Best SD card for the Bionic?

[wildkitten]

I am looking for a 32GB (I assume 32GB is the largest it will support?). Is the Micro SDHC compatible or should I be looking for Micro SD? Also, is there a particular brand that people find to be the best? and Class 10 is the fastest?

Thank you.

 

[MarkWoods]

I am looking for a 32GB (I assume 32GB is the largest it will support?). Is the Micro SDHC compatible or should I be looking for Micro SD? Also, is there a particular brand that people find to be the best? and Class 10 is the fastest?

Thank you.

Ya. 32 is going to be the largest it will support. And yes, You want class 10. It is the fastest. I found this on newegg. Newegg.com - Team 32GB Micro SDHC Flash Card Model TG032G0MC28A

 

[lykofos]

I'm running a Lexar 32GB class 10 micro SDHC card. Got it about a month and a half ago. So far, so good.

Amazon.com: Lexar High Speed MicroSDHC 32 GB Class 10 Flash Memory Card with Reader LSDMI32GBSBNAR: Electronics

I stick with Sandisk for all my DSLR and HD video recorder cards, but Lexar is a decent brand name too. For the price, you can't beat it.

 

[johnlgalt]

Can you show me speed tests showing transfer of files to the BIONIC via USB cable is faster on those Class 10 cards versus a Class 4 /6 card?

 

[Lucidot]

Can you show me speed tests showing transfer of files to the BIONIC via USB cable is faster on those Class 10 cards versus a Class 4 /6 card?

I haven't seen anyone do this for the Bionic yet, but I have seen tests of read/write speeds with the T-Bolt and there was a very noticeable difference.

Here is the T-Bolt test thread: http://androidforums.com/htc-thunderbolt/299444-tb-class-10-microsdhc-speed-test.html

 

[WA_Bob]

Can you show me speed tests showing transfer of files to the BIONIC via USB cable is faster on those Class 10 cards versus a Class 4 /6 card?

All I have is my own observations, but my Lexar class 10 is noticeably faster when I'm downloading and uploading with my home PC. It's a much bigger difference when I'm taking pictures and saving them to the Mico SD card or in the time it takes to display them. In the end, those differences may not be enough to be worth the extra money to some folks and I'd say just do some research and decide whatever works best for you.

 

[Lucidot]

I would venture to say that the difference is a noticeable one with the Bionic as well.

Unless Motorola makes their products inferior to HTC. Guess anything is possible.

 

[johnlgalt]

All I have is my own observations, but my Lexar class 10 is noticeably faster when I'm downloading and uploading with my home PC. It's a much bigger difference when I'm taking pictures and saving them to the Mico SD card or in the time it takes to display them. In the end, those differences may not be enough to be worth the extra money to some folks and I'd say just do some research and decide whatever works best for you.

download to and form your PC - clarification needed - downloading to BIONIC from PC and vice versa, or removing card and inserting in PC and downloading from and uploading to Internet from PC?

I would venture to say that the difference is a noticeable one with the Bionic as well.

Unless Motorola makes their products inferior to HTC. Guess anything is possible.

Yah, but the Motorola DROID had a hardwired connection limitation so that Class 4 barely gave any better performance than a class 2, sooo...

That's why I am asking for confirmation.

 

[Lucidot]

I tried to run SD Tools on my Bionic and it wouldn't run. Kept giving me a buffer error, so apparently that app is not really compatible with it.

I'll be honest. I'm not really too concerned about how fast the transfer rate is between my PC and my phone. IMO that would have no bearing on how much faster my phone would be with a class 10 card.

In the test performed with the T-Bolt it was measuring the I/O speeds between the internal memory/CPU and the SD card.

Maybe I am not understanding your question completely.

 

[johnlgalt]

If the speed is no different b/w a class 4 and 10 then why pay for the 10?

Hence my curiosity.

 

[lykofos]

There's one very large thread (20 something pages I think) on sdhc card speeds and phones over at XDA. The basic gist of all the testing was basically: class 4 cards are better in phones if you're using them to run apps from the card, as the lower class cards are faster at reading / writing random smaller bits of data. The class 10 cards are faster when reading / writing large files and sequential file recording (like camera burst mode or 1080p video recording).

Since I use the sd card primarily for taking photos / videos with the phone, storage / playing large video files (1GB+) and for music, I decided to go with the class 10.

If I bought class 4 or 6, I would have got a Sandisk, which was $40 at the time. The class 10 Lexar was on sale of $47, for a measly $7 difference I just went for the class 10 b/c it wasn't that much more $ and fit my needs better.

