Goodbye, microSD: Why Our Next Devices Store Your Jumps on Built-In Flash

If you’ve tried to buy a small microSD card recently, you may have noticed something strange: they’re getting harder to find, and they’re definitely not getting cheaper. We noticed too. And it has led to one of the bigger hardware decisions in airlogONE’s history.

The memory market has changed

Over the past months, memory has become a scarce resource. Chip manufacturers are shifting their production toward high-capacity parts for data centers and AI, and the small, older capacities are the first to suffer. Those are exactly the sizes a device like ours needs. They are being phased out, and what remains has become disproportionately expensive.

For a small hardware company, that means longer lead times, unpredictable prices, and a real question mark over whether the card we qualify today will still be available next year. That’s not a foundation we want to build our products on.

The card was never our favorite part anyway

To be honest, the shortage just gave us the final push. A microSD card sits in a mechanical socket, held in place by spring contacts. On a skydiving instrument, that socket has to survive opening shocks, vibration, hard landings, and years of temperature changes. Surprisingly, it does its job very well. But a card that briefly loses contact at the wrong moment means a lost recording, and a lost jump is exactly what a logging device should never produce.

A card slot is also an opening in the housing, and that has consequences (more on that below).

What we looked at

We evaluated the two main types of memory that can be soldered directly onto the circuit board.

NAND flash is what’s inside SD cards and SSDs. It offers a lot of capacity for the money, but it isn’t perfect on its own: bits occasionally flip, and some memory blocks are faulty from the factory or wear out over time. Every NAND device therefore needs error correction and bad-block management working in the background. That’s a lot of complexity for a small instrument, and it’s one more layer where things can go wrong.

NOR flash has less capacity per chip, but it is exceptionally reliable. It stores data without that correction layer, is rated for 100,000 erase cycles and 20 years of data retention, and is widely used in cars, industrial controllers and medical devices for exactly that reason. Just as important for us: these chips come in an industry-standard package with a common command set and are made by several manufacturers. If one supplier runs dry, we can switch to another without redesigning the board.

We’ve decided to go with built-in NOR flash, 32 or 64 MB depending on the model. It’s soldered onto the board like every other chip: no socket, no spring contacts, no moving parts, nothing that can shake loose.

Less memory, same experience

Yes, that’s a lot less than a microSD card. But let’s do the honest math: a typical card can hold thousands of jumps that nobody ever looks at on the device itself.

Our new devices store around **100 jumps**. And every time you upload your jumps to the airlog app or the cloud, that space is freed up again. In practice, you’ll rarely get anywhere near the limit.

If you do, your device will tell you that its memory is full. You can then sync your jumps, or simply carry on, in which case the oldest recordings make room for new ones. Your choice.

And if you’ve made 100 jumps without once syncing or looking at a single one of them? Then we’d gently suggest you probably weren’t going to. 😉

Bluetooth makes it even easier

This is where the change really pays off. With Bluetooth support, uploading your jumps no longer involves finding a hotspot and setting up WiFi credentials (but you can if you want). Your jumps sync to your mobile wirelessly, whether you’re at the packing area, on the way home, or at the bar after the last load. Getting your data off the device has never been simpler.

A bonus: waterproof devices

There’s one more thing a microSD slot prevents: a truly sealed housing. As long as there’s a card to swap, there’s an opening, and a waterproof design simply isn’t possible.

Without the slot, it is. Built-in storage opens the door for future airlogONE devices that shrug off rain, wet landing areas, and the occasional unplanned water landing.

What this means for you

We’ll convert our product line step by step, with new models coming with built-in flash from the start.

If you own an airlogONE with a microSD card: nothing changes. We continue to fully support these devices.

And how you use your airlogONE doesn’t change either: jump, sync, review. The only difference is that there’s one less thing that can go wrong, and one less part we have to chase across the global supply chain.

Blue skies!