SD Cards, USB thumb drives, even a few digital audio players – Sandisk really has done its job well when it comes to transporting data. Combining evolutionary technology with revolutionary designs, it’s churned out commercially-successful products such as the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium. Now, it steps up the whole game with its new SD card with a capacity of a whopping 32GB! That’s more storage than my old Beige IBM box.

Sandisk Cruzer Titanium

Source: http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/dmt/2006/sandisk-cruzer-titanium-00.jpg

First, let’s talk about Sandisk’s past successes. I have to say that I’m most familiar with Sandisk’s USB drives, not its SD cards – to be specific, the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium. It has 2GB of storage, and if I remember correctly was one of the first to embrace the U3 software technology. It does all this – and still stays a beaut; with a brushed finish, the Titanium makes it practically indestructible, making it a valuable addition to any geek’s arsenal. To this day, it does remain a popular product, and still a very reliable USB drive.

Sandisk Ultra II 8GB SDHC card

Source: http://www.digitalhome.ca/images/stories/2008Q1/ultra-ii-8gb-sdhc-card.jpg

Announced a couple of days ago, Sandisk’s new 32GB SD card features its patented Hinge Lock technology, giving the card both SD and USB functionality – abilities reminiscient of the OCZ Trifecta, albeit with sixteen times the storage. Of course, with such monstrous amounts of storage, they had to improve read/write speeds – which they did, to around 15mb/s. I have seen faster USB drives, but I guess Sandisk will have plenty of time to improve on this aspect.

As for the bigger picture, the 32GB SD card could not have come at a better time.  I recently purchased a Canon SD750, and its picture sizes were at a consist whopping 3MB – almost the size of a 128kbps .mp3 file.  The increase in storage came as a surprise, but is explained by higher quality and resolution pictures.  Also, there has lately been a push to use RAW files on cameras as they turn out better – but they also take up more storage.  The 32GB of storage offers a feasible solution, at nothing short of an acceptable rate (US$350) to professional photographers, but a bit steeper for us casual users.

What’s next?  Hopefully a decrease in price, as well as higher transfer speeds.  But I foresee the 32GB SD card not being too popular until the price has droppd and its features are improved – somewhat a similar situation with the PS3 when its hardware became much more affordable and features such as Home were close to completion, although that might not be that great an analogy.  Either way, this will be a welcome addition to the industry and public in a world where pictures really do matter nowadays.