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Which micro SD card to buy?

R

rlb4

Android Enthusiast
I'm looking to buy a 16GB micro SD card for the Captivate. Which is a good one and where is the cheapest place to buy it?
 
Yah no problem! :) It is one of the few things I know, but trust me, Class 6 is kind of like having a high speed one memory card for your Camera. It will rarely, but occasionally, get beat out by a lower class like a Class 4. Don't ask me why, but sometimes a Class 6 regardless of the brand, won't be able to match a Class 4's speed. Just to be safe though, buy a class 6! Haha yah that probably made no sense, but I tried my best
 
I believe the way that the memory card manufacturers work is that they try to make the best (fastest) memory cards as possible. When they test the parts, some may pass the fastest speed grade and can be sold for a price premium. Some that are slower in ANY characteristic (whether it be read time, write time, erase time, etc.) get re-classified as a slower speed grade. Furthermore if there is a lot of demand for a slow speed grade but not so much for the faster one, they could simply mark a faster part as a slow one. So those are two reasons why you could have a slow speed grade device but have it actually run as fast as a fast speed grade part.
 
this topic came up on another forum Im on. A member took a video with both a class 2 and class 4 card and there was no visible difference in video quality. Another member chimed in and said you will never see a difference in card speed through the phone itself regardless of class, the only time card speed will have a noticeable difference is when transferring files from the car to a computer or vice versa.

personally, Id rather go for a quality card like Kingston, Crucial or SanDisk. Kingstons unfortunately doesn't make anything over a 16GB, Crucial has nothing over 4GB, but SanDisk does have a 32GB which I will probably buy as soon as I have confirmed that Kingston doesn't have something in the works.
 
GalaxyS609 said:
this topic came up on another forum Im on. A member took a video with both a class 2 and class 4 card and there was no visible difference in video quality. Another member chimed in and said you will never see a difference in card speed through the phone itself regardless of class, the only time card speed will have a noticeable difference is when transferring files from the car to a computer or vice versa.

personally, Id rather go for a quality card like Kingston, Crucial or SanDisk. Kingstons unfortunately doesn't make anything over a 16GB, Crucial has nothing over 4GB, but SanDisk does have a 32GB which I will probably buy as soon as I have confirmed that Kingston doesn't have something in the works.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of looking into getting the 32GB one but does anyone know if it will definitely work on the captivate?
 
Do you really need a class 4 or 6? I can get a class 2 16GB for about $20. A class 4 or 6 16GB is like $60 is it really worth it, all I need is the extra storage for videos and pictures..
 
falcon26 said:
Do you really need a class 4 or 6? I can get a class 2 16GB for about $20. A class 4 or 6 16GB is like $60 is it really worth it, all I need is the extra storage for videos and pictures..
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I would like to know that also. Usually the class speed of the card is only important in transferrring data to a computer or transferring data to the card. In digital cameras it is mostly important when shooting in burst mode. I don't think a cell phone would be able to take advantage of a class 6 or above but I'm certainly not an expert. I would like to see if anyone has done tests to see which speed is beneficial and when does it become a waste.
 
jojorios said:
I was thinking of looking into getting the 32GB one but does anyone know if it will definitely work on the captivate?
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The owners manual, page 34, states 16GB max, microSD or microSDHC.

I'm thinking Class 2 or 4 is fine, a higher class is probably a waste of $.
 
RingMe said:
The owners manual, page 34, states 16GB max, microSD or microSDHC.

I'm thinking Class 2 or 4 is fine, a higher class is probably a waste of $.
Click to expand...

...so you can't use a 32gb? That's lame. Can anyone confirm this? I know there's alot of money involved in testing a 32gb card, but if I can, I will avoid an iTouch all together, and grab a 32gb card.
 
the way the internal 16gb is mapped you can only add another 16 to it to get the max 32gb...notice when you have an SD card it is added as an extension to the original 16gb, not as a new memory source.
 
Class 6 is recommended for taking photos & capturing video. Other than that, any other speed class will work well.
 
I hate misleading bullshit.

The way this interprets is you should be able to add 32GB to the phone

Memory
Internal memory storage 16 GB
Expandable memory storage 32 GB
Memory formatmicroSD(TM)
Click to expand...

Copied right from AT&Ts website. Samsung Captivate (TM) Cell Phone - Wireless from AT&T

Memory
User Memory - 16GB ROM/512MB RAM
External Memory - 32GB
Click to expand...

Copied right from Samsungs website. Making the Smartphone Brilliant Samsung Captivate? (SGH-i897) - AT&T Cell Phones - Cell Phones | SAMSUNG

Looks like Im going to have to make some phone calls.
 
Page 34 of the owner's manual.
CaptivCard1.jpg
 
yup, I have the owners manual, dont really care. Why print one thing and list something completely different.
 
t-readyroc said:
Class 6 is recommended for taking photos & capturing video. Other than that, any other speed class will work well.
Click to expand...

The OEM micro SD cards that come with the other Galaxy's and the ones AT&T offer are Class 2. I agree a Class 6 would be best for a "real" digital camera or video camera, but for a cell phone I think Class 2 or 4 will be more than enough.
 
I currently have a SanDisk Class2 8GB in there, and Titanium backups are slow as molasses on a frozen lake. Took like 20min to do the original "backup everything."

I'm going to try a Class6/Class10 16GB and see what happens...
32GB card would be overkill for me, anyways, so 16GB should suffice.

16GB should suffice - man, unbelievable! I remember my first IDE drive in like 1991 - 210MB Maxtor LXT213A! What a RUSH that was.

Now we're talking bout GIGABYTES on cell phones!!!

T
 
rlb4 said:
The OEM micro SD cards that come with the other Galaxy's and the ones AT&T offer are Class 2. I agree a Class 6 would be best for a "real" digital camera or video camera, but for a cell phone I think Class 2 or 4 will be more than enough.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I paid less than $30 for a Sandisk class 2 card on Amazon. Can't wait for it to show up on Monday (hooray for free shipping).
 
If anyone can get their hands on different (classes of) cards at the same time to run some tests, there's a free app in the marketplace called SD Card Speed Test you could run and post the results. :)
 
rlb4 said:
The OEM micro SD cards that come with the other Galaxy's and the ones AT&T offer are Class 2. I agree a Class 6 would be best for a "real" digital camera or video camera, but for a cell phone I think Class 2 or 4 will be more than enough.
Click to expand...
Maybe for the photos, but if you're recording HD video, you're going to need Class6 or higher...
 
sremick said:
If anyone can get their hands on different (classes of) cards at the same time to run some tests, there's a free app in the marketplace called SD Card Speed Test you could run and post the results. :)
Click to expand...

There's a problem with this program - you can't specify which SD card it's running against, so you don't know what results it's giving. I took my SD card out and ran it against the internal card. It gave me
7MB/s Write
15MB/s Read
Class 6

I put my external card back in, re-ran the test and got the same results. Unfortunately, you can't un-mount the internal card without unmounting the external card :( Looks like a different program would be needed.
 
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