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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.
..where exactly is the camera?
Look at my phone it has Tetris on it. Nope, that's the defragmenter.
But can you make telephone calls with it? Well, someone had to say it.
But the costs of this technology are too prohibitive for anyone to buy one as a serious tool, only people with too much money to spend will be getting one until the costs have come down enough for it to be widely available.
It's amazing how the GB per £ keeps going up for new 'toys' The benefits being that as other technologies progress, 'old' models also drop in price allowing the wider marker reasonable access
If at first you DON'T succeed, Skydiving is NOT for YOU!!
So what you're saying is that this cell phone has one more component with a marked propensity for failure than the competitor's does?
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
1.5 GB?
Noone could ever use more than 640 Kb of memory... er, oops...
Can it survive being dropped?
I've dropped my Nokia 5100 series about 5 feet from ear level to concrete several times. Except for a few scuffs (mostly on the battery, it must be the heaviest part), it's survived perfectly.
I doubt a phone with a hard drive can survive that kind of abuse.
Jason
ProfQuotes
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
Music through speakers the size of a dime, thats gotta sound great. Whatever happened to doing one thing and doing it well?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Not until my phone includes a grappling hook/laser cutter/.22 LR hand gun/ and is seductive enough to lure exotic women will I be content.
Hard Drive. HA, thats for CIA spies.
"Donuts, is there anything they can't do?"
I don't care about the mp3 player, but it's about time I had a phone with a Korean-English dictionary! Now I just need a translation of the Magna Carta to swahili and a random selection of quotes from "Moby Dick", and I'll be set.
I'm you from the future! We have to finish our time machine before the Angels of Destruction find the portal!
Most of the time I am just trying to maintain a clear enough signal to complete a call.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
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 cant wait until someone hacks it and runs linux on it.
Until our children are no longer molded into castrated sheep democracy remains a fake and a danger. -A. S. Neill
...USB, I think it would be down-right neato if you could plug your phone into your computer and upload data to it via USB! What will they come up with next?
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. -Alan Kay
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Reminds me of the guy that rigged his ex-wife's/ex-girlfriend's phone in such a way that it would turn-on anytime it moved. He planted it under her car and was able to track her movements via GPS.
How easy will it be to hack this phone to become a miniature security camera? Just place a couple of them around --- pretty inconspicuous since they're just phones. I'm sure it can be done with current tech, this device just seems to combine all those things into a mass-market product.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
There is a picture here
is it possible to make phone calls with this thing?
vodka, straight up, thank you!
between cell phones and computers. This thing has a processor, an embedded os and a hard drive. It's on a network, it's got a keyboard and color display.
I know that Motorola was the phone manufacturer that's in bed with apple, but jeez, if I could have only 1.5 GB, and still have my iTunes... without carrying my small, but still tangible iPod... I'd be rather happy :-)
Nothing like moving parts to send battery life down the toilet, not to mention reliability. I'm not an expert, but with 2GB of flash ram (0.5GB more than the HD) being about $150 street you would think an $800 dollar phone would use it.
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"Samsung has also included a built-in microphone..."
That's odd, my cell phone has had a built in microphone for ages.
OK, a phone with a hard drive, phones that are cameras, media players that play movies, CD's, DVD's and mp3's... How much longer until we have a PDA that you can set to "camera" and point at a target (using the screen as a viewfinder), click, get the picture, all the while listening to your favorite tunes that will automatically pause when you get an incoming call, received directly on your headphones? And to all of you who mutter something about power consumption, a bare bones operating system should be able to manage power adequately as the most likely use of such a gadget will have you never using more than a couple of functions at once. I'm not going to be buying a phone with a hard-drive, I'm waiting for my all-in-one.
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.)
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
So, how long will it be until we are all carrying iPhones?
My guess is 2 years.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
How the f*ck is the thing $800 without a PalmOS or PocketPC license? Might as well just get a Treo with some big SD cards...
With the advent of all-in-one devices, I think the naming scheme is slowly going a little off whack. This device is called a "phone" ...yet it seems like an mp3 player or gaming platform AND a phone. So is it right to be calling it a "phone" anymore?
The industry needs some new names for all the new stuff they're coming up with... any suggestions?
Wow! A telephone with a built-in microphone! What will they think of next?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
... we can only conclude that we must not be surprised by such things.