 

[johnlgalt]

Thanks - I knew I had seen it somewhere, but I couldn't remember - I should have looked more closely at XDA lol. Hell, I'm pretty sure I even posted in the thread....

Yeah, I feel you on all this - I don't do near as much HiDef recording, although I do take a decent amount of pics, but I did snag that SanDisk 32 GB for $40 at staples just between Christmas and New Year's.

Of course, the fact that I bought an eVGA GTX560 Ti 448 Core Classified (~$300) may be the reason I opted for the cheaper microSD....

 

[kingnut]

There's one very large thread (20 something pages I think) on sdhc card speeds and phones over at XDA. The basic gist of all the testing was basically: class 4 cards are better in phones if you're using them to run apps from the card, as the lower class cards are faster at reading / writing random smaller bits of data. The class 10 cards are faster when reading / writing large files and sequential file recording (like camera burst mode or 1080p video recording).

Since I use the sd card primarily for taking photos / videos with the phone, storage / playing large video files (1GB+) and for music, I decided to go with the class 10.

If I bought class 4 or 6, I would have got a Sandisk, which was $40 at the time. The class 10 Lexar was on sale of $47, for a measly $7 difference I just went for the class 10 b/c it wasn't that much more $ and fit my needs better.

The only reason class 10 would be slower than 6 is because of phone firmware. Class 10 is faster than 6 in every aspect hardware wise. Once more mobile phone manufactures actually use class 10 from the factory we will see it true capabilities.

 

[wildkitten]

So it's sounding as if a Class 6 SD card may be the best middle of the road option if there is a hardware/firmware limitation for Class 10.

Is there a difference between SD and SDHC that should make me choose one over the other?

 

[lykofos]

The only reason class 10 would be slower than 6 is because of phone firmware. Class 10 is faster than 6 in every aspect hardware wise. Once more mobile phone manufactures actually use class 10 from the factory we will see it true capabilities.

Motorola says all of its Android phones support Class 10+ cards: https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/60462

So it's sounding as if a Class 6 SD card may be the best middle of the road option if there is a hardware/firmware limitation for Class 10.

Is there a difference between SD and SDHC that should make me choose one over the other?

According to motorola, they fully support class 10, so there should be no hardware / firmware limitation for the Bionic.

It's just manufacturing / marketing jargon. The HC in SDHC stands for "high capacity." Same exact thing, the larger cards just have the HC tacked on the end. Also, remember that you don't want a regular SD card, make sure it's a "Micro SD"

Of course, the fact that I bought an eVGA GTX560 Ti 448 Core Classified (~$300) may be the reason I opted for the cheaper microSD....

Haha, nice! That's definitely a good reason, and that's a pretty sweet graphics card for sure!

 

[johnlgalt]

Motorola says all of its Android phones support Class 10+ cards: https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/60462



According to motorola, they fully support class 10, so there should be no hardware / firmware limitation for the Bionic.

It's just manufacturing / marketing jargon. The HC in SDHC stands for "high capacity." Same exact thing, the larger cards just have the HC tacked on the end. Also, remember that you don't want a regular SD card, make sure it's a "Micro SD"



Haha, nice! That's definitely a good reason, and that's a pretty sweet graphics card for sure!

re: SDHC: Secure Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a difference between SDHC and SDSC (non SDHC) but if your device can use SDHC then both types perform identically in your device.

[OT]yeah, one of the community managers for eVGA is also a member here, and he posted in a thread in the Computers and IT forum which I was reading about checking that card out - I did, and made my own thread about it - it's a 'de-cored' 580 basically. Can't shake a stick at that....[/OT]

 

[wildkitten]

re: SDHC: Secure Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a difference between SDHC and SDSC (non SDHC) but if your device can use SDHC then both types perform identically in your device.

[OT]yeah, one of the community managers for eVGA is also a member here, and he posted in a thread in the Computers and IT forum which I was reading about checking that card out - I did, and made my own thread about it - it's a 'de-cored' 580 basically. Can't shake a stick at that....[/OT]

Yeah I wasn't too sure because I've found 32GB Micro SD and 32GB Micro SDHC cards. So sounds like SDHC is the way to go.

 

[lykofos]

re: SDHC: Secure Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There is a difference between SDHC and SDSC (non SDHC) but if your device can use SDHC then both types perform identically in your device.

