How to spot a fake memory card

I  receive an overwhelming number of people who come to the technical bench of E-zone Internet Café complaining about their phones misbehaving when they insert a newly acquired memory card. Either the songs skip when playing, the capacity is less than displayed on the packaging or file names appear in strange characters.

Worse still some phones may even be duped into giving you wrong information about the capacity of your memory card. But what you may not know is that these fake cards are also painfully slow when transferring data.

The options
The first option is to copy a bunch of files to it until it’s full. Try to access the files especially the last ones and if they are inaccessible, it’s fake. If they are mp3 files, some of the songs will skip while playing or the file names will be unreadable.

An easier way if you have an Android phone or tablet, is to go to the Play Store and download SD Insight. It is a free app that lists details about the microSD card installed in your device. Real microSD cards will have data about them listed, including their manufacturer. Counterfeits, on the other hand, will have no manufacturer name stated.

How to avoid buying a fake one

– Don’t trust unusually cheap options.
– Avoid cards with fuzzy labeling or
– Buy only from established shops like E-zone Internet Cafe.

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Stephen Dumba,
E-zone School of Computing