SanDisk has been a manufacturer of flash cards and portable media for many years. They produce flash memory in every form factor, the latest being mini-SD. There are currently many different form factors, and have reduced in size over the years. They have become pretty standardized, as 6-in-1 and even 8-in-1 card readers are widely available for PCs and laptops. These readers allow access to your flash memory, no matter what type you have. So why introduce a new standard?
SanDisk introduced the miniSD card on March 13, 2003, and was designed to increased the storage capacity needs of the mobile phone market, which benefited the most from the smallest form factor. These media-enabled phones now offer storage-intensive features like digital cameras, video capture, MP3 players, and even video games.
The miniSD card is 21.5 mm long, 20mm wide and 1.4 mm thick, occupying a volume of 602 cubic mm. The new format was developed by the three original developers of the original SD card: Toshiba, Matsushita and SanDisk.
SanDisk claims the miniSD card offers significant savings in card area and volume, which are two critical design parameters as mobile phones are miniaturized. The miniSD card saves more than 40% of the printed circuit board over standard SD cards in less than 60% of the space. Windows SmartPhones use this memory format, and more miniaturized phones with multimedia features.
A Word from SanDisk
“The 1GB miniSD card provides a level of storage that significantly enhances the features and usability of these full-featured mobile phones,” said Nelson Chan, executive vice president and general manager of SanDisk’s consumer and handset business. “For example, with a 1GB card you can store approximately 16 hours of MP3 songs, record up to several hours of MPEG-4 video or take more than 2000 digital photos on a 1-megapixel mobile phone. With that level of capability, consolidating music, video, digital camera and other key features into the mobile phone platform is much more meaningful and powerful.” According to IDC, the global market for mobile phones with card slots is expected to increase to more than 258 million units by 2006, as manufacturers continue to add features to phones that increase their storage requirements. In addition to increasing available memory, a removable storage card provides greater interoperability with other portable consumer electronics devices, an important feature as mobile phones converge with other portable devices.
The main benefit of the miniSD card is that is electrically compatible with the existing SD standard, and uses the same SD interface. The same security features remain intact. The only difference is the physical interface, which is easily changed using a miniSD to SD card adapter supplied with every miniSD card. Using this adapter, the miniSD fits into any device that takes full-size SD memory.
Packaging:
The SanDisk miniSD 1GB memory card comes in a blister pack. The blister pack is easy to pop open (unlike many sealed blister packs) and is hinged at the bottom and opens like a book. Inside is the miniSD card, a full-size SD adapter, and a folded information booklet. There is also a full-size plastic carrying case for the adapter. The miniSD card itself does not have a physical lock tab, but the standard SD adapter does, which will prevent accidental writing or formatting of the module. The miniSD module fits into the adapter easily, and has a satisfying feel when docked (almost a slight click). The miniSD card feels notched into place, but removes easily with a slight tug. Other than that, it looks and works just like any other standard SD card. I’ve never accidentally removed the miniSD from the adapter when removing the main card.
We tried this card in several portable devices, from a Nikon D50 digital camera, a HP 5700 iPAQ Pocket PC, a Toshiba e300 Pocket PC, and 2 different media card readers. There were no compatibility issues with any of these devices. There was no image or file corruption when reading files written from another device.
If you’re buying this card, then it’s probably because you have a media-enabled phone. I found this miniSD solution when browsing for a standard SD card for my digital camera. So far I have no problems with compatibility and will be ready for any new miniSD devices. If the price is the same, go ahead and get a SanDisk miniSD with adapter and be future ready for new miniSD devices. This card is intended to fit the growing mobile phone niche while maintaining compatibility with “legacy” SD devices.
Speed testing
We tested our read and write benchmarks using an internal USB 2.0 card reader. The card reader has more bandwidth than the cards could ever provide, so we were certain the memory was being tested fairly, and not choked for bandwidth. We rebooted between each read and write test to ensure that the information was not cached in system memory. Below are the specifications of our test platform:
- Athlon 64 X2 3800+
- Asus nForce4 motherboard
- 1GB dual-channel OCZ Gold PC4200
- 6-in-1 USB 2.0 floppy/multimedia card reader (internal)
- Windows XP Professional SP2
- HD Tach 2.61
We tried to test with SiSoft Sandra, but could not get the File System benchmark to complete with either card. We had to go back to simple testing methods and time the data transfer between our test system and the media card using Explorer and a stopwatch. Media cards do not like to transfer lots of little files and are very slow. Flash media works best with large files, as we discovered as we tried to run our test with Pocket PC data (which consists of thousands of tiny files). Flash memory cards are designed to transfer large files, and work best with large digital photos and MP3s.
| SD Media Card 79MB transfer (in seconds) |
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Conclusion
The SanDisk 1GB miniSD performs very well, especially against older memory cards. I’m not sure if our PNY card is problematic, or if flash memory has made improvements within the past year, but the results speak for themselves. SD write speed has never been great, but the new SanDisk miniSD outperforms our standard SD multimedia card. This card has been tested in various devices, from professional D-SLR cameras to Pocket PCs and have had no compatibility issues. Performance is more than adequate for the demands of today’s high-megapixel cameras, but a professional photographer would benefit from a faster card.
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