Interesting, you learn something new everyday! Wow, they even have SDXC cards starting to come out now too, uber expensive tho. I think most recent devices are SDHC compatable. Got a GoPro Hero 2 video camera for christmas and it's recommended Class 10 SDHC in order to keep up with the resolution / fps.

yeah, one of the community managers for eVGA is also a member here, and he posted in a thread in the Computers and IT forum which I was reading about checking that card out - I did, and made my own thread about it - it's a 'de-cored' 580 basically. Can't shake a stick at that...

Getting little off topic here but, that makes me want to get one! I've got to build a new system here sometime soon. The one I'm running, I built several years ago (was top of the line for its time) and it's way outdated! Rocking a AMD 2.0 GHz single core with 1 GB RAM and Windows XP. All of my hard drives and dvd burner are still PATA. MY graphics card is an ATI Radeon X700 256MB AGP card! lol

 

[johnlgalt]

SDXC have been around for a small while, but yeah, they're prohibitively expensive for now.

[OT]to keep us on topic, read my thread here: http://androidforums.com/computers/...i-classified-448-core-p-n-012-p3-2068-kr.html[/OT]

 

[Somniferum]

I bought a Samsung 32Gb Class 10 SDHC card for my Bionic and I'm getting great speeds. After tweaking the cache size, the speeds are even better. I ran some tests and here are the results I got with different cache sizes:

128k: 9.29Mb/sec read, 9.21Mb/sec write (default)
512k: 9.73Mb/sec read, 15.42Mb/sec write
1024k: 8.94Mb/sec read, 15.22Mb/sec write
2048k: 9.48Mb/sec read, 15.34Mb/sec write
4096k: 11.16Mb/sec read, 15.84Mb/sec write (BEST)
8192k: 9.51Mb/sec read, 12.91Mb/sec write

Note that even with the default cache size of 128k, speeds are very close to advertised for a Class 10 card -- so it's hard to see how any limitations could be in place with the Bionic. I'm running it with the cache set to 4096k on boot and even large video files now load instantaneously, which is great because I enjoy streaming video off the phone to my TV via the HDMI dock.

For those interested, I used SD Booster to tweak the cache size and SD Card Tester to run the speed tests. I tried every SD card testing app in the Market and none of the others would allow me to change the path to /sdcard-ext, which is critical obviously or you'll just end up testing the internal memory. It's tricky even with this app, but if you keep tapping in the top-right corner eventually it gives you the option to change the path. If others want to try it I'd be interested to see what kind of speeds people are getting with various SD cards on the Bionic.

 

[GSBJackson]

FYI - Just purchased a SanDisk Mobile Ultra 64GB microSDXC Class 6 Memory Card from Best Buy. Was originally on sale for 50% off (not now). Phone formatted it with 59.46GB available!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/SanDisk...0220&skuId=4120116&st=64gb Micro SD&cp=1&lp=1

 

[kingnut]

FYI - Just purchased a SanDisk Mobile Ultra 64GB microSDXC Class 6 Memory Card from Best Buy. Was originally on sale for 50% off (not now). Phone formatted it with 59.46GB available!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/SanDisk+-+Mobile+Ultra+64GB+microSDXC+Class+6+Memory+Card/4120116.p?id=1218457270220&skuId=4120116&st=64gb Micro SD&cp=1&lp=1

good info!!!

 

[desmofan]

Got a GoPro Hero 2 video camera for christmas and it's recommended Class 10 SDHC in order to keep up with the resolution / fps.

I am in the market for a new waterproof digital camera, and have been reading a bit about the various SD card types. One of the drawbacks to SDHC vs SDXC is that SDHC will only allow a 32 GB file size, which at HD video is only 10-12 minutes or so (1080P). SDXC will allow a file size of whatever the card size is.

 

[drexappeal]

I've been trying to spread the word as much as possible, but Fry's has a sale going on right now for a Samsung microSD 32gb Class 10 card:

Here you go:
FRYS.com

 

[drexappeal]

FYI - Just purchased a SanDisk Mobile Ultra 64GB microSDXC Class 6 Memory Card from Best Buy. Was originally on sale for 50% off (not now). Phone formatted it with 59.46GB available!

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/SanDisk...0220&skuId=4120116&st=64gb Micro SD&cp=1&lp=1

Have you tried loading it up to see if it cuts off any files after a certain capacity? I'm only curious because I'd eventually like to upgrade to a 64gb card (especially with as much media that I carry around). TIA.

You're the first that I've seen post about actually using a 64gb microSD.