The microSD card is a small flash memory card used for portable electronic devices. It is about the size of a fingernail and can have varying storage capacities. It can be used with devices that have SD card slots using a special adapter. The technology allows for smaller physical size while still holding more data.
People who use portable electronic devices often want to store their data portablely. This is especially true for users of cell phones, portable global positioning system (GPS) devices, and video and audio players and recorders. One of the primary formats for these portable memory sources is a microSD card, which is one of the smallest flash memory cards on the market. It is manufactured by SanDisk, which lends its name to the SD; the other part of the name comes from the paper’s small size.
SanDisk originally manufactured the SD card, which was a little bigger than the microSD card. Then came the miniSD card, which was a bit smaller, and the microSD card, the smallest of them all. Most technical measurements for small paper put it at 15 by 11 by 1 mm (about 0.59 by 0.43 by 0.04 inch), which is roughly the size of a fingernail.
The microSD card is about one-quarter the size of a standard SD card, but can still be used with devices that have SD card slots using a special adapter. Portable audio and video players have SD card slots, and some of the latest models have smaller slots as well. When used in a cell phone or portable GPS device, the card is usually built into the electronic device. Some cell phones or GPS trackers have removable cards, but that feature is usually reserved for devices of a different nature—those that lend themselves to expandable and compressible memory needs, such as video and audio players.
The general idea behind SD cards is that they can have storage capacities of varying amounts. A common amount of memory for one of these cards is 1 gigabyte (GB), although microSD cards are also available in 128 megabyte (MB), 256 MB, 512 MB, and 2 GB capacities. The more data the card contains, the more expensive it will be.
However, this increase in capacity does not mean a corresponding increase in physical size. The technology that allows computer hard drives to get smaller and smaller while still being able to hold more and more data also applies to these memory cards. The 128MB microSD card looks a lot like the 2GB card, for example, but a user will notice the difference when swapping one for the other in a digital audio player.
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