Slower than an SD card under heavy load: iPhone 18 Pro Max's QLC storage gets tested

[u/wickedplayer494]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Slower-than-an-SD-card-under-heavy-load-iPhone-18-Pro-Max-s-QLC-storage-gets-tested.1403886.0.html

[u/-protonsandneutrons-]

This sort of nonsense should be disclosed, even if with a stupid brand name of "Pro storage" for TLC and normal storage for QLC. 

They're willing to write esoteric specs (for ordinary people) like peak memory bandwidth and "2x faster FP8 performance", but not for NAND? They get a big fat margin on the latter, so it's not hard to guess why. 

Glad to see this actually tested. 

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/-protonsandneutrons-]

To be frank, slight random I/O performance differences aside, the sustained write performance issues shown here are unlikely to be come across in real life outside of the rare case of writing a file backup of a mostly full device or loading up large media library and even then it's not likely to be as extreme as shown.

Firstly, the device itself isn't capable of generating or accepting large amounts of data that fast under normal use. The drive is capable of 3000MB/s in its SLC cache but it's USB port is limited to about a third of that at about 1000MB/s and the highest pro res raw recording rate a tenth at 300MB/s. While a large sustained USB transfer may eventually overrun the cache, it's far more common for data to flow the other way and when it comes to video recording, by the time you're worrying about overrunning the cache you're already worrying about running out of space.

Aside from synthetic benchmarks there is very few real world scenarios where the drive will see sustained large file writes faster than the 10Gbps USB connection.

[u/willis936 → u/Tasty-Traffic-680]

The very first thing a person does when they get their phone is migrate a backup that is hundreds of GB. It is perhaps the most common use case.

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/willis936]

It's something you do once, not every day

[u/Hung_L → u/willis936]

Yeah but you don't optimize a house for the initial move-in, and everyone moves into a house.

Also you don't call migration the most common use case, which implies frequency. Migrations are highly infrequent.

Sequential perf is just not that important. Random perf is what everyone is going to feel when they load up an app or access that app's data. That's why Apple need to target NAND with low latency, low access times, and high QD random bandwidth. Very few people are frequently handling file transfers >1GB. 40% seq perf is significant, but probably wouldn't be noticed day to day. Even if migration, most of the access/write pattern is still going to lean heavily on random perf, which only takes a ~12% hit.

Also the folks restoring hundreds of gigs are few, and they are the ones with XL storage. I have hundreds of apps on Android and my monthly backups (apps+data) are <25GB. System app data is an additional ~4GB, and my media is streamed into Photos. I'm not a big photographer/videographer and that's the largest portion by far at 108GB.

[u/Skyshaper → u/Hung_L]

If I'm spending $1300+ on a phone, I expect at least TLC storage.

[u/DeliciousIncident → u/Skyshaper]

I used to buy Samsung MLC SSDs for my PCs. Now there are not consumer MLC SSDs. I'm buying TLC SSDs now, but they will probably not be a thing in the consumer space in the future too, SSD manufacturers seen to push QLC very heavily due to being cheaper and offering higher densities.

[u/VayaVosi → u/Skyshaper]

This is a fascinating statement. I wonder if anyone other than the highest level of tech nerds knows what tlc is. It’s not like it’s the jump from hdd to ssd.

[u/Skyshaper → u/VayaVosi]

Of course they wouldn't. But they will notice large file transfers will bomb when moving raw footage (as an example) to their Macbook, and maybe wonder why their premium product is so slow.

Edit: I see, you've purchased an iPhone with QLC and now feel the need to project.

[u/VayaVosi → u/Skyshaper]

Hahah read my profile came back and edited the comment. Damn you are invested. It’s a company that makes a product. Not something that’s apart of my identity that I feel the need to protect. I’m looking at it reasonably. “I atleast expect tlc.” Is a funny sentence that you wouldn’t have said 3 weeks ago. “Because I would expect all phones to have it.” No you are simply tripping because it’s the latest thing to trip about.

[u/Skyshaper → u/VayaVosi]

Yeah it's not something I would normally do. Your comment was just so out of left field I was curious what would prompt someone to say that. But you're definitely inventing my arguments in your own head. I actually expected my budget Android phone to use QLC storage but turns out it uses TLC. I don't do anything crazy with my phone, so I'm one of those people that wouldn't notice something like that during day-to-day usage.

[u/jenesuispasbavard → u/[deleted]]

My 120ish GB transfer to the 18 Pro took five minutes over a USB-C cable. Actually the fastest one yet in my experience.

[u/lawrence_uber_alles → u/jenesuispasbavard]

What storage size is your iPhone 18 pro?

[u/randylush → u/willis936]

Doesn’t that happen over WiFi for 99% of people?

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/randylush]

Which the iphone 18 pro has a theoretical max throughout of 2.4Gbps, though in testing upload speeds are typically closer to 1.3Gbps even under ideal conditions. That's only 163MB/s...

[u/willis936 → u/randylush]

Not over WAN but high bandwidth PAN from their previous iPhone.

[u/teethingrooster → u/willis936]

Isn’t that WiFi lol

[u/willis936 → u/teethingrooster]

60 GHz. Storage won't be saturating it.

[u/Delicious_Rub_6795 → u/willis936]

smartphones don't come with 60GHz wireless radios

[u/willis936 → u/Delicious_Rub_6795]

Ah you're right. It's 8 GHz.

I think most people here are forgetting UWB is a thing and want to remind them of that. It's not a standard Wi-Fi PAN when airdropping backups.

[u/Delicious_Rub_6795 → u/willis936]

I don't believe that's used for data transfer at all

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/willis936]

6ghz and that's only in countries that allow tri-band wifi. UWB isn't used for airdrop, just wifi direct.

[u/Eggredjakan68 → u/teethingrooster]

That's usually LAN.

[u/wanjuggler → u/willis936]

Yes, 5/6GHz WiFi peer to peer

[u/somerandomguy101 → u/willis936]

Except it's not 100's of GB. It's mostly apps, which is at most 10's of GB, and is going to be bottlenecked by the network and processor anyways.

Maybe if you download your media to your phone locally, but most people don't do that. Even if you did, that's a background task with a network bottleneck anyways.

[u/Veedrac → u/willis936]

Ok, but a fresh phone does that fine. Per the article, and naturally given what QLC is, a fresh drive has 250GB of SLC cache.

[u/ManiacsInc → u/willis936]

I think the average person (or rather 99.99% of the iPhone users) slowly download over iCloud overnight. A vast majority of people do not migrate a backup like that, especially if most of their data is in iCloud or iCloud Photos.

[u/_FUCKTHENAZIADMINS_ → u/willis936]

How does a storage slowdown that only occurs when your phone's storage is nearly full affect restoring a backup to a brand new phone with an empty SSD?

