miniSD performance

[Guest gavinchappell]

I've been having a bit of trouble with my SPV C500 of late, mainly with the camera app (sometimes hangs while taking a photo or showing me the album) but also playing videos etc. Just out of interest, I found an app for my PDA and stuck the 3 SD/miniSD+adapter cards I have into it and benchmarked them:

 <property id="1" name="CardType" value="SD" /> 

  <property id="2" name="CardManufacturer" value="Dell" /> 

  <property id="3" name="CardSize" value="32MB" /> 

  <property id="4" name="Device" value="Axim X50" /> 

  <Read mbsec="1.02" type="avg" /> 

  <Read timesX="6.9" type="avg" /> 

  <Write mbsec="0.09" type="avg" /> 

  <Write timesX="0.6" type="avg" />

 <property id="1" name="CardType" value="SD" /> 

  <property id="2" name="CardManufacturer" value="SanDisk" /> 

  <property id="3" name="CardSize" value="16MB" /> 

  <property id="4" name="Device" value="Axim X50" /> 

  <Read mbsec="1.07" type="avg" /> 

  <Read timesX="7.3" type="avg" /> 

  <Write mbsec="0.23" type="avg" /> 

  <Write timesX="1.5" type="avg" />

 <property id="1" name="CardType" value="SD" /> 

  <property id="2" name="CardManufacturer" value="Kingmax" /> 

  <property id="3" name="CardSize" value="256MB" /> 

  <property id="4" name="Device" value="Axim X50" /> 

  <Read mbsec="0.40" type="avg" /> 

  <Read timesX="2.7" type="avg" /> 

  <Write mbsec="0.19" type="avg" /> 

  <Write timesX="1.3" type="avg" />

As shown, the Kingmax 256Mb card I bought is less than half the speed (reading) of the SanDisk one I got with the phone (with the Orange apps on it). The thing is, it didn't used to crash anywhere near as much as it does now, so I'm not sure whether I've just got too much stuff on the card and it can't keep up when the phone wants to read it, or whether the card is going bad. Anyone any clue whether this could be a bad card, or if it's just too slow and can't keep up anymore?