SD cards or memory cards are one of the most popular mobile add-ons purchased by most people.
Whether you’re a smartphone user or a feature phone user, you have at one point in your life had to purchase a memory card.
Even though most phones produced after 2013 are designed with huge internal memory capacity, most users still require extra memory space.
Therefore, most of these phones still come with external memory card slots – except for iPhones.
For most people, when purchasing a memory card, the premium focus is on memory capacity.
Once they see higher volumes written on the card, they are impressed and ready to dish out some money.
If you’ve ever done this, know that you’ve been doing it the wrong way.
There are several other features which should be considered when selecting a memory card to buy.
In this article, we take you through all those features and what you might be doing wrong.
Memory Type
What most people don’t know is that Memory cards actually come in types. There are two basic types of memory cards. They are the SDHC and the SDXC.
The SDHC is an abbreviation for ‘SD High Capacity Memory Card’ while the SDXC is an abbreviation for ‘SD Extended Capacity Memory’.
Depending on what your phone specifications are, you may have to choose a memory type which matches it.
For instance, if your phone accepts external memories of up to 64GB, you should consider buying the SDHC memory card. It’ll work perfectly in it.
However, if your phone supports higher external memory of up to 1TB, then it’s perfect to go for the SDXC.
So, yes! The memory type matters so much when you’re selecting your memory card. It’s usually written boldly on the package so you can see if it’s the best fit for your phone.
Memory Card Speed
I know this will surprise you. But, memory cards have speed. Just like pen drives and other devices.
Memory cards are ranked based on how much data they can process per minute.
The ranking is on a scale of 1 to 10. With 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest in terms of speed.
To determine the speed of your memory card, you should check the UDMA rating written on the card.
A UDMA rating of 1 means the card is slow while a UDMA rating of 10 means the card is super fast.
CAPACITY
Obviously, this is the most common one. You are already used to this one but I still had to put it on the list anyway.
After all, of what good would it be for you to buy a memory card without checking its capacity?
It’s the memory capacity you want, anyway!
Depending on what you need that extra memory space for, you may decide to go for a smaller memory capacity or a bigger one.
Obviously, if you’re up for photos or videos, then you may be considering a higher memory capacity.
Memory Size
The size of your memory card is also one of the most important things you need to consider.
Size here means physical dimensions. And not storage capacity.
Memory cards have evolved over the ages and so there are various forms available on the market.
Getting the right size is important so you can use it in your phone.
There are two main sizes of the memory card. There’s the standard-sized memory card and there’s the micro SD card.
You should check the external memory card port on your phone to see which size is applicable.
Memory Card Brand
Finally, the last thing you should check before buying your memory card is the brand.
After checking all the factors listed above and confirming that the memory card you’re buying is a good fit for your phone, this final step is very important.
Due to the influx of many fake devices and materials on the market, you can’t afford to buy just anything.
In fact, there are many fake memory cards than there are legitimate and original ones.
To prevent yourself from buying a fake memory, the best thing is for you to stick to known brands.
Don’t buy a memory card brand which sounds a bit strange or wrongly spelt.
Don’t buy a memory bearing SUMSUNG since you know there’s no authentic brand like that.
Conclusion
Memory cards are very important in today’s world. Almost all smartphone and feature phone users have memory cards in their phones.
A memory card gives you an extra storage space which you can use for just about anything.
But, getting the right memory for your phone can be a problem. This is particularly true because you don’t know what to check out for when buying one.
In this article, we looked at some 5 things to look out for when buying a new memory card.
We hope the article was helpful to you and that you’ll share it with your friends and relatives.
If you have any questions, comments or reservations about the article, kindly share them with us in the comment box below or get in touch with us.
