How fast is card I/O on the 720?

[shlomo80]

Using a fast Class 10 card, what's the throughput for read and (especially) write?

 

[OzRob]

Using a fast Class 10 card, what's the throughput for read and (especially) write?

Maximum speed will depend on the card, not the phone. Minimum read and write speed will be 10MB/s (that's what Class 10 means).

 

[shlomo80]

Yes, I want to know what the achievable speeds are. On some handsets it's more card limited than phone limited. On others it's more phone limited than card limited.

 

[OzRob]

Yes, I want to know what the achievable speeds are. On some handsets it's more card limited than phone limited. On others it's more phone limited than card limited.

Fair 'nuff. But can I ask why you want to know? 10MB/s is more than enough to stream HD video, and that's about the most demanding thing you can do on an SD card at the moment given that WP8 doesn't let you store apps, app data or anything much else on the card.

 

[shlomo80]

Fair 'nuff. But can I ask why you want to know? 10MB/s is more than enough to stream HD video, and that's about the most demanding thing you can do on an SD card at the moment given that WP8 doesn't let you store apps, app data or anything much else on the card.

It's more about how fast I can swap data.

 

[Yipcanjo]

Sadly, using an SD card on the Lumia 720 (or the 820, since I've owned both) adversely affects performance of the phone in odd ways. The Music Hub is strangely sluggish, and then usually suffers from showing multiple versions of the same songs -- sometimes 5 or 6 times. The Camera is slow to take your first photo, even when you've set the Camera to store photos in the Phone Storage (not External Storage). Even opening the Settings menu is noticeably slower -- just by having a microSD card installed. Yes, I've tested a couple of Class10 cards, a Class4, and a Class2. Same behavior on all.

Microsoft really needs to fix these issues.

 

[donoester]

Yipcanjo, what brand and capacities are these cards and do you recall how they were formatted?

Thanks

 

[Yipcanjo]

Yipcanjo, what brand and capacities are these cards and do you recall how they were formatted?

Thanks

64GB Class10 Kingston
32GB Class10 SanDisk
2GB Class4 Toshiba
512MB Class2 ???? (just for testing)

I formatted with the phone initially, and then with Windows and placed into the phone later. Didn't matter -- same issues either way.

The problem appears to be with WP8 itself, and not really the speed of the microSD cards.

 

[OzRob]

It's more about how fast I can swap data.

Sorry, I'm still not understanding. What data can you 'swap'? Are you trying to develop an app?

 

[shlomo80]

Sadly, using an SD card on the Lumia 720 (or the 820, since I've owned both) adversely affects performance of the phone in odd ways. The Music Hub is strangely sluggish, and then usually suffers from showing multiple versions of the same songs -- sometimes 5 or 6 times. The Camera is slow to take your first photo, even when you've set the Camera to store photos in the Phone Storage (not External Storage). Even opening the Settings menu is noticeably slower -- just by having a microSD card installed. Yes, I've tested a couple of Class10 cards, a Class4, and a Class2. Same behavior on all.

Microsoft really needs to fix these issues.

As a matter of curiosity have you run say ATTO or CrystalDiskMark on any of those cards?

 

[donoester]

Well, I've purchased a 64 GB Samsung MicroSDXC (Class 10) - last week - which turned up today, so I'll let you guys know how that works out. Only problem is that I STILL have not received my 720 :-( .... But if anyone wants to know anything about the card in advance, just ask.

 

[SnailUK]

Windows phone has always had issues with cards. The problem is, they all quote read/write max throughput, but its the random access times that are key, and no card publishes those figures.
Sent from my RM-821_eu_euro1_342 using Board Express

 

[shlomo80]

Well, I've purchased a 64 GB Samsung MicroSDXC (Class 10) - last week - which turned up today, so I'll let you guys know how that works out. Only problem is that I STILL have not received my 720 :-( .... But if anyone wants to know anything about the card in advance, just ask.

If you can run ATTO or CrystalDiskmark on a PC with a decent card reader it'd be good - that would give is a baseline point of how fast it can accept data.

 

[donoester]

If you can run ATTO or CrystalDiskmark on a PC with a decent card reader it'd be good - that would give is a baseline point of how fast it can accept data.

I FINALLY got the chance to perform the benchmarks you asked for. Ironically, I only had a USB-SDcard reader which performed very poorly. At work I have a L520 thinkpad with an embedded SD Card reader (from Realtek) on a PCI-e bus. Here's the results with the Samsung 64 GB microsdxc:

 

[shlomo80]

Not too shabby. Let us know what you get once you plug it into the 720... though it might be kind of moot for me by that time, as I've also ordered a 620 and a 720 :grin:

Eyuurgh, these smileys are kerrreeeeepeee...

 

[donoester]

Now the next question arises - now that I've got the 720: What app can test the throughput?

That being said. I see absolutely no sluggishness (yet) with the 64 GB card installed - getting to the Settings menu and entering it feels just as fast. Photos are snapped as fast as without an SD card. Don't know what to say. I've got no further apps installed other than AE Bowling 3D.

 

[shlomo80]

Just a transfer test would be good - i.e. line up say 500MB of files (e.g. music - video's not a good test), dump them across and time how long it takes.

 

[shlomo80]

I finally received my 620 and 720 today, been playing around with them - and I have to say the transfer speeds aren't as bad as I'd feared. It's actually syncing from j.River Media Center faster than the Xperia Z did with the same card, which is pretty stunning (especially as it's an MTP vs UMS comparison - MTP is usually slower given the need to process metadata after each file).