We have zero insight into the longevity of flash memory because it doesn’t matter: whatever it is, it’s a lot longer than the phone’s planned obscolescence.
That’s why you’ve never heard anybody complain about their saved data getting corrupted: their device has long since hit the landfill before that happens.
I must disagree. I’ve encountered a couple of phones from people in my family that could not be restored because the flash itself was bad. The flash memory specifically failed and required them to purchase a new phone.
We’re talking 5 to 7-year-old phones here. It does happen. There are plenty of people who will never replace their phone until it breaks.
For another example, consider that Google added forward error correction to their system images because they encountered issues with failing memory chips in the wild. This was an effort to keep devices booting and operable for longer.
Not a whole lot to share. Phone was unstable for a bit and one day refused to boot past a blank screen. As far as I could tell from trying to pull data off it, something got corrupted and it could no longer boot but my data was all encrypted with no way to pull it off.
It depends on the storage medium. SD cards will fail if you use them enough. Photographers and videographers will run into to problem every once in a while, especially if they’re a professional. Why SD cards in particular have a tendency to fail, I can’t exactly say. It might just be their form factor making internal physical damage more likely. I say internal, because the issue is that a normal looking SD card will one day turn up corrupted for no obvious reason.
I haven’t heard of any other type of flash memory having lifespan issues for regular consumers.
Yeah it’s at the level of frequency where an ordinary user with one SD card is unlikely to have a problem, but if photography is your hobby it’s only a matter of time. In a rather informal poll conducted by Chelsea and Tony Northrup, they basically found that two thirds of the most active photographers had experienced at least one SD card failure. It basically was just a direct correlation with how many photographs you’ve taken.
Yeah but the practical write limit tests I’ve seen for SSDs (from ten years ago) put it well beyond what even a professional photographer would do. We’re talking SSDs that sustained constant writing of random data 24/7 and didn’t fail for more than a year. There’s just something about SD cards. As further “proof,” photographers don’t complain about their SSDs failing on them, even though those should have more write cycles than their SD cards.
SD cards don’t perform wear leveling while ssds do. This is why there are specific SD cards meant for surveillance cameras. They have additional wear levelling circuitry at the expense of speed.
So photographers who fill up their sd cards end up writing over the same spots repeatedly and wear them out.
I have seen multiple (quality) SSDs with unrecoverable read errors after a few years. All of them had plenty of spare area left. Maybe some kind of retention issue?
The UFS storage inside an Android smartphone is basically an SSD. Both use flash memory, so it’s reasonable to expect that they have similar failure modes. But I’m not sure if you could diagnose such a failure on Android.
I wonder if it’s still true now that most phone manufacturers enable Memory Extension by default. This feature will likely reduce storage lifespan especially on low end devices that don’t have big RAM.
We have zero insight into the longevity of flash memory because it doesn’t matter: whatever it is, it’s a lot longer than the phone’s planned obscolescence.
That’s why you’ve never heard anybody complain about their saved data getting corrupted: their device has long since hit the landfill before that happens.
I take it you weren’t around for the Nexus 7 (first edition)?
I must disagree. I’ve encountered a couple of phones from people in my family that could not be restored because the flash itself was bad. The flash memory specifically failed and required them to purchase a new phone.
We’re talking 5 to 7-year-old phones here. It does happen. There are plenty of people who will never replace their phone until it breaks.
For another example, consider that Google added forward error correction to their system images because they encountered issues with failing memory chips in the wild. This was an effort to keep devices booting and operable for longer.
I’ve had two phones die because of the storage chip, around 5-6 years after buying them.
Can’t agree with that, I’ve definitely had corrupted data events happen in the past.
Care to share details?
Not a whole lot to share. Phone was unstable for a bit and one day refused to boot past a blank screen. As far as I could tell from trying to pull data off it, something got corrupted and it could no longer boot but my data was all encrypted with no way to pull it off.
It depends on the storage medium. SD cards will fail if you use them enough. Photographers and videographers will run into to problem every once in a while, especially if they’re a professional. Why SD cards in particular have a tendency to fail, I can’t exactly say. It might just be their form factor making internal physical damage more likely. I say internal, because the issue is that a normal looking SD card will one day turn up corrupted for no obvious reason.
I haven’t heard of any other type of flash memory having lifespan issues for regular consumers.
I’ve used the same microsd for years. Granted it isn’t heavily used.
Yeah it’s at the level of frequency where an ordinary user with one SD card is unlikely to have a problem, but if photography is your hobby it’s only a matter of time. In a rather informal poll conducted by Chelsea and Tony Northrup, they basically found that two thirds of the most active photographers had experienced at least one SD card failure. It basically was just a direct correlation with how many photographs you’ve taken.
Flash has a limited number of writes so that makes sense
Yeah but the practical write limit tests I’ve seen for SSDs (from ten years ago) put it well beyond what even a professional photographer would do. We’re talking SSDs that sustained constant writing of random data 24/7 and didn’t fail for more than a year. There’s just something about SD cards. As further “proof,” photographers don’t complain about their SSDs failing on them, even though those should have more write cycles than their SD cards.
SD cards don’t perform wear leveling while ssds do. This is why there are specific SD cards meant for surveillance cameras. They have additional wear levelling circuitry at the expense of speed.
So photographers who fill up their sd cards end up writing over the same spots repeatedly and wear them out.
I have seen multiple (quality) SSDs with unrecoverable read errors after a few years. All of them had plenty of spare area left. Maybe some kind of retention issue?
How does that apply to android?
The UFS storage inside an Android smartphone is basically an SSD. Both use flash memory, so it’s reasonable to expect that they have similar failure modes. But I’m not sure if you could diagnose such a failure on Android.
I wonder if it’s still true now that most phone manufacturers enable Memory Extension by default. This feature will likely reduce storage lifespan especially on low end devices that don’t have big RAM.