Seven of the world's top mobile phone technology companies are backing the development of a new flash memory standard to be used in mobile phones, digital cameras and other consumer electronics devices.
The new industry standard, called Universal Flash Storage (UFS), is an attempt to drive data transfer speeds and memory storage capacity up on memory cards and embedded memory, so users can keep more songs, photos and video data on mobile devices and enjoy them more, the companies, including Nokia Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.said in a joint news release.
UFS would greatly speed up the time it takes to access data on a mobile device. A 90-minute movie that takes about three minutes to access today would take only a few seconds using UFS, the companies said.
Currently, the UFS standard is under construction by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association (formerly known as the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council), and companies involved in the project expect to have a standard finalized by 2009.
Micron Technology, Inc., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Spansion Inc., STMicroelectronics NV and Texas Instruments Inc. also announced their support for the creation of the UFS standard.