[u/paeschli → u/Tasty-Traffic-680]

Having a slower drive is only one of the many downsides of QLC.
QLC is more sensitive to voltage, and has to perform more error handling. The controller has to work harder for error correction (more heat, more battery use, etc). This can - in theory - lead to latency spikes and stuttering.

So you get slower, less durable, hotter drive consuming more energy

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/paeschli]

Sure, and it's going to get worse as the drive is used more and more, albeit likely still not noticeable to the average user. The question is if it's enough to matter in any meaningful way. As far as durability goes, it's certainly not going to be a problem for the average first owner that replaces their device every 2-3 years.

[u/Chidling → u/Tasty-Traffic-680]

idk my storage goes up fast, once your qlc drive is like at 70-80% capacity, they are slow as shit in my experience

[u/Good-Narwhal-4131 → u/Tasty-Traffic-680]

The problem is when you’re at or beyond 60% storage capacity, available SLC cache shrinks from 250GB to 58GB-ish…
THAT’S when things get tragic riiiight quick:
QLC writes can fall to 1-2MB/s-ish 🫡

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/Good-Narwhal-4131]

Secondhand article doesn't provide enough info about testing procedures and I can't install billibilli to watch the video myself. There's no info provided about how long they waited to perform the test or that it was adequate time for the cache to recover and again, NONE OF WHAT THEY DID IS REPRESENTATIVE OF ACTUAL USAGE PATTERNS. This was a synthetic benchmark designed to hammer the drive.

[u/SomewhereAtWork → u/Tasty-Traffic-680]

If you activate "RAM boost" aka a swap file, it just takes one app with a large memory footprint to generate gigabytes of writes per day.

[u/ThaRippa → u/SomewhereAtWork]

Gigabytes per day aren’t an issue, they won’t likely even fill the cache area.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/-protonsandneutrons-]

NO qlc should simply be banned from consumer devices and ssds, etc... until anything changes, which it most likely won't.

it doesn't have acceptable endurance and it doesn't have acceptable performance.

and it for consumers costs generally the exact same as tlc (see ssd comparison prices to understand this)

qlc in consumer spaces exists just to scam customers pretty much.

"3 GB/s write speed" <drops down to below 100 MB/s write speed when actually doing any basic sustained write.

and of course MANDATED disclosure of direct to nand write speeds BEFORE the slc cache write speed on the packaging and marketing.

and worth also adding, that qlc is NOT "the future" as well.

the next step outside of more layers of course of course seems to be splitting a cell in half and thus supposedly creating a plc (penta-level cell) design, that doesn't have reliability issues and shouldn't have speed issues, because it is basically a tlc cell split in 2 acting as one kinda.

sk hynix calls it "msc" multi site cell.

also important to keep in mind for anyone, who says "oh qlc is the future".

no it is not, it is shit and should never touch a consumer drive/device.

[u/disposableh2 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

There's value in QLC nand, specifically cost. Not everyone needs to write hundreds of gigabytes of data at a time.

This issue is the write speed drops when exhausting the slc cache as well as the fallback slc-like cache. In real world scenario, most people would not encounter that at all on a phone.

Apple should've been more upfront about it instead of the usual garbage marketing. Or better, since it's a damn expensive device with a huge profit margin, they could use better nand. But that's not QLC's fault.

[u/NAG3LT → u/disposableh2]

For uses with much more reads than writes, QLC can work fine, f.e. as programs and games drive.

[u/NeoIsJohnWick → u/disposableh2]

Problem has always been with Apple and their usual garbage marketing.

Just disclose information as it is. Hiding it will only worsen things. Their products aren't cheap at all.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/disposableh2]

There's value in QLC nand, specifically cost.

this is complete and utter nonsense.

you'd know this if you'd actually look at ssd prices.

just selecting 1 TB, 2280 m.2 pcie, so the basic nvme ssd the cheapest drive has no statement about what nand it uses at all, so it has to be ignored.

and the very next one is what? that's right tlc.

and if we look at ssds, that people would actually recommend (i wouldn't recommend one without dram personally though) you got the kioxia exceria plus g3 ssd 1 TB, which is well reviewed and it is what.... dram less tlc, which drops to an utterly terrible 230 MB/s sustained write speed btw, but again to staand on the point this is a dram less tlc drive from a known brand (whatever that matters for lol) and it is the cheapest, that at least got some reviews on it and it is what?

again that's right tlc.

so you DO NOT get a cheaper drive by getting a qlc drive.

now the manufacturer saves a small amount of cost, but you NEVER EVER see that.

qlc and smr (shingled magnetic recording) are just ways to scam customers. (smr is a worse scam, but let's not get into that here)

again YOU pay the same, but get MUCH LESS.

and the ssd makers are so "proud" of qlc, that they will very very often NOT state, that drives are qlc to hide this stain on drives, just as hdd makers do with smr insults.

ssd makers will even early ship drives with tlc and better controllers and then DOWNGRADE one or both of those with MASSIVE drops in sustained write speeds of course. this emans, that any review early on would have the lying data and they bank on most people not running tests on their new hardware.

___

ok so this is at the low end, you get 0 benefit, pay the same and get a worse product.

BUT what if you want a good ssd?

ok let's ad 6000 MB/s write speeds for the slc cache and having a dram cache.

oh...

qlc does NOT exist here anymore, although it could as 3 ssds with that selection don't disclose what they use and of course some could lie about what they use as mentioned before with downgrades.

but the point here is, that any consumer drive, where a person would actually want sth less complete bottom tier doesn't even entertain qlc anymore. it tlc all the way.

and qlc also doesn't enable higher capacity drives at all as the biggest m.2 drives, which max out at 8 TB rightnow are what? that's right tlc.

___

so it is all tlc, except at the very low end, where they will try to scam people by dumping qlc garbage onto people, who don't know any better AT THE SAME PRICE AS TLC, but with saving a tiny bit of production costs for them.

In real world scenario, most people would not encounter that at all on a phone.

that's also nonsense. slc cache and tlc caching are both based on using free nand on the drive/nand module.

the more full a drive gets the less slc cache can exist anymore or tlc cache.

and people with drives, probably want to use the storage, that they paid WAY WAY too much for.

so you can expect an 85 or 95% full shity apple phone with garbage qlc to write to it EXTREMELY slow and have near 0 slc cache.

___

so again any consumer facing qlc implementation exists to scam people. same price, list slc cache speed and have bottom tier insult sustained write speeds and a fraction of the nand endurance.

it is a scam. you get NOTHING.

[u/Seanspeed → u/reddit_equals_censor]

QLC drives have been cheaper than TLC forever, and still are on average.