...
do not be surprised when you see your tech on the streets. do not be surprised when you see your shit being used in ways you never imagined. do not be surprised when you see others with things you only dreamed of.
moores law predicted it all. it is you who was not able to comprehend it, while another did. then, they implemented
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
A phone with a built in microphone? What a novel concept!
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.
Why did you list that amongst our posessions in the first place?!
that's what it looks like to me.
So I still can't open it up, say "beam me up Scotty" and have anything interesting happen.
Squirrel!
Until I can buy used ones at the thrift store for a dollar a piece. Great for hacking.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
- Windows remote terminal, with foldout keyboard/touchpad (or integrate in screen)
- Xvid movie playback -- this phone could fit a drive that could carry a movie in this format
- Pleasant aroma, such as pine needles, that gradually turns into burning tire or pig farm as hard drive fills
- FLAC playback (MP3/Ogg are nice but the difference is noticable)
- USB connectivity -- like thumbdrives
Just to name a few things.Storage is great but it's about time they add features to the phone that can take full advantage of it.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
"Samsung has also included a built-in microphone" Anyone else see something funny with this statement?
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
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.
Nice, I can now build nice biceps while talking on the phone.
Simpy
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.
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
I really really want to like Samsung phones. They have a really good combination of style and functionality yet all (but maybe a handful) of their handsets don't feature Bluetooth.
It seems they are the only cellphone manufacturer that doesn't want to support Bluetooth. If they had it in their handsets, I'm sure more phonegeeks would purchase them - I know I would, as I'd instantly hand over cash for something like the Samsung E715 with Bluetooth functionality.
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Throw a dart by holding it by the tip and put a strong spin on it from a minimum of 10 feet from the dartboard. It will always hit the board tip first regardless of how much spin or how you vary the distance. Why? Once you figure that out, that's the same reason the heaviest part of the phone hits the ground first more often. It has nothing to do with which part falls faster.
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.
prior art, prior art!
Hooray for upskirt videos!
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.
ZZ
Now, if they just put a http server in it...
phone sex for sale!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
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.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
And a bigger one here
That's über-cool! I always wanted a cell with a built-in microphone. Now I can finally talk to the people I call!
Have you ever seen that Virgin mobile phone commercial where the guy has a built in taser in his phone? I'd sure like one of those...
Mod parent funny man! What's wrong with you people? lol!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
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
It seems the same problem and it's hard to imagine that people don't drop their Ipods nearly as often as their cell phones.
I'm unemployed and, therefore, too poor to buy an Ipod. Else I would be able to answer the question from first hand experience. ( I drop everything )
I didn't realize your cell phone has a dart-tail connected to it.
Most cell phones e.g. Nokia's have shapes that are symetrical and largely unaffected by aerodynamics.
If one end of the cell phone is heavy and the other is light, but the shape is uniform and material around the cell phone is more or less uniform, it will fall without necessarily turning mid-air just because one end of the cell phone is heavier than the other side.
GIVE IT A TRY.
This is... Unless your cell phone has a dart-tail connected to it.... If so, then my bad.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Most cell phones, for example, Nokia's are largely uniform as far as aerodynamics are concerneed.
Put a 8lbs bowling ball and a 16lbs bowling ball in inside a larger container that is aerodyanmically uniform.. Try using a long cardboard box that resembles a Nokia cell phone. See what happends... I bet you gravity doesn't care which side is heavier, and I since the rectangular box is... well, rectangular and uniform, it'll land without bias twoards the heavier bowling ball.
Have fun.
Modesty is one of life's greatest attributes
Suddenly twisting the phone could cause a hard drive crash, unless you are lucky enough to twist it in the plane of the drive's rotation.
Even with an accellerometer-driven braking mechanism, this is a potential problem.
Thank goodness these are small, lightweight drives, so it MAY not be a problem for "ordinary" use.
I think I'd prefer solid-state for something like this, even if it means paying 10x as much for storage.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Basically what balloonhead is saying is this is Slashdot. Saying fuck, shit, bastard, bitch, ass, damn, and anything else you can think of is perfectly acceptable.
Unless some 12 year old mods you down for saying "words mommy told me were bad".
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
*gravely voice*
And I don't caaaaaare.... if your cell phone.... has a hard drive in it....
