Based on materials from android-softwares.com
An amazing thing is a small card that can contain a huge amount of data, for example, the discography of your favorite band, all episodes of your favorite TV series, and whatever. But when it comes to fake cards, things don't get so rosy …
Counterfeit microSD cards are not a good investment. Using them is dangerous, and worst of all, you can lose all your data. However, often the buyer does not even suspect that he is buying a fake, because it is practically indistinguishable from the original. The packaging looks convincing, with the familiar brand name on it – Samsung, Kingston, SanDisk. Let's figure out how to avoid problems when buying a card.
What is the technical difference between real and fake microSD cards?
Let's say there is a person who has put a microSD card with the declared capacity of 64 GB into the device. The phone starts to glitch, and, of course, the owner understands that the problem is in the card, but mistakenly assumes that this phone does not support memory cards of this size. But in fact, he just bought a fake.
Many modern counterfeit microSD cards actually have much less space than advertised. For example, only 8 GB instead of the declared 64 GB. And worst of all, your device recognizes it as 64GB too. Interfering with the firmware is a common thing, because of it it happens. And your phone starts trying to fill non-existent gigabytes with data. The device will either give an error or write information over the existing one. In any case, your data may be irreparably damaged.
Plus, fake microSDs are guaranteed to be slower to read and write data. They can be so slow that they seriously affect the performance of the phone, leading to lags and crashes. And if something like this happens to you, check the card for authenticity.
What does a fake look like?
We know that this is a property of Chinese culture in which copying is not considered bad. And that's why the most accurate imitations come to us from the Middle Kingdom. This is true for microSD cards as well as for their packages, which are very similar to real ones. But they are never exactly the same. If the printing on the package is embarrassing or there is something wrong with the logo, this is most likely a fake. If the text on the card itself is poorly typed or crookedly located – the same thing. And finally, if the price is too nice to be true, you are probably holding a fake in your hands.
Examples of fake microSD cards
Real card and fake
On the left, we have an original 64GB microSD card from Samsung. The counterfeit on the right is only 8GB in size, although it claims 64, and is slower. Pay attention to the bad print on the fake card, which should immediately alert you.
Fake Samsung Evo 64GB card
Comparison of fake and original from YouTube user wan7000. On the left is a real 64 GB Samsung Evo microSD card, on the right is a fake. Both were purchased on eBay for A $ 41 and A $ 37, respectively. And again we see that the forgery has crooked and poorly printed inscriptions. You may also notice a white slice around the edges of the original map. Fortunately, wan7000 got the money back. But no one will return the data to him.
Fake 256GB Samsung microSD card
An example of an obvious fake, the card, which naturally lacks 256 GB of space, it is not made by Samsung, is sold online for $ 18, and a card reader is included in the package. Fakes without any brand sell for less than 10 bucks. So, alas, those who bought into the deception.
Packaging with a fake 64GB card from Kingston
There are also fake Kingston cards. On the left is what YouTube user vta1985 found on eBay. Look, there is no information on the card capacity on the package. The actual packaging on the right clearly states 64GB. In case you're wondering, the capacity of the fake is only 5GB. Using such a card means putting your data at risk.
Fake 64GB SanDisk microSD card
The fake is at the bottom, Mrwhosetheboss from YouTube bought it on AliExpress for about $ 15. Let's take a closer look and see that the text on the fake is poorly printed and the colors are slightly different than that of the original 32 GB. We do not know how much space is actually on the fake card, but we know that it made the application lag and crash when playing a video. There were typos on the fake packaging, which should be another important signal for you.
How to avoid buying fake microSD cards?
As always, your best friend is intuition. The most correct thing is to buy accessories for your smartphone from a well-known store, both online and offline. But from eBay or AliExpress, fakes may well come to you.
As for the price, without going into details, the largest current card in existence, the 200GB SanDisk, costs $ 99 on BestBuy. And you don't need to be seven inches in the forehead to suspect a trick when you see a 512 GB card for $ 10.
The 512GB microSD card costs $ 9.87 on eBay. Excellent purchase? Well, I do not…
How to recognize a fake in your microSD card?
If you have a phone or tablet on Android, the easiest way is to download the SD Insight app. It's free and shows information about the microSD card installed in your device, including the manufacturer. For fakes, the manufacturer's name will not be determined.
As a reliable application, SD Insight, unfortunately, cannot read information from any of the existing maps. Therefore, it is best to test the map without relying on the entire application. Just write data on it. Copy files to it, hammering to capacity, or record a test video to the device, choosing microSD as the save destination. When the card is almost full or completely full, check if you can access the files. And if you get an error, your best bet is to just throw that piece of plastic away.