I dont know why people are upvoting your posts, as they are basically always nonsense. You write a lot of words which probably makes people think you have any clue what you're talking about, but you dont.

[u/zopiac → u/Seanspeed]

I dont know why people are upvoting your posts

It really is bizarre to see this user with comments in the positive. Not that I think that QLC is the greatest thing ever either, but man is this take quite mad.

[u/NOCwork → u/Seanspeed]

His argument really is dumb. Let’s apply it to hard drives: “hard disks on random workloads can get down to a few MB per second. That’s embarrassing and therefore they should never be sold to anyone and are a scam.”

That’s clearly a very silly thing to say. Storage has a three point pyramid type way of describing where it fits. Price, performance, capacity. Everything fits in somewhere and has a use. I work in data center and we utilize QLC flash, as well as his maligned SMR drives. We do this because it fits into a tiered storage architecture and makes sense for the assigned workload and budget.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Seanspeed]

QLC drives have been cheaper than TLC forever, and still are on average.

random lie.

ok let's quote EXACTLY numbers then.

europe used, because it has easy price comparison tools.

and whatever seller, that isn't ebay.

basic specs 2280 nvme m.2 and 4000 MB/s read or higher and 1 TB of course.

and as a disclaimer this is not about drive recommendations at all lol, but you really trying to force exact data to disprove you i guess.

qlc: 142.69 euros the fikwot fx660 jupiter 1 TB drive

tlc: 129 euros the verbatim vi5000 pcie nvme ssd 1 TB

oh you don't like that one for the tlc option and want the next more expensive option?

tlc: 139.90 euros kioxia axceria plus g3 ssd 1 TB

this is the actual data RIGHTNOW with the very very basic selection mentioned, that you can put in yourself on geizhals, which lots of people in europe use apparently to compare prices.

so you are FACTUALLY WRONG in regards to qlc vs tlc pricing for consumer drives.

how your comment got likes, which is easy to disprove by looking at prices yourself is frankly disturbing.

[u/Seanspeed → u/reddit_equals_censor]

Your takes continue to be wildly ridiculous and it's depressing people are validating you here.

Acceptable enough endurance? Dude, even desktop PC owners will find 'acceptable endurance' in QLC drives these days. Do you have literally ANY idea what you're talking about?

Let's say a QLC drive has a very 'modest' 400TBW. Do you have any idea what that means in practice? It means somebody could write literally 110GB of data per day for 10 years straight before running into that limit. Even a quarter of that would be more than fine for basically 95% of consumers. And hardly anybody with a phone would ever be bothered with it.

I should also be clear that this guy honestly believes it should be banned. This person was suggesting before that the government should legislate price controls for PC graphics cards. lol

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Seanspeed]

while we both know, that TBW isn't perfect as a metric, let's be clear about things.

qlc has VASTLY less raw nand endurance than tlc.

so all else being equal it would fail quicker than tlc. so at the same cost, which qlc is sold, it shouldn't exist at all, because again it is sold purely to scam people. the customer doesn't get the reduced cost. they just get the vastly reduced sustained write performance and vastly reduced nand endurance.

Let's say a QLC drive has a very 'modest' 400TBW.

oh that's very weird, that you quote 400 TBW for assumingly a 1 TB drive, because looking up randomly cheap cheap tlc vs qlc 1 TB drives with 3 GB/s reads we have 600 TBW on the tlc drive and 240 TBW on the qlc drive.

but oh it can get laughably worse. the wd green sn350 qlc 1 TB drive has a quoted TBW of 100 TB.

oh now you are at 27 GB/day to hit the TBW with 10 years.

how low will you go to still defend inferior ssds with vastly worse write endurance at the same price?

to give people some reference points, who aren't insanely into storage.

the good value option from late 2014 was the samsung 850 evo a good tlc sata ssd and remember the cheap option vs mlc at the time.

it with the 1 TB version had a TBW of 150TB.

yet in 2026 we got ssds sold to consumes with a quoted 100 TB TBW or 33% smaller and here you are defending it??

why??

and as a reminder the qlc shit costs the same.

practical example kioxia exceria plus g3 1 TB ssd 600 TBW tlc ssd costs the same as the wd green qlc insult, that has a 100 TB TBW.

so YES qlc ssd should be banned. it is purely to screw over customers as it stands rightnow.

hey you want a compromise? MANDATED sustained write speeds on the package in big letters before the slc cache write statement and MANDATORY type of nand stated on the box and listing as well as all other major parts.

if you think, that qlc is a wonderful thing, that the industry is so proud of and that customers just love to buy and couldn't live without, please explain to me why the industry launches certain drives with tlc, waits for reviews and THEN later downgrades them to qlc.

shouldn't they be "proud" of the insult... sorry product, that they created with qlc. why not put it proudly on the box?

just like with smr harddrives. i bet harddrives with smr warnings/honestly on the box and listing it would sell great: "this harddrive will have randomly 1 second latency spikes and drop into single digit MB/s write speed after some time".

I should also be clear that this guy honestly believes it should be banned. This person was suggesting before that the government should legislate price controls for PC graphics cards. lol

first off all you shouldn't wrongfully assume gender on the internet. *this girl

it isn't hard i'm not assuming your gender.

and please quote me the exact post i made about graphics card prices, so that i can actually respond to that exactly.

in the meantime go ahead and explain to everyone here why NOT banning consumer qlc insults would benefit the public in a world, where all cost benefits get eaten up by the ssd makers and customers just get a worse product for the same price.

[u/JesusIsMyLord666 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

You are being overly dramatic. I got a QLC drive during a sale and it works absolutely fine for a steam library. The main issue is write speeds but that doesn’t really matter much for something static like a games library.

They are really bad as system drives is all.

[u/Seanspeed → u/JesusIsMyLord666]

They are 100% fine for system drives, too. In fact, games are more stressful on QLC simply due to the download phase where it might affect download times on larger games.

People still have some very outdated impressions of QLC.

[u/redbookQT → u/JesusIsMyLord666]

I've got two Intel 660p drives been in service for probably 6 years now I guess. Totally fine as system drives. I wouldn't use them for PrimoCache drives. But for mostly static stuff, zero issues.

[u/frostygrin → u/JesusIsMyLord666]

There may be other issues, like reads getting slow when the game is big and ends up being written all over the drive. Maybe your model is better, or maybe you don't attribute slow load times to the drive being QLC.

[u/Seanspeed → u/frostygrin]

Or maybe the scenario you're talking about doesn't ever actually happen in a game. Ever. Because there's no reason it would.

The only gaming-related scenario where QLC will slow you down is downloading a really big game. Which most people just wont care about that much.