--riney
I got my first PC in 95.... this little phone has more space than it did, and I'm sure it cost alot less
My name is a variety of floral rose, and no, it's not blue
uh.. yeah like I want to have something to generate more heat while I'm talking.
;)
That spinning up sound of the hdd would be lovely also. I just wish they'd add a GF6600GT in so I can also play my doom 3
I am still using my 8210 btw for the reason that I don't want any other extra shit on my phone. I just want a phone.
I'm holding out on buying a portable hard drive MP3 player or a PDA until they're all combined together with a phone and a camera, and include a good sized hard drive. This is the next logical step, and more affordable and practical units are now closer than ever.
But does it make phone calls?
"When I die, I want to go quietly, like my grandfather, in his sleep... not screaming, like the passengers in his car."
but....Bill Gates said 640 kb would be enough for everybody! ...and it STILL won't be enough to run DOOM3! ..and watch 'em get sued into oblivion by the RIAA when they find out how many MP3's you can put on one ...I'm not buying one until they support .ogg
yeah, but can you put linux on it?
Imagine a beewolf (spelling wrong on purpose) cluster of these!
I want to see Natalie Portman using one...patricularly when she's naked and petrified, while I'm pouring hot grits down my pants.
blah, blah b;ah!
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Most cell phones, for example, Nokia's are largely uniform as far as aerodynamics are concerneed.
OK, let's say you're right. Then there's a uniform amount of resistance to the object falling over the surface facing the ground. Let's even be generous and pick a shape that won't induce any torque itself, like a sphere. This can be modelled as a vector, from the aerodynamic center of the object, in the opposite direction of the fall.
Then, when you add up all the mass vectors to figure out the center of mass (where gravity is acting), and you get a different point than the aerodynamic center-- from which the force of gravity is applied. Hence there is a torque applied to the object by these two different force vectors and rotation occurs-- unless they happen to be lined up.
Then you're further ignoring the effects of a tumbling object as it skids along a surface-- it will want to settle into the lower-energy state of having the center of mass as close to the ground as possible.
And there's tons of evidence throughout life that these effects are important-- mass distributions in airplanes and rockets, adding weights to dice to cheat, etc.
It is true if there was no atmosphere, no torque would be applied to a falling object. But on Earth, objects tend to fall and land heavy side down.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe we will see the first phone with a floppy drive too.. the world would do better without moving parts in every electronic device..
More solid state to the people
What I want, is not a phone with built in hard drive, but a hard drive mp3 player with built in phone. That is to say, I don't want the stupid features of phones like games and camera, I just want to be able to make phone calls on my mp3 player so I don't have to carry both around with me where ever I go.
I used to be the person complaining about phones having too many features, but I've come to realise that they could be quite useful, if only the phone manufacturers would combine two gadgets that I'm likely to be carrying around with me at all times.
I don't take my camera with me everywhere, but I do take my mp3 player with me everywhere.
I'd hope so, how else are you going talk to the person you're phoning? Or did they neglect to include that feature?
Cause.. I can't count how many times I have violently dropped my phone on congrete and other hard surfaces. A hard drive now? YIKES! I don't think it would survive my treatment, but my solid state phone is doing very healthy.
Hang on, this thing has a built in *microphone*?
So now not only can they track your movements with it and watch you on the camera, they can hear what you're up to as well...
Next they'll be.. god.. I dunno.. putting little speakers in them so they can.. somehow wirelessly send their voices through the phone and tell you what to do
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
God, I feel so old.. I remember looking through InCider magazine and seeing that I could get an external 20 MB drive for my IIc for about $400.. Imagine how big my BBS could be with that kind of space! I'd never need another drive!
And now they're putting 1.5 GB drives on phones. What will they think of next..
Hax.
http://www.haxwell.org
Gravity 101: Drop something in a vaccum, with only a downward force applied and no rotational forces applied, and it will fall straight down.
Aerodynamics 101: A falling object will rotate around its "centre of gravity" when a rotational force (torque by another name) is applied. These forces can be due to aerodynamic drag. If its a simple retangular shape with the centre of gavity down towards one end, then it will tend to lead with the end which centre of gravity is towards. The reasons why? well that's 102
Check you facts before you denounce people as Clueless
Why deal with unreliability of mechanical devices when solid state memory prices are getting reasonable. I've seen a gig of flash now advertised for $79- and thats retail.
with a cart to carry the battery around?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba