Huawei unveils new Nano Memory technology

Huawei has revealed four new Mate 20 series phones and two new wearables, but one feature stood out from all the rest — the announcement of a new Nano Memory (NM) card storage technology.

The new storage card showcased at today’s Mate 20 launch further reduces the already-compact size of a microSD card into as small as a nano-SIM card while still keeping its storage intact. This enables Huawei to further reduce the footprints incurred by the hybrid SIM card tray on the phone, leaving space for more internal hardware. The new cards boast read and write speeds of up to 90MB/s, and comes in two storage variants so far based on online listings — 128GB and 256GB. No word yet if this will actually be open to other smartphone makers or will be a Huawei-exclusive peripheral.

The NM card is poised to make a launch alongside the new Huawei Mate 20 series of phones once it launches in key markets starting this month. Could this replace the standard microSD cards we’re accustomed to? Only time could tell.

2 Comments

MrOrange says:

6 years ago

I feel that this would end up like Sony’s M2 where it was exclusive to Sony. which eventually died vs its competition the MicroSD due to development.
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Dante says:

6 years ago

I purchased a Mate 20 not knowing that it uses an NM card instead of a standard SD card. Had I known this fact in advance, I would have bought something else. This oversight is on me because I didn’t do my research.

However, looking at the specs offered some consolation because on paper, the NM card poses to be a better performer. But this is quickly dashed by the disappointing realization that the card is not locally available, at least not officially. As of Jan ’19, The only way to get it is to either order it from sellers is China or in the local gray market many of which are shady at best. Either way, the price is obscenely prohibitive.

This uncoordinated release is a critical misstep on Huawei’s part. The NM card’s apparent superiority would not amount to anything and it’s destined to suffer the same fate of other products that attempted to compete with the SD card standard. I hope Huawei learns from the failure of others, recent tech history is littered with products that failed because they’re not readily available, exclusivity, and more importantly, the lack of third party producers,
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