Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Introduces Phone With Hard Drive
swight1701 writes "It is being reported that Samsung has shown what it claims is the world's first mobile phone that incorporates a hard drive. The model, V5400, is integrated with a 1" hard drive with 1.5GB of capacity. Other features of the phone include - 2.2" LCD display, an MP3 player, electronic book reader, and Korean-English dictionary. Samsung has also included a built-in microphone to enhance the audio in the phone's camcorder feature. The included dual-speakers allow the user to listen to music with a 3D appeal."
loid_void adds a link to this Reuters story, too.
There is a picture here
To understand this sort of thing, you have to accept that everyone in Europe (and I suspect the Far East) has a mobile and carries it everywhere . Actually, that's not true but it's very close, and the younger the person, the more likely they will be to have a phone (down to a point, of course). As far as electronic devices that you carry all the time are concerned, the mobile phone won. In the UK at least, you may well see people with PDAs, but everyone has a phone. Therefore, there is a market for phones which do more. Given that people will always carry their phone, there is the potential for the phone to assimilate the MP3 player, for example. Or the PDA. Or a radio. Or a walkie-talkie. I'm sure you get the general idea. Like it or not, manufacturers have finally found an electronic device that most people want to carry with them all the time.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
That depends. A lot of people seem to have taken to the earbud phones. Depending on the model, even a good share of headphone audiophiles use them. That doesn't mean they are for me though.
It's on the flip lid, according to this photo on Engadget.
For more information, click here.
The HDD is faster and able to be written more times?
A 1GB SD card is faster than a mechanical, for reading or writing. And in a phone, it will accumulate "burned out" bits (after 1M writes) slower than a HD accumulates bad inodes. And it's a lot tougher when you drop it, while drawing a lot less power, generating less heat, and using less space. Although the gyroscopic HD might have some advantages turning the phone into a force-feedback 3D mouse.
--
make install -not war
Hard drives are fragile, especially for portable devices. A better solution would have been 1.5GB of solid state memory like an included Secure Digital card slot, or built in Compact Flash. Why was a hard drive chosen? I have a feeling this is all a gimmick to satisfy the new HDD craze that Apple has driven.
I don't think reliability will be an issue. I have owned an iPod mini since day one and have dropped it a number of times while it was running. No damage so far.
Hard drives in portable devices are designed to take much more of a beating than anything you will install inside a computer. Laptop drives handle a lot of Gs before taking damage and microdrives take a tremendous amount of G forces to cause a problem.
These aren't normal hard disks, but proper portable models. That doesn't sound like a difference, but they're made to be able to stand being moved (quite violently) during use. I think you'd be surprised by how robust they actually are.
it's meaningless to put those vendor specific OS onto a cellphone.
a dell x30 might not be perfect, but it has bluetooth, wifi, SDIO, 624M processor for $267 today
any one still wants to buy a cellphone over $300?