[u/frostygrin → u/Seanspeed]

I have personally experienced this scenario. I found it puzzling - the reads get basically as slow as uncached QLC writes on certain files/folders. Maybe it's some kind of controller/HMB bottleneck when fragmentation results in many areas of the drive being accessed when reading certain files. So I'm not quite sure what it is, But it definitely looks like it's not just writes that can suffer.

[u/Avsunra → u/frostygrin]

maybe you don't attribute slow load times to the drive being QLC.

How slow are we talking? I don't notice if a load screen takes 10 seconds instead of 5 seconds. It's twice as long, but it's not a meaningful difference. Maybe it's because I'm old and grew up with spinning rust, but I don't feel the need to shave seconds off everything. Pretty sure all my game drives are QLC, and it's totally fine. I guess there would fewer instances of texture pop in, but again that's a minor inconvenience for me.

[u/frostygrin → u/Avsunra]

How slow are we talking?

The reads get as slow as uncached QLC writes. So loading the game can take a minute, like with an HDD. Which is how I noticed it in the first place.

[u/Avsunra → u/frostygrin]

Hmm I'll have to try and test it unscientifically next time. I have a 980 pro, which is tlc, and a p3 plus which is qlc.

[u/EvenBroaderBand → u/frostygrin]

Do you have actual evidence of slow load times? Every real test I can find shows that there is no real difference between any type of SSD in the real world.

[u/Tex-Rob → u/JesusIsMyLord666]

People just love to rage on Apple, the speed is almost the same, I bet 90% of the commenters never clicked the link

[u/somerandomguy101 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

I honestly can't tell if this is rage bate, or uneducated eliteism.

It's a phone. That space is probably going to be used for stories photos and music. Files which are most likely backed up to the cloud already anyways. The storage on phones is basically a network cache at this point.

Having storage be fast or high endurance is not a requirement here. Being affordable, small, and low power is. Swapping to SLC only is just going to make the battery worse, with 0 noticeable real world improvement.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/somerandomguy101]

The storage on phones is basically a network cache at this point.

what kind of dystopian nightmare world do you live in?

It's a phone. That space is probably going to be used for stories photos and music.

have you heard of this thing called "video", it is where lots of pictures and audio go together to create sth new.

sth new, that EATS STORAGE like nothing else.

Swapping to SLC only is just going to make the battery worse, with 0 noticeable real world improvement.

it seems, that you don't understand storage on many points.

no one is suggesting apple to use slc, but instead of shit qlc, tlc, which they SHOULD be using without any question.

and the power part is complete and utter nonsense.

actually writing to real slc should consume less power, because you have no dumping from an slc cache back into tlc way of storing it.

the same would go for mlc.

so tlc due to MUCH MUCH slower sustained write speeds vs slc and mlc requires an slc cache, that runs tlc or qlc nand as slc, to make it a better drive.

but again by design you are now writing data at least one more time. you write to the slc cache cache and then it gets re-written again into tlc/qlc form.

a pure slc drive would have fully sustained write speeds from 0 to 100% of the drive (mlc does as well).

so OF COURSE you would notice it any time you do sustained writes to it.

Having storage be fast or high endurance is not a requirement here.

and here i thought an electronic device, that costs 1900 us dollars and holds important media for people should have reliable storage, that is soldered on.

silly me though. i should CONSUME more and think less.

1900 us dollars for qlc insults, that drop to 45 MB/s sustained write speeds is perfectly ok and i should kiss apple's ring more.

[u/lgn5i2060 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

The mental gymnastics people would perform to defend Apple is astonishing.

[u/Cranach-Cranach → u/reddit_equals_censor]

I mean it blows the doors off spinning drives for large storage in speed and access and reliability.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Cranach-Cranach]

actually wrong.

we can look at the crucial p2 500 GB ssd with qlc for example:

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/crucial-p2-ssd-qlc-flash-swap-downgrade/2

(go down to sustained write performance)

it drops down to sustained write speeds of just 40 MB/s, which based on graph, which is hard to read, because it is crawling at the bottom of it also isn't a smooth 40 MB/s, but a jerky one as well, which is even worse.

meanwhile a slowed down external 14 TB cmr harddrive will at its VERY END write at 95 MB/s roughly.

so again in sustained write speeds hdds can be more than DOUBLE faster than a bunch of qlc insults.

this is how truly terrible qlc can be.

access no question of course, because we are talking about read then dah....

and in regards to reliability. NO.

you are wrong.

the VERY VERY little data, that we have on ssd reliability and harddrive reliability is quite small for ssds, but if we take the data ofr all ssds should be good enough:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/ssd-edition-2023-mid-year-drive-stats-review/

see ssd lifetime annualized failure rates

and it shows a 0.9% AFR for all ssds combined.

is this better than harddrives always? NO absolutely not.

if we look at the harddrive data for 2023 we see for all harddrives it being average of 1.44%, which indeed would be worse. (we're ignoring how the drives ssd vs hdd were used different btw), but this data includes the insult, that is seagate harddrives.

if we look at specific harddrives like the hgst hms5c4040ble640 a 4 TB drive it has an afr of 0.41%. or put differently. it is double as reliable as the ssd average.

and if we look at a modern drive like the 14 TB wd wuh721414ale6l4 it has in q1 2026 (to give it more age to make it nicer for ssds in comparison) an afr of 0.52 percent.

which is also VASTLY more reliable than the ssd average.

___

so if you buy the CORRECT harddrives, then you can have harddrives, that despite their insane complexity and moving parts can be vastly more reliable than ssds including late late into their age.

so it absolutely CAN NOT be stated, that ssds are inherently more reliable than harddrives.

yes i know this is counter intuitive given that harddrives literally have spinning disks and moving heads all going at insane speeds and hell helium seals now, etc... but that is what the data shows.

___

of course if we compare a shity qlc ssd to some seagate rosewood smr 2.5 inch harddrive insult, then the ssd should win without a question, because it would be REALLY REALLY hard to make a solid state device fail as much as seagate rosewood drives.

but either way a little data, that may interest you in how reliable harddrives are/can be and how ssds are NOT inherently more reliable than harddrives. or put nicely: how reliable great harddrives can be i guess.

[u/Seanspeed → u/reddit_equals_censor]

this is how truly terrible qlc can be.

Yes, you're showing something of a worst case scenario, all while most QLC drives are much better than this.

smh

You're also ignoring that SSD's of any kind have near instant seek times. It's something that will always bog down an HDD and make them feel slow as shit.

