This week SanDisk has announced the 7232, its new iNAND solution. This is the same common type of NAND flash you will find in most of the smartphones. Usually flash memory for smartphones is not driving any excitement. However, this is not the case of iNAND 7232 from SanDisk.
This flash memory is not your usual one. Unlike smaller capacities and lower performances you will see in most of the flash memories for smartphones on the market, this iNAND 7232 makes some news and deserves some special mention.
SanDisk's new flash memory, in terms of technology is just an evolution of its previous system. However, what is truly impressive about iNAND 7232 is its increased capacity. The available choices come in a range of 32GB to 128GB. iNAND 7132, SanDisk's previous generation shipped only in 16GB minimum capacities.
The new memory coming on the market will make the 16GB smartphones go obsolete in not so distant future. With larger OS foot prints and larger application installs, on a 16GB device users are already starting to bump into size limitations, whether or not that are running many applications. The iPhone 6 limiting its capacity at this 16GB minimum has already spread widespread dissatisfaction among its users.
Apple is just the most prominent brand that continues to ship a 16GB minimum size among several companies. Most of the smartphone manufacturing companies used to resist switching to higher memory capacities until now because they still make good profits on NAND flash.
For example, the upper capacities usually cost only $5 to $10 to manufacture but come on the market with a price tag in the range $50 to $100. A smartphone manufacturer can therefor make 90 percent profit on an upgrade when users pay for a $200 premium.
These numbers explain how profit might be the main cause why smartphone major brands are not in a rush to come with bigger memory capacities. This would require an upgrade of their manufacturing facilities as well as investment in R&D. Why bother when money are good with the status quo?
SanDisk is the first memory manufacturer which decided to break the ranks and come with a greater flash memory capacity. NAND 7232 make use of the same tactics for performance boosting as its previous family.
The NAND flash is split into two areas: a TLC NAND partition for storage of the bulk of actual data, and a high-performance SLC cache. Its SLC cache can burst up to impressive speeds of 150MB/s write and 280MB/s read. SanDisk's memory chips, according to company's claims, can also support gigabit wireless performance. They can be used in a 2×2 antenna configuration for feeding 802.11ac.
The NAND partitioning along provides all these advances in burst performance in SanDisk flash memory chips. The end user is not seeing such partition schemes and they do not take additional storage capacity.
There were some issues in the past associated with TLC NAND memories regarding the long-term wear. However, in case of using them in smartphones these issues don't seem to manifest, since most of the smartphones' don't use to write huge amounts of data on them anyway.
