Unironically a good idea. I can see these really helping to increase the chances of memory survival in camera applications where the camera has a high chance of being physically destroyed. Also a metal body reallllly helps conduct heat out of the flash, which will increase their lifespan in continuous-write applications.
Stainless is extra bad at conducting heat considering it’s a metal, but it’s still way better than plastic. I hope they make an aluminum version at some point.
Yes, stainless is “bad”, compared to other metals. But like you also mentioned, it’s loads better than plastic.
I’d doubt they make an aluminum one, it’s probably not worth the tooling.
When dealing with only 100-200mW, even a small change in thermal conductivity will make a big difference.
One day the card will be conductive enough for us to complain it’s hot when we take it out
Elemental silver SD card casing for maximum thermal transfer, when???
When somebody finds a better source of silver than the mines on Earth and is able to increase silver supply by several orders of magnitude.
What an age we live in
Seriously, my plastic cookware is terrible
But there’s no better way to make a really traditional dioxin omelette.
How strong is aluminium compared to steel again? Oh right, its butter…
Cool
Why tho
Personally, id choose them over plastic ones if not just to save plastic
doesn’t metal manufacturing use quite a lot more energy?
But it has the benefit of not breaking down into micro plastics and getting into every part of everyone.
“Honey, I accidently digested our SD card again”
True enough. Though I wonder, as a thought experiment, what would be the actual better option in the long run. Some type of resin maybe?
Wood
H e m p
Uranium
that’s…
I somehow doubt that.
Uranium baseball cups. Not physically possible to throw a baseball hard enough to damage the goods, plus it helps combat the effects of overpopulation.
I guess using renewables for the energy needs of metal production would work too
Good thing heavy metal toxicity isn’t a problem.
Steel or stainless ain’t gonna give you metal poisoning
Stainless steel leaches nickel and chromium.
Better toss all your cookware then
probably, but then i can ingest less micro plastics. Which is probably good.
You’re not supposed to eat them.
i literally cannot help myself.
But what about ingesting micrometals
do micro metals even exist in substantial capacity? The problem with micro plastics is that they don’t break down and decay until like a gazillion years later, so whatever micro plastics are in your kidneys now, will continue to be in them until you die.
at least its not a single use product, the packaging it comes in is probably a worse contributor
honestly, this might be true. There are definitely worse things to be made from metal lol
Maybe extreme weather conditions for trail cams? That’s the only reason I would think about using one but never actually buy one for lol.
ROG Ally
People will pay more money for premium.
But yeah environmentally this is a damn good idea. We should make everything out of metal.
sounds pretty metal
Cause it’s metal.
\m/
Less plastic being manufactured? Sounds good to me. :)
Seriously. Let’s light a fire under this trend. I will spend twice as much on a thing if it’s metal instead of plastic.
While we’re at it, let’s get back to all metal phones! Screw this glass back shit.
For the “Wireless” charging people:
It’s a gimmick, nothing of value is lost
“All right team this is the single most dropped item in the history of mankind we need to make this thing tough what are we gonna manufacture the backing out of?”
“Glass?”
“…….Brilliant!! You’ve got upper management written all over you, Jacobs!”
Wireless charging rocks, dude
True wireless charging would definitely, the kind where your phone being in the mere vicinity of the “base station” allows it to start charging. From an actual distance larger than a handful of centimeters. That would be a feature worthy of the sacrifice of a metal body and being stuck with glass
The “Wireless” charging marketing gimmick is just as bad as the “Hoverboard” gimmick vs a real Hoverboard a la Back to the Future.
Its basically just a plug shifted from a socket to the back of the phone, but worse. It’s almost always slower and saves a second or 2 at most from having to plug/unplug it. Some minor pros, but not worth having to be saddled with annoying and fragile glass backs. You still need to take it out of your pocket, place it in a designated spot, and can’t use it all that well while in the designated spot and still have it charge.
It’s a gimmick so companies could say their phones totally have wireless charging so they didn’t have to spend the R&D money to develop actual wireless charging and you bought into it hook, line and sinker.
There were some promising developments on real wireless charging, but ever since the fake gimmick caught hold it’s been awfully quiet. Another victim of marketing I suppose.
What a weird think to insult someone over. It does what it says it does and I don’t get why you’re drawing the line on what “true” wireless charging is when I’m not plugging a wire into my phone. You think I “fell for a marketing gimmick” despite using the feature almost exclusively for the past 12 years? How is it a gimmick if I get value out of it?
