Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

LG K8 2018 - need to buy a card to increase phone's memory.

Sep 23, 2018 12:23AM PDT

I recently acquired an LG K8 2018 smartphone which has 16GB of memory but can be expanded to 32GB of memory by purchasing something called a micro SD card. I did a search on Best Buy for one; came up with 13 results; went to Amazon and came up with more than 100 results from numerous companies. These cards look like the cards purchased for digital cameras years ago; are they the same type of card or not? What type of card do I need to buy to expand the memory in my smartphone? Amazon's page asked which speed I needed? What did they mean by speed of card needed?


Big Steve
09/23/18

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: card
Sep 23, 2018 1:08AM PDT

Yes, that's the same type of card. Any "micro SD" should work.

The speed is how many bytes a second can be read or written to the card. If you plan to make High Definition video's on your phone, high speed is needed (a lot of data each second) . If you just use the card to store pictures and mp3's, any speed is fine.
Don't spend money for a very high speed that is not supported by your phone. So look in the user manual what is says about needed and supported speeds for such a card.

- Collapse -
Re: card
Sep 23, 2018 2:03AM PDT

I have no plans to make videos; this is my first smartphone purchase; the phone; an LG K8 2018 model came with 16GB of internal memory with the option to increase the memory up to 32GB by purchasing a microSD card. I'll go through the 53 page manual which came with the phone to see what it says about microSD cards. Thanks for your feedback.


Big Steve
09/23/18

- Collapse -
Re: card
Sep 23, 2018 2:12AM PDT

Dp you think you need more than 16 GB to store what you want to store?

- Collapse -
Re: card
Sep 23, 2018 2:58AM PDT

I don't know how much memory I'll use but I plan to add some apps and I might test out the camera; I'll just have to see how much memory an app will use. When I start to build my phone's contact list will doing that use up some memory? Saving text messages?


Big Steve
09/23/18

- Collapse -
Re: card
Sep 23, 2018 2:12AM PDT

I forgot to mention once I took the phone to my T-Mobile store to activate it with a plan last week; the phone's 16GB of internal memory was reduced to 9GB of available memory after the phone was activated and I have not added any apps to the phone since I got it activated which is why I decided I better buy a memory card to increase the phone's internal memory. The phone's home screen has 9 icons on it; at least 4 are labeled Google; one is labeled Accuweather and the others I haven't attempted to mess with yet.


Big Steve
09/23/18