Eh, consumer-quality SSDs these days can hit a good bit more than 500Mbps even with writes. This Inland NVMe drive lists 1,900MB/s write speeds (15.2Gbit/s). ~$60 for 512GB. Even if we take its rated speeds with a grain of salt for sustained writes and cut it in half, that's still >7Gbit.
That said, almost all phones are not using such an interface or controller for their storage and I do largely agree having a phone with a >1Gbps link is a bit overkill for a handheld mobile devices. Ultimately though once there's a bunch of clients on it your actual throughput in practice will be much slower. The big win is that the overall channel (or channel grouping) can now handle a ton more aggregate throughput meaning higher realized speeds per customer for the same amount of spectrum. Being able to get your slice of data faster means you can quit talking or quit listening sooner and someone else can talk or hear something they care about.
"consumer grade", I meant SATA SSD. Although I acknowledge that NVMe drives are entering the consumer market these days with insane write speeds that you'd only find in the data center before.
Also, good point about why speed is important - it can certainly help serve more customers!
https://www.microcenter.com/product/600420/inland-premium-51...
That said, almost all phones are not using such an interface or controller for their storage and I do largely agree having a phone with a >1Gbps link is a bit overkill for a handheld mobile devices. Ultimately though once there's a bunch of clients on it your actual throughput in practice will be much slower. The big win is that the overall channel (or channel grouping) can now handle a ton more aggregate throughput meaning higher realized speeds per customer for the same amount of spectrum. Being able to get your slice of data faster means you can quit talking or quit listening sooner and someone else can talk or hear something they care about.