XV6800 microsd transfer speeds? Class 6 worthy?

[SteveNYC]

I'm familiar with the difference between the class 4 (4MB/s transfer speed) and the class 6 (6MB/s transfer speed). But is there any value in using a class 6 card on the XV6800 (regardless of size)?

I ask because I have a 4GB class 6 A-Data microSDHC card in my XV6800 right now and there is no problem at all with it. However, I am considering purchasing an 8GB class 4 Sandisk microSDHC card. So it got me thinking, even thought the A-Data card is capable of a faster transfer speed, that doesn't mean the XV6800 is ever actually using that extra speed. So would I see any slowdown if I moved to a "slower" spec'd microsdhc card?

I looked around for transfer speeds on the XV6800's microSD card slot and didn't come across anything.

Anyway have any data on this? Thanks in advance.

[darksine]

Depends some on what you are using it for but I doubt you will notice much of a difference. When transferring using a card and a card reader from your computer you may notice a difference but otherwise the interface in the phone itself doesn't seem to be all that fast anyway.

[SteveNYC]

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the comment, but that's why I'm asking if anyone has any actual data. The device either reads and writes to the microsd card slot above 4MB/s or it does not. I have not found a way to benchmark it so I'm looking for some actual detail. But thank you.

[SteveNYC]

So I found an application that is supposed to measure the transfer speeds of the card slot on a Windows Mobile device. It's from Audacity Audio. The link on Softpedia is here (http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/Developer-Tools/Benchmarks/Card-Speed-Pocket-PC-37620.shtml).

I'm familiar with the application because I used the Palm OS version on my old Treo 700P. The problem is that he results always seem inconsistent and confusing.

In any event, I ran the test on two different microSD cards. The first is an empty 1GB Sandisk microSD card with. These cards don't have a "class" rating. The second is a 4GB AData Class 6 microSDHC card. I still had 2.5GB of the 4GB empty.

1GB

Wrt32bit/Wrt8KB/Read8KB
1105/330572/7943757
1105/335208/7710117
1123/366634/7710117
1030/311705/7489828
1070/306242/7489828

Avg
1086/330072/7668729

4GB
1462/109317/6393756
527/111408/6241523
1462/119482/4161015
517/85724/6241523
1581/126334/6241523

Avg
1109/110453/5855868

Honestly, the scores don't seem to make much sense. The read speeds all indicate north of 4MB/s and most of the time above 6MB/s. That's good. But the write speeds seem pointless. 330KB/s (.3MB/s) for the 1GB and 110KB/s (.1MB/s) for the 4GB ?!?!?! That doesn't seem right.

Anyway, any ideas would be welcome.

[jimnutt]

Write speeds are typically going to be a great deal slower for flash memory. And larger cards being even slower for writing makes a twisted sort of sense. All flash cards have "load-leveling" algorithms built into them to spread the writes across the flash disk in order to reuse locations as little as possible (flash memory cells have a limited lifetime). So the bigger the card, the more memory the load leveler has to manage. Of course, I could have it completely wrong....