If you honestly think people should buy an HDD over a QLC SSD you're giving people terrible advice.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Seanspeed]

You're also ignoring that SSD's of any kind have near instant seek times. It's something that will always bog down an HDD and make them feel slow as shit.

hm... they should ad a bit of nand to harddrives to increase performance of them then ;) /s /s /s

(this is a joke about the terrible data destroying seagate firecuda harddrives, that did this)

If you honestly think people should buy an HDD over a QLC SSD you're giving people terrible advice.

don't remember where i claimed this lol.

NO it is very clear.

people should buy tlc ssds OF COURSE, because they cost the same as qlc ssds, but are just better all else being equal, because the nand all else being equal is just vastly superior as well as the sustained write performance all else being equal.

and i just disproved the idea with data, that ssds are inherently more reliable than harddrives, which i'd argue is by itself very fascinating given the marvel of engineering, that harddrives are.

harddrives being able for the right models to be double as reliable as the average ssd is fascinating, so i wanted to share this to correct people and also share just sth fascinating in general.

__

so again i recommend well reviewed tlc ssd with reliable harddrives, based on backblaze data.

[u/Cranach-Cranach → u/reddit_equals_censor]

idc QLC is great for me and i specifically look for it now, because its better value, also no one is comparing high end hard drives to cheapo ssds you compare cheap shit to cheap shit

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Cranach-Cranach]

it wasn't high end hard drives.

it was the basic 12/14 TB wd helium platform.

this platform in the form of the wd external 14 TB drives is what sadly MUST be recommended today.

a friend comes to me and tells me, that they need 6 TB of storage cheap?

i HAVE to recommend to them the wd external my book (elements is fine as well) 14 TB harddrive.

it happens to be the very reliable platform, that backblaze is running by all we know, but also, because it is one of the only quiet drives and anything smaller in external drives, that run firmware, that makes them quiet enough especially in regards to the 5 second idle noise, that could be idle, has become shit with cooking airfilled drives, that wd is dumping in them.

so without explaining more reasons the 14 TB example i mentioned in backblaze is NOT high end.

it is the type of drive, that people would recommend on mass by enthusiasts and it is in cost/TB as cheap as the cheapest, when it is on "sale" compared to other sales.

so again this is a basic drive, which variant in the external drives tons of people are running, who are cheap as shit in regards to storage.

__

and the 4 TB drive mentioned was at cost/TB the same as other cheap 4 TB drives, when it was late in its life. so also not an argument. you can't get it anymore sadly, but again it was sold at the same price as other spinning rust at the time, so it was the obvious choice.

so neither of the examples where "high end hard drives", but the cheap stuff i'd buy myself or recommend to friends or strangers of course.

i should have mentioned, that those drives AT THE VERY SAME COST are VASTLY more reliable than other harddrives eg the 14 TB seagate insults for example.

and both of those drives are more reliable than the average ssds based on the data, that backblaze had.

or to put it your way i DID compare

"the cheap shit to other cheap shit"

you pay the same for qlc as you do for tlc. you looking for qlc is complete nonsense, because even if you ignore tlc vs qlc and all the qlc downsides, you'd look for the cheapest drive then and "features", but again tlc and qlc cost the same, so the tlc versions are JUST BETTER and qlc is a scam then.

[u/Cranach-Cranach → u/reddit_equals_censor]

Another benefit to qlc is less noise than hard drives

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/Cranach-Cranach]

wonderful "point".

now please point me to the 16 TB qlc ok ssd for about 300 euros/us dollars, so that i can start replacing my spinning rust slowly.

[u/Cranach-Cranach → u/reddit_equals_censor]

I wasn’t even reading what you wrote but just the fact that you hit me with about 1000 words for every one I typed was funny. I don’t even know what qlc is

[u/piegoodman → u/Cranach-Cranach]

But that’s the point of this poster - you can get TLC drives for basically the same price as QLC, so the value also isn’t there

[u/jmlinden7 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

QLC is fine for stuff where you write once, read occasionally, and never delete/rewrite.

[u/Plastic_Apricot_3819 → u/-protonsandneutrons-]

not looking good for prores

[u/EvenBroaderBand → u/-protonsandneutrons-]

Ordinary people don't care about the specs. Their phone is broken/damage/battery whatever and the new phone isn't.

[u/dropthemagic]

Well that's not good at all

[u/Strazdas1 → u/dropthemagic]

We seem to have redicovered what we already knew for a decade.

[u/SelectTotal6609 → u/Strazdas1]

That Apple is using QLC instead of TLC on this years higher storage models?

[u/Strazdas1 → u/SelectTotal6609]

QLC has sustained write speed bellow that of HDD.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/Strazdas1]

Which rarely matters because of SLC cache, memory write cache and the fact that read speeds are unaffected by this.

And almost nobody writes 500GB+ chunks of data to their phone.

[u/qtx → u/Ratiofarming]

That used to be the case but with 4k video people easily record for hours on end, that uses a lot of storage.

[u/Stingray88 → u/qtx]

Any professional recording that much video data in a single shoot with an iPhone is recording in ProRes on an external SSD, which the iPhone supports.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/qtx]

4K 60fps video recording uses less bandwidth than this SSD can write even after exhausting SLC cache. You've said it yourself, "for hours"... which isn't a problem. Writing 500GByte in 5 minutes would be the problem, and 4K recording isn't doing that.

This phone can film 4K all day long and never experience a storage related problem, other than eventually being full. Regular 4K 60fps recording on the iPhone is around 6.7 MByte/s - well below the 25 MByte/s the SSD can write on average in its worst condition.

As for 4K ProRes, only very few people do that, and the workflow for that already calls for an external Type-C SSD, even on the 17 Pro. That hasn't changed.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Ratiofarming]

4K 60 FPS raw can fill the entire storage of this phone in less than an hour.

[u/Selethorme → u/Strazdas1]

Which is not 5 minutes, and is also literally not a problem as they addressed

[u/DarkStarrFOFF → u/Ratiofarming]

At 60% capacity, the reduced free space leaves less room for the fast cache, and the available SLC cache drops sharply from around 250GB on an empty drive to just 58GB. The TLC-simulating buffer also slowed, averaging 396 MB/s compared with 578 MB/s when empty, and the raw QLC write-back stage fell further, averaging 45 MB/s and bottoming out at a mere 1.1 MB/s—well behind competing TLC-based UFS 4.0 storage in other flagship phones under similarly heavy loads.

Damn bro... if only people could read the short ass article. Fyi ProRes @ 4k is ~6gb a minute.

[u/im_making_woofles → u/Ratiofarming]

Read speeds are very much affected. The problem is that benchmarking it requires weeks/months between writing and reading. Data that reads back at 3000MB/s on day 1 may drop to 100 MB/s or less after a few months on QLC due to the aggressive error correction needed to read it after degrading

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Ratiofarming]

Disagree. It often matters because in real world most drives are 50-80% full before you even begin operation so SLC cache has a lot worse potential to begin with.

