400 GB micro SD Card

[Siltech817]

On 9/3/2017 at 1:04 PM, plissken said:

Good luck on finding devices outside of laptops/desktops supporting this capacity. 

 

Awesome none the less. 

 

If the device, say an Android phone, supports the microSDXC format, then why would there be any problem?

Many Android devices erroneously list an arbitrary "limit" to the capacity of a microSDXC card compatibility, sometimes 64GB is specified, sometimes 128GB etc...

But if you load a 200 or 256GB microSDXC card into that phone? It works just fine, in every instance I've tried, no firmware update necessary.

I've heard this explained in a couple of different ways, one is that the device manufacturer only tested the device with a certain capacity card and so that is the limit they are willing to list in the specs as tested/confirmed.

Another explanation is that when that particular device first became available (take for instance a Galaxy Note 2 circa 2012 or so), the largest microSDXC card then available was just 64GB, so thats what they list as the capacity limit even though the SDXC format technically includes capacities up to 2TB (someday).

A friend has the Galaxy Note 2 still kicking around, he was told emphatically that 64GB would be the capacity limit. I sent him a 200GB SanDisk card and sure enough, it worked just fine with no firmware revision needed.

The last possible explanation for this confusion is a bit more troubling/insidious, that being the device manufacturer wants to sell you the more expensive version that has the built-in higher capacity, so they intentionally mislead about what the microSDXC capacity limit is in an attempt to get you to buy their 64GB model device instead of the 32GB model.

So more than just laptops desktops will support this capacity if recent history holds true, Android devices specifying 64 or 128GB microSDXC capacity limits would very likely work fine with a 400GB card, just as they do with 200 and 256GB cards unless the device manufacturer is being deliberately jerky and placing arbitrary limits via the firmware.