All Pixel 9 telephones ship with an older, slower storage tech. Are we okay with that?

Google has outfitted your entire Pixel 9 collection, together with the Pixel 9 Professional Fold, with UFS 3.1 storage, regardless of the sooner UFS 4.0 reminiscence being accessible since earlier than the Pixel 8’s launch.

The UFS 4.0 normal was introduced in mid-2022 and we’ve been seeing it on flagships since 2023, although admittedly it is not the default storage protocol.

Having mentioned that, it is one factor for a mid-tier cellphone and even an entry-level flagship like the usual Galaxy S24 mannequin with 128GB of storage to omit UFS 4.0 however a completely totally different factor for high-end telephones just like the Pixel 9 Professional duo and 9 Professional Fold to ship with UFS 3.1 in 2024. Particularly if they’re vying for the title of one of the best cellphone of the 12 months.

And it isn’t mere hypothesis as Google has confirmed that each one of its new telephones function the UFS 3.1 protocol.

UFS 4.0 affords double the learn pace of UFS 3.1 and 1.6x sooner write pace. This interprets to hitch-free multitasking and sooner app load occasions.

As Android Authority factors out, issues apart from flash storage specification additionally influence reminiscence pace, together with a cellphone’s cellphone’s chipset and reminiscence controller. The theoretical significance of a brand new storage tech cannot be undermined although, as proved by the truth that the Zenfone 11 Extremely, which boasts UFS 4.0, affords two and 3 times sooner sequential learn and write speeds, respectively, than the Pixel 9 Professional XL.

Whereas that will sound like an enormous distinction, you might be unlikely to really feel it whereas utilizing a cellphone, as sequential reads and writes do not matter all that a lot until you routinely switch heavy information or play large Android video games. For generally used apps akin to Fb, WhatsApp, and Maps, even UFS 2.2 will suffice.

The Pixel 9 is quick sufficient to profit from a typical 5Gbps (625MB/s) USB 3.0 connection when copying knowledge from the cellphone to a pc. Then again, transferring knowledge to the cellphone is slower. To get probably the most out of your UFS 4.0 smartphone, you want a quick USB port in your laptop computer in addition to a speedy SSD.

UFS 4.0 is 25 to 45 p.c extra environment friendly, so it sucks considerably much less energy than UFS 3.1. This is not going to have a perceptible impact on battery life, contemplating storage solely accounts for a small share of a cellphone’s total power consumption.

It may be tempting for many who recurrently switch heavy information, akin to movies, to go for a cellphone with UFS 4.0 however since most smartphones apply compression, UFS 3.1 can simply deal with even 8K movies.

With all that mentioned, I nonetheless do not suppose Google did proper by its prospects by not going for UFS 4.0. In spite of everything, the Pixel 9 begins at $100 increased than the earlier technology, and the AI options aren’t sufficient to justify the hike.

Additionally, these are billed as AI telephones, in order that they’d have benefited from sooner storage speeds as this might have allowed for AI fashions to be rapidly loaded into RAM. To make up for the deficiency, the Professional fashions have reserved 3GB of RAM for AI duties.

The Pixel 9 will likely be supported for seven years, and the older storage tech would possibly begin displaying its age a couple of years into the possession. It would not assist that UFS 3.1 lacks lots of the new capabilities of UFS 4.0, akin to put on leveling, which is a course of that extends the lifetime of solid-state storage units.