SanDisk Develops a 12GB microSD Card

SanDisk has announced at CES that it has begun to sample 12-gigabyte (GB) microSDHC flash memory cards to major phone manufacturers for testing and evaluation. The card marks a 50% bump in capacity from the current largest 8gb microSD cards available today. SanDisk has not announced pricing or availability and says this card is a prototype and may not even come to market. The company says it will begin shipping a 16GB card later this year.

According to SanDisk, a 12GB microSD card will be able to store a combination of 1,500 songs (128kbps), 3,600 photos (2 megapixel) and 24.5 hours of video (Approximation for MPEG-4 video at 384 kbp).

SDHC is the designation for any SD or SD-based card that is larger than 2GB and adheres to the new SD 2.00 specification required for cards and hosts to support 4GB to 32GB capacities. The specification was developed by the SD Association, an industry standards board, which has also created three classes to define minimum sustained data transfer speed. These cards adhere to the SD Speed Class 4 Rating.