is here

As of today, you can now buy a 1TB micro flash card to store massive amounts of pictures and videos on your camera or mobile phone – though it'll set you back a not inconsiderable $449. SanDisk has said its Extreme 1TB microSD card is shipping to customers after being announced in February. The Extreme 1TB card retails for $ …

  1. KarMann
    Coat

    Welp…

    Time to update the bandwidth of FedEx again.

  2. TWB

    I'm still stunned

    By the number of bits per mm3 and we all know that the actual chips in these things are even smaller.

    Years ago when domestic tape based video cameras were evolving into smaller and smaller packages, we all joked that the Japanese had a shrinking machine since there was no way they could fit that many rec/play heads onto such a tiny drum.

    Maybe that Tardis technology has come on really well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: I'm still stunned

      Black holes and shell theorem gives us the theoretical limit. I've not looked at the numbers for that yet thought.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: I'm still stunned

        http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/Ms_fnd_in_a_Lbry.html

        by Hal Draper. Notched quanta for the win!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Re: I'm still stunned

          Oh, just by chance Youtube recommended the latest (released 15th) Royal Institute lecture. Guess what they covered? XD

          So the number is "very very very very large" to put it frankly. If loop quantum/quantum gravity is a thing, may even be slightly smaller than the planck length! :O

  3. seven of five Silver badge

    My wife needs one of these immedeately.

    She is happy, I am happy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

      How/Why? How many photos could you ever take?!

      1. Tom 7

        Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

        I recently got a compact camera for my daughters photography gcse and it took me a long time to realise the number on the screen was not the seconds to the heat death of the universe but number of photos that could be taken. I did calculate that it would take till the heat death of the universe to ..er.. collate them!

        1. Dominic Shields

          Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

          I have tried (in vain) to point out that there is a delete function that can be applied to 19 of the 20 identical photos someone takes in the hope that one will be good.

      2. seven of five Silver badge

        Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

        Hahaha.. Single, eh? You will find out.

        As for "why": Don´t ask, don´t tell.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

          Yes you guessed it.

          But it was a rhetorical question. Single, but I know "why". ;)

      3. Efer Brick
        Trollface

        Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

        More like the images of other people wives >-)

    2. Hans 1
      Joke

      Re: My wife needs one of these immedeately.

      Yeah, I see where you're coming from ... you start with gold, then giver her a platinum card and she claims she needs a black card, been there, seen that ...

  4. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Challenge accepted

    I almost managed to fill up a 400 GB card while on vacation - itinerary, OsmAnd+ maps, music & movies for the flight, a copy of Wikipedia for Kiwix in two languages, and a backup of the photos and videos from my camera.

  5. Tom 7

    My daughter is wondering where the sofa from her dolls house has gone

    its the only place it can be safely kept.

  6. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I will let the early adopters with deep pockets pay these launch prices. I will pick one up in another 12 - 18 months when they are down to around a quarter of the price. Especially when I can pick up 64GB cards for around a tenner at the moment and just swap them out for a fresh one as needed.

  7. CheesyTheClown

    Am I the only one?

    I was driving yesterday and as always, instead of paying attention to the road, I was going all Sci-Fi and drifting off to a weird fantasy. I though... imagine if I blinked and found myself driving my BMW i3 in the year 1919... kinda like “Back to the Future” but without Mr. Fusion.

    My car had been recently cleaned so all I had with me was my backpack. And I freaked, because I had my play laptop, a Microsoft Surface Go and it didn’t have and development tools on it... not even VS Code. And I was like “I have a JRPG video game, some movies and the only programming language I had was Powershell, whatever is in Office, vbscript, the web browser... ok... I can code... but I don’t have Google, Wikipedia, or StackOverflow”

    I could made do I told myself, and then I thought to myself, on my phone, I have about 150 videos on multivariable calculus, chemistry and encryption. Woot!

    Then I realized how screwed I was because I didn’t have the parts I needed to build a USB to.. well anything interface... all I had for peripherals was a USB-C to USB and HDMI dongle. I could design a USB to serial UART. In fact, I also have on my phone an FPGA course and I could make a simple VHDL to schematic compiler in Powershell if I had to. But of course, I would have to make my own semiconductors and I’m not sure I could produce a stable silicon substrate capable of 12Mhz for USB using 1919 era laboratories.

    Then I realized I had a really awesome toy with me... I have a 400GB MicroSD in the laptop. I don’t think I could even explain to Ramanujan what 400GB is and that’s a guy who was pretty hard core into infinite series. Could you imagine explaining to people 100 years ago that you had a chip that was visually the size of a finger nail which had the storage and addressing circuitry for about 4 trillion memory cells?

