OK, this is really cool. We have practically zero insight into the longevity of these things. Even if you know what chips are being used, lack of information about the wear leveling algorithms means there isn’t much that we can say about the real world performance under different loads.
We have zero insight into the longevity of flash memory because it doesn't matter: whatever it is, it's a lot longer than the phone's planned obscolescence.
That's why you've never heard anybody complain about their saved data getting corrupted: their device has long since hit the landfill before that happens.
It depends on the storage medium. SD cards will fail if you use them enough. Photographers and videographers will run into to problem every once in a while, especially if they're a professional. Why SD cards in particular have a tendency to fail, I can't exactly say. It might just be their form factor making internal physical damage more likely. I say internal, because the issue is that a normal looking SD card will one day turn up corrupted for no obvious reason.
I haven't heard of any other type of flash memory having lifespan issues for regular consumers.
Yeah it's at the level of frequency where an ordinary user with one SD card is unlikely to have a problem, but if photography is your hobby it's only a matter of time. In a rather informal poll conducted by Chelsea and Tony Northrup, they basically found that two thirds of the most active photographers had experienced at least one SD card failure. It basically was just a direct correlation with how many photographs you've taken.
Yeah but the practical write limit tests I've seen for SSDs (from ten years ago) put it well beyond what even a professional photographer would do. We're talking SSDs that sustained constant writing of random data 24/7 and didn't fail for more than a year. There's just something about SD cards. As further "proof," photographers don't complain about their SSDs failing on them, even though those should have more write cycles than their SD cards.
SD cards don't perform wear leveling while ssds do. This is why there are specific SD cards meant for surveillance cameras. They have additional wear levelling circuitry at the expense of speed.
So photographers who fill up their sd cards end up writing over the same spots repeatedly and wear them out.
I must disagree. I’ve encountered a couple of phones from people in my family that could not be restored because the flash itself was bad. The flash memory specifically failed and required them to purchase a new phone.
We’re talking 5 to 7-year-old phones here. It does happen. There are plenty of people who will never replace their phone until it breaks.
For another example, consider that Google added forward error correction to their system images because they encountered issues with failing memory chips in the wild. This was an effort to keep devices booting and operable for longer.
