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.

Comments

Is this a phone?

[elgatozorbas]

It also has a TV output. Makes me wonder what will be the evolution of the integration of stuff. A calendar/camers/notebook(let)/... may be handy, but won't there ever be a moment where integration should/will stop?
Z

Oh good

[ArchieBunker]

Music through speakers the size of a dime, thats gotta sound great. Whatever happened to doing one thing and doing it well?

Re:Oh good

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I think you plug headphones in?

But can it make a phone call?

[erick99]

The Samsung handset also features an FM radio, 64-voice polyphonic ringtone support, a 240 x 320 display and TV output - again, preparing the way for the day when mobiles incorporate Microsoft Portable Media Center-style functionality.

Most of the time I am just trying to maintain a clear enough signal to complete a call.

Cheers,

Erick

Why not Flash?

[BlastM]

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.

Re:Why not Flash?

[TheUnFounded]

I have a feeling this is all a gimmick to satisfy the new HDD craze that Apple has driven.

You know, I sincerely doubt that any greater than 2% of the population has a clue that the iPod uses a HDD. All anyone in the general population cares about is "hey, this thing can hold X days of music and still have room for X pictures!!"

Pre-emptive strike against the luddites!!

[SlashChick]

Every time one of these phones is reviewed, there are many nay-sayers (who often get modded "Insightful") who say things like, "I just want a phone that can make calls without dropping the signal!"

Sure, we all want that... but keep in mind that the cell phone hardware manufacturers and the cell phone service providers are different companies. This is an article regarding Samsung cell phones. At least in the U.S., Samsung is not a cell phone provider. So if you want fewer dropped calls, call your provider and complain... but don't insist that hardware manufacturers focus on something they don't have control over (the cell phone networks.)

Re:Pre-emptive strike against the luddites!!

[entrigant]

And how did this post even make it to +2, Insightful? You you really think the hardware manufacturer has NO control over how well their phone can maintain a good signal? You see phones have this thing called an antenna.. perhaps you've heard of it? Different phones will always work better than others when it comes to reception.

Re:Pre-emptive strike against the luddites!!

[DigitalCrackPipe]

Hold on there. Just because most of the cell providers are substandard in the US doesn't mean that the hardware manufacturers aren't remiss in their duties as well. It seems that as time goes on and we get more features in phones, the call performance declines. The people who seem happiest with their phones have the simple phone-only models. All I'm asking is for focussing on the call quality circuitry before adding a bunch of gimmicks. The consumers flocking to the gimmicks aren't helping a lot in this matter. One further note - I've seen statistics that some manufacturers have a higher dropped call rate (Motorola) - so if you can trust the statistics the manufacturers CAN be blamed.

Re:Most important feature..

[Jason1729]

It's a phone, it's meant to be thrown around. It's built to take that kind of abuse because the manufacturer understood how people use cell phones. I have no trouble with dropping my powerbook, but then quite often I leave the PB home because I know I'm going somewhere it might get banged around.

I've never dropped my PDA, but it spends a lot of time in my backback which gets thrown around. If it had a hard drive, it also wouldn't survive.

If I have to leave the cellphone home because I'm worried it might get damaged, then it's completely useless.

Jason
ProfQuotes

User interface

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with a device that gets too rich in features is that the user interface tends to get ugly. It means that most people don't use three quarters of the features.

Given Moore's law, we can predict that this kind of thing will cost $100 in a couple of years. I think that the company that prospers will be the one that can make it work the way people want it to work. Otherwise, all they're doing is kludging a bunch of stuff just because they can.

Proof of progress.

[Trifthen]

You know... it's days like this when I can't help but stop and realize the sheer disparity between now and ten years ago. Then: I'd just bought a new 486 with a 120MB hard drive - now: you can get a phone with over 10x the storage capacity, and probably more processing power.

Sometimes it may not seem like it, but we really have come a long way.

Re:Uhhh, heaviest part? Go back to Gravity 101.

[mlyle]

Uh, hello Mr. Clueless.

Things like to have their center-of-gravity as close to earth as possible. Ever notice that things that are top-heavy are a lot easier to tip over than things that are bottom-heavy? If you drop something that's very top-heavy out of an airplane, it's going to at least initially flip over to be heavy-side-down.

In a short fall, rigid bodies will tend to rotate so the heavy side faces the ground. In a longer fall, aerodynamic forces become more dominant than distribution-of-mass issues.

Why hd?

[wirwzd]

What we really need is ubiquitous cheap high speed synchronous wireless internet access.

Then there is no need for a hd. Just stream the MP3/movie, etc from your home server to your car, office, headphones, friends house.

This allows for a more compact convergence device, with more of focus on interface and usability.

DRM (ducks) would also be *slightly* less annoying as portability of content would be increased.

Stop and think.

[sploo22]

Will this really do any good if your service provider says you can only use content that they provide? I'm not interested in buying 1.5GB of songs twice.

Re:Most important feature..

[timeOday]

Personally, I would have thought an MP3 player with a hard drive was an equally bad idea. That's why I own an a solid state model. But whenever this topic is raised, iPod owners come out of the woodwork to tell about using them for exercise, dropping them, whatever, without damage. I can only conclude that hard drives (especially these little low-mass ones) aren't so fragile after all.

Also note that the phone's disk drive will be deactivated almost all the time - there's no reason to run it constantly, and it would kill the standby time. This reduces the risk even more.