Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest smartphone-maker, said Thursday that it has started mass production of an advanced storage memory chip for smartphones called universal flash storage memory.

UFS memory chips, which comes in three storage capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB, has double the capacity of current internal flash memory chips used in smartphones.
 

“The increased smartphone storage thanks to the UFS memory chip will likely do away with the need for external memory cards and bring much change to the design of the Samsung smartphone lineup down the road,” an industry official said.

The first smartphone in line for such a design change is likely to be Samsung’s new marquee smartphone, the Galaxy S6, which will make its official debut at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday.

The S6 is anticipated to have a uniform metal body without a slot for an external memory card.

The new memory chip ― using the UFS 2.0 interface, the industry’s most advanced data transfer standard ― is also 2.7 times faster than the current top-notch internal memory chip, and 28 times faster than an external memory card.

The UFS 2.0 interface was first adopted in a flash memory chip made by Japanese chipmaker Toshiba last year, and other chipmakers including SK hynix are working on developing flash memory based on the same technology standard.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)