    So, today... without even thinking of it, I found myself loading VSCode, .NET and Julia onto my laptop. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself packing a USB-RS-232 dongle too. I also realized that I had 3D Studio Max and OpenSCAD installed.

    And oddly, I believe I have an Arduino and USB cable in my glove box. Though, I don’t have the software, but I think I could write an Atmel assembler from memory.

    Today if I got sucked back to 1919, I could use my laptop to design a simple field emitting transistor which I’m sure would be reliable at 50Khz, a simple cathode ray tube, a simple CPU, a reliable and reproducible carbon film resistor, a half-assed capacitor (don’t know the chemistry on those, but I could fake it), and probably could produce a reasonable two sided circuit board etching and plating system... and I could probably do all this with my laptop and 1919 era tools and tech. I would have to do it at Kodak in New York.

    Oddly, I could probably do most of this with just the information I have on my phone, but it would probably take me a while just to make a stable 5V 2amp power source to keep the phone running for any period of time.

    To be honest, I think I’d find the closest thing to epoxy available at the time. I would use gold leaf to make traces... then I’d use a simple acid based battery. I wouldn’t trust 1919 electrical mains.

    Anyway... anyone else here ever get geeky like this? Wouldn’t you love to show off a 1TB MicroSD card to people back then? Hell just try to explain the concept of what it would take to fit 10 trillion non-volatile memory cells into something that size :)

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: Am I the only one?

      It's always good to be prepared. I hate it when I get flung back in time like that.

      (btw - I suspect that the silicon in a processor would show *no* impurities to the chemistry of the time, nor any real hint of structure optically.)

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Am I the only one?

        I saw that documentary about that bloke who got flung back to the middle ages with his high school chemistry book, his Oldsmobile Delta and a chainsaw. Groovy.

        There's also an earlier book with a similar concept written by Richard Something about an English man finding himself in Roman Britain. I too have indulged in day dreams of what I would do with my smatterings of 21st century knowledge if I found myself several centuries in the past. Besides the gaps in my knowledge, my chief concern would be my strange accent and ignorance of etiquette without getting killed for being a Frenchman or witch (depending upon the era). I feel my first steps would to find a patron and protector who can make use of my knowledge.

        1. 0laf Silver badge

          Re: Am I the only one?

          1Tb Boom Stick

        2. Christoph

          Re: Am I the only one?

          The classic one is by Mark Twain. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

          1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

            Re: Am I the only one?

            There's a nice SF tale - can't recall the author or title - in which the protagonist returns to Roman times and introduces them to hygiene and germ theory. Eventually they get so overpopulated they send someone back in time to kill him...

            1. albertfandango

              Re: Am I the only one?

              I think that might be "The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass" by Frederik Pohl

          2. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Am I the only one?

      In summary: "If magic was possible, just imagine all the magical things we could do".

  8. Rafael #872397
    Facepalm

    Ugh, the names.

    Extreme. Extreme Pro. Extreme Ultra.

    Extreme Extra. Extreme Expert. Extreme Extreme. Extreme Galaxy Pro.

    Extreme Egg Bacon Sausage Spam.

    Lovely Extreme! Wonderful Extreme!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ugh, the names.

      I was looking at the 'speed' names and thinking what happened to class 1, class 2 etc

      I mean C10, U3, V30, A1, A2 etc wtf?

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Ugh, the names.

        U1 == Class 10 (roughly)

        The problem with the simplistic "class" groupings is that they gave no indication of sustained write speeds or asymmetricality or endurance

    2. Hans 1

      Re: Ugh, the names. [Let's ask George!]

      Quality, value, style, service, selection, convenience

      Economy, savings, performance, experience, hospitality

      Low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms

      Affordable prices, money-back guarantee

      Free installation, free admission, free appraisal, free alterations

      Free delivery, free estimates, free home trial, and free parking

      No cash? No problem! No kidding! No fuss, no muss

      https://genius.com/George-carlin-advertising-lullaby-lyrics

  9. defiler

    That's 2PB in a Coke can

    Just saying...

    1. drand

      Re: That's 2PB in a Coke can

      And yet there are always more pictures of cats.

      1. defiler

        Re: That's 2PB in a Coke can

        Then it's settled. We have to stop the cats.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I could make a fag packet sized SAN from these.

  11. Compuserve User

    Take Away

    How big was that micro SD card Snowden used to copy all that data he downloaded from the NSA?

    How much damage can your disgruntled employee do with one of these micro SD cards?

    How much damage can be done to your life/business if this card gets corrupted?

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