Xiaomi’s recent launch of the Xiaomi 14 series has been met with much fanfare, thanks to the top-of-the-line specifications and features on offer. But there is one hidden surprise feature that hasn’t been talked about much—UltraSpace storage expansion.
It is a patented new technology that Xiaomi uses in the Xiaomi 14 series to expand the phone’s available storage beyond its original capacity using available UFS storage.
This may be confusing for some, so let me explain it with an example.
Xiaomi 14: 264GB storage on a 256GB model with UltraSpace storage expansion
In simpler terms, UltraSpace storage expansion is a feature that gives you more space on your smartphone without adding any extra physical storage. Typically, you’d sacrifice storage space for more virtual RAM, but Xiaomi’s implementation offers more storage instead—like pulling a rabbit out of a hat!
For example, if you buy a 256GB Xiaomi 14 Pro, you will actually have 264GB of total storage space on your phone, with 8GB of extra free space thanks to this new technology.
Xiaomi is cleverly using the space reserved for Over-Provisioning (OP) in the UFS memory chip for this. OP is a technique used to improve the performance and reliability of flash memory by reserving a portion of the storage space for tasks such as Wear Leveling (WC), Garbage Collection (GC), and Bad Block Mapping.
The company found that this space is often too large, for example, a 256GB UFS memory chip actually has a real capacity of more than 266GB, which means over 10GB of space is reserved for OP.
However, Xiaomi engineers found a way to free up this extra space without sacrificing performance or reliability. The company says it rewrote the system (HyperOS) firmware and optimized it to use much less space, freeing up 8/16GB on their 256/512GB storage models, giving them “264/528GB” of actual usable storage.
As a result, the 256GB version of the Xiaomi 14 Pro has 8GB expanded storage to make it 264GB, while the 512GB version of the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro has 16GB expanded storage to make it 528GB.
This is a significant increase in storage space, which can be useful for storing more applications, photos, videos, and other data. It is also worth noting that this technology does not require any additional hardware, so it does not increase the cost of the smartphone.
However, Xiaomi’s new UltraSpace storage expansion technology is only available on the 256GB model of the Xiaomi 14 Pro and the 512GB model of the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro.
This leaves a few unanswered questions, such as why the 256GB model of the Xiaomi 14 does not get the same 8GB expansion, and why there is no mention of UltraSpace storage expansion for the 1TB variant.
Despite this, the UltraSpace storage expansion is a promising new technology that could offer significant benefits to users.
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