Amid global chip shortage, Samsung says it has made world's fastest UFS 5.0 storage

Samsung has announced the industry's first UFS 5.0 storage solution. The new chip can deliver speeds that read up to 10.8GB/s. Here is everything you need to know.

In Short

• Samsung has developed the industry’s first UFS 5.0 storage solution
• The chip delivers a sequential read speed of 10.8GB/s
• The chip is 16.7 per cent smaller than its predecessor

Smartphones are getting smarter day by day, thanks to the development that is happening inside the device. Not only the processor, but the storage chip, which is responsible for keeping everything moving. And now, Samsung has taken another significant step forward on that front, announcing the industry's first UFS 5.0 storage.

UFS, or Universal Flash Storage, is essentially the internal storage chip inside your phone — the component responsible for storing your apps, photos, and files, and for feeding data to the processor when it is needed. The faster and more efficient this chip is, the snappier and smarter your phone feels. Samsung's new UFS 5.0 pushes that performance to a level the industry has never seen before.

What makes UFS 5.0 a big deal

The headline figure is a sequential read speed of 10.8 GB per second, which is more than twice as fast as the previous UFS 4.1 standard. Write speeds come in at up to 9.5 GB/s, also more than double what was possible before. In other words, this means your phone can load apps, process large files, and handle AI tasks significantly faster than current devices.

Another notable update is its impact on the device's battery life. Samsung says UFS 5.0 uses more than 40 per cent less power than its predecessor to move the same amount of data.

And despite all these improvements, Samsung claims the chip itself is actually 16.7 per cent smaller than the previous version, giving phone makers more flexibility when designing thinner and more compact devices.

Why AI makes this particularly important

The timing of this announcement is no coincidence. AI features on smartphones are rapidly shifting from cloud-based processing — where your phone sends data to a remote server and waits for a response — to on-device processing, where the phone handles everything locally. This requires moving large amounts of data extremely quickly between storage and the processor.

Jangseok Choi, head of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, summed it up well. "In the era of on-device AI, storage devices are evolving into a key driver defining AI experiences," he said, adding that Samsung is "setting a new standard for storage on the go."

With UFS 5.0, Samsung is essentially building the infrastructure that next-generation on-device AI needs to work smoothly. Whether it is a smarter camera, a more capable voice assistant, or real-time language translation, all of these features depend on fast, efficient storage working quietly in the background.

Samsung plans to begin mass production of UFS 5.0 in the fourth quarter of 2026, with storage capacities going up to 1TB. The chips are expected to make their way into flagship smartphones, XR headsets, and AI-powered wearables.

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