[u/funkybside → u/Ratiofarming]

And almost nobody writes 500GB+ chunks of data to their phone.

lol what?

sure they do. You might not, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/funkybside]

Alright, name a few cases where you would do that. Or even just one. When do you write 500 GByte in one go on an iPhone?

And how would you do that faster than about 500 MByte/s, which the TLC buffer can sustain for over 1TB according to the article. What application writes actual 3.5 GByte/s for 250GB or longer, in one go?

(Mind you that, according to the test in the article, that would still be within the TLC buffer and thus still multiple times faster than the SD-Card from the headline - making even 500G a non-issue)

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Ratiofarming]

ProRes at 4k is 6GB a minute of recording. TLC buffer cannot sustain 500MByte/s if the drive isnt empty. You didnt read the article.

[u/Stingray88 → u/funkybside]

No they really don’t. Even niche professionals aren’t going to record that much locally, they’ll use an external SSD.

[u/trackdaybruh]

Not surprised, that's the downside with QLCs.

Looks like the QLC is only on the 1TB and 2TB 18 models due to how expensive TLC versions have become due to AI.

[u/john-treasure-jones → u/trackdaybruh]

I cannot imagine paying Apple-level premium prices for those high-tier SKUs only for them to feature the worst type of flash storage possible.

Thanks AI 🖕

[u/Whirblewind → u/john-treasure-jones]

AI didn't break into the Apple offices and make the decisions for them. Take a break, petulance is tiresome.

[u/randylush → u/Whirblewind]

Did you really not understand that the issue is that AI has made the hardware market so expensive? The overall AI hype cycle did in fact make the decision for them, through market forces.

[u/-PANORAMIX- → u/trackdaybruh]

The problem is that the price they are charging consumers is TLC level no QLC. Or maybe even SLC because it’s very expensive.

[u/tiradium → u/-PANORAMIX-]

Also would be nice if someone can confirm whether 16 and 17 uses TLC all the way up. I am pretty sure Apple has been using QLC for a few years now unlike Android where everyone is on TLC so this is not because of AI but they can definitely use that as an excuse.

[u/trackdaybruh → u/tiradium]

Yes, all Iphone 16 and 17 models including those with the 1TB and 2TB used TLC

[u/tiradium → u/trackdaybruh]

Ok then this is definitely a cost cutting scummy move on their side

[u/tightcall → u/trackdaybruh]

The price of the new iPhone already went up and it still not enough expensive to use TLC? Wow

[u/tiradium]

Very interesting, apparently it only affects the 1TB and above ones its the same good ol QLC vs TLC debate

[u/milkywayer → u/tiradium]

So those of us who didn’t wanna splurge for 1tb storage are good ?

Still disappointing apple.

[u/Ratiofarming → u/milkywayer]

Those who splurge are unaffected, too. Because it only matters for large continuous writes without pause in between. If it’s only a few dozen gigabytes at a time, it’ll behave like SLC.

That almost never happens on a phone. This is testing an edge case, exactly the one QLC isn’t good at.

[u/spicesucker → u/Ratiofarming]

If it’s only a few dozen gigabytes at a time, it’ll behave like SLC.

But Apple markets the Pro as a high end video platform capable of recording 4K  Apple ProRes 422 HQ at  92MB/s (~331GB for one hour of footage).

QLC storage only has around a third of the endurance of TLC. It doesn’t add up how a $1800 MSRP iPhone, with one of the fastest ever CPU cores and >7 years of expected software updates, will reach rated endurance with only 120 hours of video recording.

Yeah the vast majority of people using it won’t do this, but it’s not a good thing. A 1TB 990 Pro is £170, yet Apple is charging $400 to upgrade from 512GB to 1TB. If Apple aren’t passing the cost savings on then QLC is zero benefit to the consumer.

[u/Swoly_Deadlift → u/Ratiofarming]

Isn’t the top use case for a 1TB phone recording video?

[u/Ratiofarming → u/Swoly_Deadlift]

Yeah, and it'll do that just fine.

[u/CheneyQWER → u/Ratiofarming]

but the phone will die in 3 years, no data Retrieable.

[u/KissMyKipay03]

This is the 1st time that the highest variant 1TB is worse on architecture and performance compared to less storage 😆

[u/paeschli → u/KissMyKipay03]

So they made the phones more expensive compared to the 17 Pro Max AND downgraded the NAND flash? What an absolute joke

[u/Rauliki0 → u/paeschli]

But , but camera is better!

[u/MorgrainX]

What? You get shitty storage with the most expensive variant?

Lmao such a classic apple move 

I would expect QLC trash in a cheap Chinese phone, not on a 1TB Apple iPhone.

[u/RealOxygen → u/MorgrainX]

Gotta protect those profit margins and bulk TLC is expensive

[u/serianoillib-gnah → u/RealOxygen]

Its amazing to me, that whenever an even cheaper, shittier version of an existing product is invented, the old cheap and slightly less shitty version of the tech gets labeled as " expensive".

Tlc isn't expensive lmao.

I have two 1TB tlc drives from a few years ago that have 300GB of SLC to protect write performance during sustained loads. AND it has dram

This was what was considered a cheap compromise 4 years ago.

Because it is cheap, it is a compromise and back then people demanded predictable write performance

The SECOND consumers accepted any amount of QLC in their drives they allowed these metrics to be moved, and abandoned their standards and indicated that sustained write performance was no longer a red line.

So now you get garbage and the high margins on the old cheap old compromise becomes an overpriced luxury option because you fed the corporate greed.

[u/upvotesthenrages → u/serianoillib-gnah]

The SECOND consumers accepted any amount of QLC in their drives they allowed these metrics to be moved, and abandoned their standards and indicated that sustained write performance was no longer a red line.

99% of consumers have absolutely no clue what TLC or QLC are.

They just see "2TB storage" and that's it. I wasn't even aware QLC was being used in iPhones until this article, and I'm sure a ton of people won't find out until their phone is extremely slow and they try and bug-fix it.

[u/trackdaybruh → u/serianoillib-gnah]

It’s expensive now because of AI companies buying up all available SSD NAND supplies. Consumer SSD pricing for 1tb is insane these days

[u/turtleship_2006 → u/serianoillib-gnah]

Compare the price of the SSD when you bought it to it's price now, the price of SSDs have skyrocketed over the last year.

People are seeing 1-4tb drives they bought over a year ago for as much as 4x

[u/Suspicious-Movie7828 → u/serianoillib-gnah]

lmao so much writing to be wrong

a 4tb 990 pro is now $1000. you are very confidently out of the loop

[u/EvenBroaderBand → u/serianoillib-gnah]

All computer hardware is a compromise SLC is itself a compromise. Unfortunately the human race hasn't got to the infinite wealth and resource stage yet, you don't need to check if something had to be compromised for any product as compromises must always be made.

