Your Next Phone Could Run Twice as Fast Thanks to UFS 5.0 Storage

The latest Universal Flash Storage standard, UFS 5.0, promises nearly double the speed of previous generations, potentially transforming smartphone performance for AI applications. The update, announced Monday by the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC), sets a new benchmark for mobile storage.

UFS 5.0 boosts maximum transfer rates to 10.8GB per second, compared to 5.8GB per second with UFS 4.0, which launched in 2022. The upgraded standard also emphasizes energy efficiency, targeting devices designed to support increasingly demanding artificial intelligence tasks.

While Samsung integrated UFS 4.0 storage in the Galaxy S23 series shortly after its introduction, no smartphone makers have confirmed adoption of UFS 5.0 yet. Experts suggest that backward compatibility with UFS 4.x hardware could accelerate implementation across future devices.

Google continues to employ older storage technology in some models; Pixel 10 devices with 128GB memory still rely on UFS 3.1, whereas larger capacity models have UFS 4.0. Apple, for its part, has never used UFS in iPhones, including the latest iPhone 17 series, whose storage remains slower than UFS 4.0 standards.

Although daily smartphone users may not notice immediate improvements from faster storage, the enhancement is expected to benefit AI-driven apps and features, which require higher read and write speeds. Industry analysts say that as AI functionality becomes central to mobile devices, UFS 5.0 could offer a substantial performance edge.

JEDEC’s update underscores a trend where faster storage and improved energy efficiency are critical to keeping pace with growing AI demands. Consumers and manufacturers alike are expected to monitor adoption closely as new devices roll out in the coming months.