Make room for more movies on your Galaxy S20 with a microSD card - Android

Samsung starts the Samsung Galaxy S20 off with 128GB of memory. Still, if you like to download movies for trips like me or are just an absolute shutterbug that needs to capture literally every moment of your or your kid's life, you'll probably want to invest in a microSD card. It's the perfect thing to expand and offload your media so that the internal memory can be used for apps and those super-duper slow-mos. Here are some of the best Galaxy S20 SD cards you can buy right now.

What all those symbols on a microSD card mean — and why they don't always matter

Manufacturers cover just about every space centimeter of a microSD card in classifications and certifications, and these symbols can be useful in ruling out slow cards quickly. However, looking at those symbols should never be the end of your research into a microSD card.

• Video Speed Class — Indicated by a stylized V followed by numbers from 6 to 90, this class is one of the newer classification systems and was developed specifically for shooting ultra-high-definition video. V30 starts at 30MB/s write speed, V60 starts at 60MB/s write speed, and V90 starts at 90MB/s, but unless your phone somehow shoots 8K video, you probably don't need a V90 card.
• UHS Speed Class — Indicated by a 1, 2, or 3 inside a U, this class is still used on most cards today. U1 starts at 10MB/s write speed, U3 starts at 30MB/s write speed, and both are perfectly adequate for most Android phones.
• Speed Class — Indicated by a number inside of a C, this was the original classification system for SD cards. Class 10 was as high as this class went, 10 MB/s write speed, and practically every card worth buying today is well beyond this speed at this point, so it's not as helpful an indicator of power/quality these days.

Notice that those specifications focus on write speed, which is the lower of the two speeds a card will have. Read speed is almost always faster than write speed, so if you see a card that only mentions "transfer speed" of 100 MB/s but is a V30 card, we can infer that the read speed is 100 MB/s and the write speed is at least 30 MB/s.

It's essential to look beyond the symbols and see what the write and read speeds are supposed to be. U3/V30 cards can have actual write speeds above some V60 cards. If a V60 card has a listed write speed of 80 MB/s, there are some V30 cards out there with 90 MB/s write speeds. So read the specs!

Go beyond internal storage

For most of us who just want to store some movies, music and a couple hundred thousand pictures of our adorable dogs and kids, all you need is a U3/V30 card, which covers literally every card in here! At that point, it simply becomes a matter of finding the size and reliability you want. For a Samsung phone — and really, for every phone with a microSD slot — I highly recommend the Samsung EVO Select. It's all but guaranteed to outlast your phone. Plus, it is fast enough for everything except those ultra super slo-mo videos that Samsung won't let you record to any microSD card.

If you intend to be running apps on your microSD card — I want to know how you filled 128GB to need to put apps on your microSD card, by the way — A2 cards are becoming more common and more affordable with each passing season. The Lexar Professional 667X is a great card. The 256GB size will triple the amount of storage you've got to work with, which means that you should be able to run thousands of apps from it if you are a complete and utter madman.

And since you'll have to take off your old, ratty case to put in the new microSD card, maybe it's time to grab a new Galaxy S20 case, too!