I like having a clean desk and not accidentally yoinking my phone off. I like not adding wear and tear to the USB port because it sucks when they break. I like that I’ve had a dozen or USB cords die but never once had to toss a wireless charger.
You aren’t the arbiter of what’s useful. You not finding value in wireless charging doesn’t mean it’s a useless gimmick. Get off damn your high horse
Lol never said it was useless, only the value doesn’t outweigh the sacrifices. Gimmicks can have some usefulness and utility and still be gimmicks.
The gimmicky part is that smartphone companies got you hooked into a product that barely fills just enough peoples value thresholds that they could avoid developing real wireless charging.
In a world where this fake shit didn’t take hold we could have had real wireless charging by now, if you think the “wireless” charging is good now, just think what true wireless would be like. You could walk into a room and your phone just starts charging with 0 effort. None.
But all the major companies stopped their R&D on it because consumers like you lapped the gimmick up and continue to. All that’s left are a handful of startups working on it, so it’s going to be years still.
From your first comment:
It’s a gimmick, nothing of value is lost
You’re right, you didn’t say it was useless! You said it was valueless. My bad, huge difference…
In a world where this fake shit didn’t take hold we could have had real wireless charging by now, if you think the “wireless” charging is good now, just think what true wireless would be like. You could walk into a room and your phone just starts charging with 0 effort. None.
You know this is possible how exactly? Wireless power distribution has been considered since Tesla’s time. Yet it still hasn’t been done outside of laboratory environments or very short distances. It’s definitely possible, but making it practical might not even be possible within physics as we currently understand it.
For example a very power light beam like for example a laser beam can transfer a lot of power over some distance. It would also cook you, burn you, or make you go blind. It would also require precise alignment between transmitter and receiver, as well as very expensive transmission equipment.
I use a magsafe charger in both the vehicles I drive on a regular basis, and a charging mat at home, both are extremely useful.
You’re talking absolute nonsense.
I know it’s counter to what the thread is saying but I really miss plastic phones. They allowed for wireless charging and don’t shatter so easily. Lumias had amazing designs and were built like a brick.
Likely far more energy and pollution needed to manufacture this though so overall a loss for the earth.
But most steel is recycled and most plastic is not.
You still need a lot of energy to recycle steel. Less than mining by far but still a lot.
In a sustainable world, energy can and should be cheaper than raw materials. We are only harvesting a tiny fraction of the solar energy hitting the earth, to say nothing of wind and geothermal power. Rolling out more renewables and energy storage and using some of the surplus power to switch from extracting new resources to recycling our waste would greatly lower our footprint.
But compared to plastic from virgin fossil fuels?
We as a society are going to need memory cards.
What do you think they should be made out of?
chitin
Sorry, that’s not Kosher.
Need to be examined on e case by case basis but plastic often comes out aheadi
If you penny pinch and don’t want to pay the environmental cost, sure plastic might come out cheaper.
But when you take into account the triple bottom line, plastic comes out behind.
Plastic in a landfill is a lot less harmful than co2 in the atmosphere.
Is anyone going to bother recycling the one gram of metal in this card though?
Energy needs can be met and shouldn’t be an argument for using plastic.
The pollution could be more dependending on how you look at that statement, but making something without plastic results in less plastic pollution and you can’t claim that to be an overall loss for the earth.
You can swap out centralized energy sources (relatively speaking) overnight as greener sources become cheaper/more available compared to retooling whole industries away from plastic
It’s the same thing with electric cars, yea it might plug in now to a dirty energy source, but that energy source could be a green energy source tomorrow without you ever knowing and importantly not having to buy a new car or change any other infrastructure to take advantage of it
A power line is a power line, it doesn’t care if the electricity going through it was derived from a dirty power plant or solar or nuclear
I respect the sentiment, but is the amount of plastic in an SD card really that significant? There’s probably more in just the packaging alone.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
This is more like taking the first step, getting distracted by a cool bug, finding an interesting stick, and going home to show Mum your cool stick.
An SD card lasts for years, and the amount of plastic in one is negligible. It’s just not an issue.
An SD card lasts for years, and the amount of plastic in one is negligible. It’s just not an issue.
Hark! The ghosts of countless generations of short-sighted polluters cry out in complacent, rationalizing unison!
It’s not about expecting one model of memory card to save the Earth. It’s about moving away from needless production of toxic materials, everywhere.
And if you don’t care, nobody’s going to force you to read The Lorax, but please don’t go around shitting on people’s appreciation for even the small things.