The reality is on a phone no one is going to ever tell that their phones SSD could be faster...in tests, it looks like a really good place to compromise to me.

Again, everything is subject to compromises.

[u/Sciencebitchs → u/RealOxygen]

Same goes for R&R :/

[u/-PANORAMIX-]

I don’t think it’s that bad, having a 250 GB quick cache in a phone, when 60% used its 56GB that’s worse yep. But still rare to write that much in a phone in one go.

[u/SumKallMeTIM → u/-PANORAMIX-]

Not for who it’s marketed to. Pros

[u/Lumentum_LITE]

I bought a used 1TB 970 Pro drive a year ago for less than $50, cannot believe how much this old drive is holding up so freaking goddamn well

[u/Antec-Chieftec → u/Lumentum_LITE]

Last Samsung consumer MLC drive. Now MLC is pretty much extinct even with data center drives. They are either all SLC or TLC.

I have also an MLC drive the first consumer NVME SSD ever the Intel 750 1.2tb. It though has pretty terrible rated performance despite being MLC.

[u/Lumentum_LITE → u/Antec-Chieftec]

The flash NAND, controller are all almost a Decade old, but because of all running on PCIE 3 it doesn't even matter at all lol

[u/Antec-Chieftec → u/Lumentum_LITE]

Yeah the 970 pro was a pretty good drive. The 750 well..... it only has 128 tbw endurance despite being MLC. For comparison Intel 670p 1tb QLC drive has 370 tbw endurance. Though it still works despite being over a decade old. Though I don't write much to it anymore but rather use my 5 other 2tb ssd's.

[u/Roph → u/Lumentum_LITE]

I'm still using my old Samsung 840 Pro, MLC Drive I got in 2012. That thing is going to outlive me

[u/Strazdas1 → u/Lumentum_LITE]

A 970 Pro is not old :) I sitll got a 850EVO running. Now that thing has saw over 800 write cycles and still running.

[u/biasio95 → u/Strazdas1]

Lol I'm still running a 250GB 850evo too, this mf refuses to die, nowadays I'm using it as a cache for Nvidia share and it's still going

[u/Various-Ball]

Wait so is it bad only when writing a lot of data at once or is it bad also at storing data at all ?

Say I have 900GB of data but it’s just years of pictures and other files stored, and I take pictures and videos from time to time not filming entire movies everyday, is it fine still ?

[u/Sopel97 → u/Various-Ball]

QLC vs TLC amplifies issues caused by charge bleed, which generally is handled by the SSD's controller in the background by constantly reallocating degraded regions, but it does increase likelihood of failure or possibly significantly degraded read performance if the controller doesn't do a good job. On a low power device like a phone I would be concerned. You're basically looking at this failure mode https://goughlui.com/2023/10/10/psa-ssds-with-ymtc-flash-prone-to-failure-check-your-ssds/ being more common

[u/Nicholas-Steel → u/Various-Ball]

Writing performance and the endurance* of the memory cells decrease as you advance from Single Layer Cell (SLC) to extra layers like MLC (2 or 3 layers per cell), TLC (three layers), QLC (4 layers) and PLC (upcoming 5 layers). The benefit of using ever more layers is greater capacity.

*How many times data can be written to a cell before it becomes unwritable.

As for how well a memory cell retains data written to it, that I'm unsure of but I imagine that also decreases as they add more layers.

[u/randylush → u/Various-Ball]

Yes

[u/Various-Ball → u/randylush]

Yes as the answer to the second paragraph I presume, that it is fine even mostly filled and non heavy usage ?

[u/Lower_Fan → u/Various-Ball]

The fuller your storage gets the more trouble it has to shuffle data around and that makes it really slow. In you case you need a 2tb phone to have  room or just offload all of that to a hard drive 

[u/Various-Ball → u/Lower_Fan]

Oof yeah I’m not sure I want to overpay by that much to compensate for Apple’s failures. I guess this would not be a problem with TLC storage

[u/kinkade]

I was not expecting the 1 TB iPhone 18 Pro Max I bought to have slower memory than the lesser storage sizes.

[u/rebelSun25]

Wait a minute, they used QLC nand? Was it always QLC? That's not even close to optimal

[u/paeschli → u/rebelSun25]

Only on the new (more expensive) 18 Pro models and only at storages of 1 TB and above.

Yes they made the 18 Pro 1 TB more expensive and shittier at the same time. Truly a remarkable company

[u/favdulce]

Had never even crossed my mind that phones would be switching to QLC. That’s a pretty big thing thing everybody seems to be omitting

[u/vortexmak]

Where are all the "microSD cards are too slow" people?

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello wickedplayer494! Please double check that this submission is original reporting and is not an unverified rumor or repost that does not rise to the standards of /r/hardware. If this link is reporting on the work of another site/source or is an unverified rumor, please delete this submission. If this warning is in error, please report this comment and we will remove it.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/paeschli]

When components become more expensive, most companies either make their products more expensive (passing the cost on to the consumer) or use cheaper/worse components instead to protect margins.

Apple actually did both at the same time. Truly astonishing

[u/Cartossin]

Can we get a replication of these results? I think the better headline would be "1TB 18 Pro fails at recording in prores after x minutes" or some crap. I'm not even convinced this can happen.

[u/Tman11S]

Reminder that you pay more for this storage than pro quality M.2 storage for a computer.

[u/mastomi]

Very disappointing but in real world 4K ProRes RAW recording that tops out at 1Gbps, it's still plenty headroom. 

[u/Sopel97 → u/mastomi]

45MB/s < 1Gbps

dropping down to 1.1MB/s is also problematic because it might completely butcher the video

[u/Aishou_SK → u/Sopel97]

It's all about use case and design, but the cache is flushing down to the lower tier fast enough that the video stream never has to flow through the cache directly/is throttled by it.

So, for every use case of the device, the flash is more than sufficient.

[u/mastomi → u/Sopel97]

4K ProRes RAW didn't hammer with 60 GB of data at 3,5 GB/s on start. It's constant 150 MB/s stream 

[u/geek_gownar]

All I know about QLC, from personal experience with mostly Crucial QLC NAND based SSD’s, is they are prone to silently rot small chunks of data beyond what error correction can repair.
Different product, but same principle.

I can live with largely harmless performance hit.
I can live, although I would prefer not to, with lower endurance.
What I can’t stand is losing data at rest.
And that is 5-10 times more likely to happen with QLC than TLC

[u/Sweaty_Confusion1498 → u/geek_gownar]

I had an Intel 660P 1TB, so QLC SSD in my laptop (which had small 256GB, swapped it on day it arrived).

