Samsung today announced that it has started the mass production of 1TB UFS 2.1 NAND storage chips for mobile phones. This eUFS NAND chip from Samsung is expected to be found inside a special variant of the Galaxy S10 packing 12GB RAM and 1TB storage.

Despite doubling the storage capacity from its 512GB chip, the 1TB NAND chip has the same package size. Samsung is able to achieve such a higher storage capacity by stacking 16 layers of its advanced 512-gigabit V-NAND flash memory. The additional storage capacity comes with an improved read/write speed as well. The 1TB eUFS 2.1 NAND chip offers sequential read speeds of 1000MB/s and write speeds of 260MB/s.

“The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices,” said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “What’s more, Samsung is committed to assuring the most reliable supply chain and adequate production quantities to support the timely launches of upcoming flagship smartphones in accelerating growth of the global mobile market.”

Four years ago, Samsung was the first to the industry to mass produce 128GB NAND storage chips. While Samsung is the first in the industry to mass produce eUFS 2.1 NAND of 1TB in capacity, it is not going to be the first to launch a device with a whopping 1TB of storage. That award is with Apple which launched its 2018 iPad Pro lineup with 1TB storage last year in October itself.

Apart from Samsung, Apple will likely also benefit from the introduction of 1TB NAND storage chips as it can use them on its 2019 iPhone lineup.

While most users will not require 1TB of storage space on their smartphones, the introduction of these chips will lead to the price of 128GB NAND chips to fall which in turn will lead to more OEMs to adopt them.