Worrying about the plastic in an SD card just feels like bike-shedding to me, but keep up the good fight, I guess.
Yeah it’s the equivalent of finding two dollars on the ground and getting excited because at this rate you’ll be a billionaire soon enough. There’s less than 2g of plastic in an SD card - the buttons on your shirt probably weigh more.
Any reduction in plastic is a good thing.
Very nuanced view of the world you have.
Should have used glorious Nippon steel, folded over 1000 times.
Easy there Weeby McWeebson.
I feel like dealing with SD cards’ inevitable demise is more important than armoring them. What good is a stainless SD card that no longer functions after 2 years of use?
What good is a stainless SD card
Better thermal conductivity and in turn dissipation than plastic does tend to longer lasting flash chips, how much this change means in real world practice though remains to be seen
Heat is a flash storage killer of all kinds
It’s hard to believe that it would have taken 25 years for the many SD card builders out there to figure out that a heat spreader could solve the degradation problems.
Why would they want to solve an issue that causes you to need a new product from them
Well considering that most of the SD cards I’ve had always died from foul play or physical destruction of some kind I think that armoring them is not without merit.
Obviously like all solid state media they do wear out over time, and their wear leveling isn’t as good as an SSD which has a much more sophisticated controller with much more sophisticated wear leveling management.
All the comments are fun and games but they could’ve used aluminium which is way cheaper. It’s nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
Was about to say
- cheaper
- lighter
- non-conductive
- softer, won’t wear the port
How is aluminum non-conductive? It’s literally used as a lighter and cheaper alternative to copper in wires
to my knowledge, the only place they use aluminum as a conductor is in overhead external transmission lines, because you can wrap them around a steel or fiberglass/carbon fiber core (due to the skin effect this incurs minimal losses) while increasing strength and reducing weight (with the composites at least)
the secondary reason is because you can just use more aluminum, since it’s not nearly as dense as copper, and also allows you to string farther, since again, not nearly as dense.
most aluminum wiring is actually cladded in copper, it’s called CCA for what should be fairly obvious reasons.
Also i believe the oxide coating of aluminum isn’t conductive? The bare material itself is, but once it oxidizes it’s probably not a good conductor, this is why we use shit like gold plated contacts. Copper also oxidizes as well, but it’s not nearly as bad.
Aluminium is a better conductor than copper by weight, but not cross sectional area. It’s used in aerial conductors because the weight is more important than the diameter. And it’s cheaper.
it’s technically like four different reasons.
The big one is weight per foot of current carrying capacity. this reduces the amount of transmission towers you need, reducing the amount of labor, and raw materials. the aluminum itself is cheaper, but that’s a secondary effect. Since it’s not as heavy per unit, you can make the runs much cheaper. And since you can make them cheaper, you can carry more current by simply making them bigger, or adding more of them.
compounding effects are something funky.
it’s called CCA for what should be fairly obvious reasons.
CCA Ethernet cables are literally the worst. The wires are much more brittle so it’s much easier to break the cable just by bending it a little bit, and since the resistance is significantly higher, they can’t go as far as regular pure copper cables, and you can’t use them for Power over Ethernet (they’ll overheat).
People buy them to save money since they can be a lot cheaper, but often end up having to re-run a lot of the cables in the future. Better to just buy the high quality cables from the beginning. “Buy once, cry once” as the saying goes.
yeah, this is a pretty common issue with CCA cabling, normally this is why people go for things like OFC wire instead, it also carries a little bit more current which is nice.
Sure, aluminum as the sole conductor is rare, but as you said, there is CCA, which is ridiculously common. CCA is mostly aluminum to save cost but is still 60ish% as conductive as copper.
Aluminium corrodes, and is a relatively soft metal.
Isn’t there a danger of someone shorting data to voltage by inserting this thing wrongly?
Also a good way to wear down your SD port if you remove this with any regularity.
Why?
Money whale hunting.
So what?
Woah boy, Elon is gonna be super jealous.
Steam deck modders rejoice
Doesn’t the steam deck use micro SD cards, I don’t think that these full-sized ones are going to be much help for those guys. Unless of course they come out with stainless steel micro SD cards but that doesn’t seem likely for obvious reasons.
Everyone thought 1tb+ microsd is impossible, but here we are
I guess if they made the chips small enough that the MicroSD body is just a shell, same thing happened with full sized SD cards (there was a time the whole space inside them was used, now it’s usually a small part of the front and the rest is just the body shape for compatibility).
Maybe you can just trim them!
ah yes, so you can get a card that will die before you manage to use all of it