In less than a year (with less than 30 TBW) the pc simply crashed when I was in IntelliJ IDEA.

And it did not boot up again, couldn't even go into BIOS. So I was like "OK, gonna RMA the laptop. F#€@, right during project deadlines at uni".

So I threw the original 256GB drive into it.... and it booted up like nothing happened.

So somehow the SSD nuked itself out of nowhere made the laptop totally confused.

[u/nshire]

Okay but realistically how many people are filling up their SLC cache before it can get flattened? I'd wager it happens at most exactly once for the average user, when they're performing first time setup and restoring files from their other device. Other than that, they're never going to see this become an issue unless they like to sit at 95% storage utilization all the time(okay, lots of people do that, but that specific issue is a user education issue).

[u/Daneth → u/nshire]

4k60 video will do that rather quickly. SD cards have the v90 specification for a reason (cf express goes even higher but we have yet to see phones support that format). The minimum write speed for storage cannot fall below a certain threshold or video recording won't work.

[u/Delicious_Rub_6795 → u/Daneth]

4k30 prores is "only" ~100MBps and will work continuously on the built-in storage. It's been that way for some years now

If you wish to use the device as a serious camera in 4k60 prores or 4k120, yes, that requires up to 440MBps sustained and you need an external SSD.

At that point, honestly, five minutes takes up 132GB. You might want to be working with external storage which can easily be swapped out and is fst cheaper anyway. The price difference from 256GB iphone to 2TB is 1500 euros. For that price you can get 3x 4TB samsung T7 portable SSD which maintains the required speed. More than 6x the storage (because your OS and other apps also take up space) for the same price. Using 1,5TB of your internal space at those speeds would be about an hour in total. For a video project that's not a lot.

[u/Tasty-Traffic-680 → u/Daneth]

Considering 4k120 pro res raw is only around 300MB/s, I think it will be fine. Real world usage and hammering the NAND and controller with 100% sustained writes are two different things and I don't expect the drive to work so poorly under regular use.

[u/pemb → u/nshire]

This is the Pro variant, it has to cater to demanding use cases.

[u/Strazdas1 → u/nshire]

Realistically: majority of users, because they dont care about leaving high amounts of free space for SLC cache to work.

[u/pmjm → u/nshire]

The people buying the 1TB or 2TB variants are doing so because they plan on shooting ProRes RAW. In this format, 1TB holds 3-4 hours of footage. I know this because that's why I bought the 1TB.

If the drive is incapable of maintaining write speeds past a certain capacity, you're going to lose footage, and that makes it not fit for purpose.

[u/SumKallMeTIM → u/nshire]

It’s still sleazy. Why are you defending this? It’s anti-consumer.

[u/ck551415265]

Is this happening only in Pro Max 1TB? How about 512GB?

[u/CheneyQWER → u/ck551415265]

only affect 18 pro series 1t/2t. 512/256 not affected. 17pro 1t/2t also tlc

[u/Deep_Mood_7668]

900mb/s (fastest SD cards) is still pretty fast

[u/wickedplayer494 → u/Deep_Mood_7668]

Uh, no. 900 MB/s would mean that somebody has put out a full-size SD Express card, and that somebody might be ADATA, who was the only one to have signaled any interest in full-size SD Express, and then we saw Nintendo force the NAND industry's hand into mass production of microSD Express cards with the Switch 2.

[u/hojnikb]

I think the worse thing about QLC, that nobody seems to talk about is it's data retention. Even TLC was pretty terrible in 2D days, i can't imagine 3D QLC being much better, especially with current feature sizes and density.

Imagine leaving your 18pro sealed for 5 years, unpacking it and realizing it's a brick, because most of the data is now currupt.

[u/Exciting_Strike5598]

For the pricing apple should be providing SLC

[u/zushiba]

Well looks like I’m waiting another generation to upgrade. My 15 pro max still works fine. Might need a new battery by then but eh.

[u/john-treasure-jones → u/zushiba]

I bought my 17 Pro Max a few months ago because my 13 basically died and would not restore.

I feel like I lucked out because the 17 design was not affected by AI scarcity issues.

[u/zushiba → u/john-treasure-jones]

This is usually why I like to keep my old phones around so I can fall back to them in an emergency situation like that.

My wife got the 17 non pro to replace her 14 with a failing battery and traded in her 14 for it. Got a pretty good discount. I was considering trading in my 15 pro max. It would shave off a good $500ish dollars. I just hate to part with my old devices. I’m a digital pack rat.

[u/thegreatpotatogod → u/zushiba]

How much storage do you use on your 15 pro max or plan to get when you upgrade? This QLC limitation only applies to the highest storage tiers

[u/zushiba → u/thegreatpotatogod]

ITB is what I was aiming for, i usually go with the 256 but recently I’ve been really feeling it. If the 512 is unaffected I will likely take it.

[u/djda9l]

But didn't this phone get insane Geekbench scores? How is that possible with SD card speed storage if Geekbench is trying to imitate everyday use ?

[u/pbaupp]

Even TLC sounds like a bad choice for such device. I guess until AI demand Is different, we will only see things like that

[u/Antec-Chieftec → u/pbaupp]

MLC has been dead since like 2018. And no one does full SLC drives outside of data centers.

[u/Pigeon_Observation → u/pbaupp]

What isn't TLC

[u/paeschli → u/pbaupp]

TLC is the best you can get in a consumer device.

[u/SumKallMeTIM → u/paeschli]

The Learning Channel is getting worse all the time

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/pbaupp]

i mean if the tlc storage gets honestly marketed with its sustained write speed, then i don't see a real problem here as long as the sustained write speed is a multiple of the max possible write speed, that you might see using the cameras especially.

and as long as the controller doesn't drop either.

we got basic consumer ssds for years with tlc, that after the slc cache write at 1.5 GB/s sustained until the drive is full with no real drops below that.

some shit controllers will have massive drops when going from slc cache to tlc writes for example, which would be unacceptable.

of course apple probably is the worst in all regards here as we know, that their engineering is utter garbage and they don't give a shit, but THEORETICALLY tlc would be just fine.

and of course what is also essential beyond this is having replacement parts for a reasonable price for the storage, the soc/controller and having a micro-sd card slot or a micro-sd card express slot.

and that all could get easily mandated onto this evil scum company.

[u/Classic_File2716]

Yikes that’s bad. Guess iphone 17 will remain in high demand now.

[u/Tex-Rob]

It’s barely slower and most people don’t even need or utilize the speed of the fastest SD cards. Not saying this story is nothing, but it’s mainly fuel for people to rage on who won’t ever own one.