4 ms·

The thing is, internal storage isn't necessarily faster. Sure, it is on the top tier $750 and up premium-priced phones like the iPhone 6s (which has very fast

The thing is, internal storage isn't necessarily faster. Sure, it is on the top tier $750 and up premium-priced phones like the iPhone 6s (which has very fast internal storage). But we're talking about a much less expensive phone here. Let's compare: 64GB Nexus 6P: $549 64GB iPhone 6S+: $849 So, you really shouldn't expect the Nexus 6P to be using the top-tier internal storage solutions Samsung rolls out as used in the iPhone and Samsung phones. Yes, a lot of that $300 price difference is for the Apple name, especially when you factor in the lower resolution 6S+ 1080p screen. But quite a bit of it is used for the polishing bits that make the phone faster... like much faster storage. As a data point, the high-end Sandisk 64GB microSD cards are about $50 and are around 3x faster than the internal storage in my Nexus 6. They're hitting 95 MB/s read, 90 MB/s write now. While a microSD won't top out at the 200 MB/s you get from last year's top-tier storage available in the Samsung S6 and iPhone 6 (not to mention the twice as fast Samsung storage in the new iPhone 6s and upcoming Samsung phone), they'll perform better than the internal storage in most mid-tier phones and all low-tier phones, which is all most folks need for photos and videos.

danieldk 11y ago
and are around 3x faster than the internal storage in my Nexus 6. They're hitting 95 MB/s read, 90 MB/s write now. Even the Moto G has that read speed. More expensive phones are much faster... http://www.anandtech.com/show/9525/the-moto-g-2015-review/3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9525/the-moto-g-2015-review/3 Also, I wonder what SD read/write speeds are in practice.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  Not quite. A more recent chart comparing them is here: http://anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-preliminary-results http://anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-... Note that everything tested is below the 90 MB/s sequential write speed of a high-end microSD except the iPhone 6s Plus. From a review, here's the numbers on the 64Gb Sandisk Extreme Pro microSD using CrystalDiskMark: Sequential Read : 95.325 MB/s Sequential Write : 90.660 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 89.314 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 75.971 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 7.492 MB/s [ 1829.0 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.441 MB/s [ 595.9 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 7.472 MB/s [ 1824.3 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.380 MB/s [ 581.0 IOPS] Note that Ars Technica is using Sequential Read/Write values on 256K which is flawed. It should be larger to be accurate.

danieldk 11y ago

and are around 3x faster than the internal storage in my Nexus 6. They're hitting 95 MB/s read, 90 MB/s write now. Even the Moto G has that read speed. More expensive phones are much faster... http://www.anandtech.com/show/9525/the-moto-g-2015-review/3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9525/the-moto-g-2015-review/3 Also, I wonder what SD read/write speeds are in practice.

JohnTHaller 11y ago
Not quite. A more recent chart comparing them is here: http://anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-preliminary-results http://anandtech.com/show/9662/iphone-6s-and-iphone-6s-plus-... Note that everything tested is below the 90 MB/s sequential write speed of a high-end microSD except the iPhone 6s Plus. From a review, here's the numbers on the 64Gb Sandisk Extreme Pro microSD using CrystalDiskMark: Sequential Read : 95.325 MB/s Sequential Write : 90.660 MB/s Random Read 512KB : 89.314 MB/s Random Write 512KB : 75.971 MB/s Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 7.492 MB/s [ 1829.0 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 2.441 MB/s [ 595.9 IOPS] Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 7.472 MB/s [ 1824.3 IOPS] Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 2.380 MB/s [ 581.0 IOPS] Note that Ars Technica is using Sequential Read/Write values on 256K which is flawed. It should be larger to be accurate.