Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

1" Hard Drives in Cellphones on the Rise

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the coming-to-the-tipping-point dept.

Tomo Hiratsuka writes "The imminent 10Gb 1-inch hard drives we've been hearing about have been well covered but the maker, Cornice, reckons its product could end up in over 70 million cellphones by 2009. Kevin Magenis, one of the company founders, isn't shy about pointing out that this is 30 million units more than predicted DAP sales."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks? by __aammuz5019 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I agree totally with not wanting a hard drive in my cell phone, but... has anyone tried to buy a cell phone *without* a camera in it lately? I don't want a camera in my cell phone either, because I work in the defense industry and I cannot take my phone into many buildings due to security restrictions. But, when I tried to purchase a cell phone without a camera, I found my only choice was a klunky offering that was too big for me and looked like it was several years old in design. I fear that the idea of having a hard drive in one's cell phone will "catch on," and shortly after, one will not be able to find a cell phone without one. Sigh! smp

  2. Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks? by mnemotronic · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Very small drives are ... a little different. You're probably thinking of Z-axis damage, where the heads "slap" into the media after the drive is dropped "face down". What's kewl about these tiny drives is that everything (including the head or heads) is smaller and lighter, with less mass, which means less momentum, which translates into fewer chances for this kind of damage. Another way to prevent damage is use an accelerometer which the embedded F/W will use to sense impending doom and park the heads on a non-data portion of the media, or to remove the heads from the media entirely (ramp loading).

    But in the end, you're right - Flash is much more tolerant of these kinds of environments. Yes it's expensive, but there's that Moore's Law thing that, for a few years now, has given us smaller, denser, and cheaper circuitry. There's also the limited number of rewrite cycles, but in the sub 1.8 inch drive arena, I think (MHO) Flash will be the ultimate winner. Until then, those of us using micro drives thank those of you who fork out the Really Big Bucks for Flash-based products (like the Nano) - you're helping drive down the cost for us all.

    --
    The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
  3. Re:That depends. by jank1887 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    hmmm... DDR hard drive needs external power supply. So, basically the idea is to use RAM as a HDD by never turning it off? Nice. 'Cause power outages never happen.

    Although, seeing as how I have to reformat my windows box once a year or so, this would make that process really fast.

    Also, is there any validity to that device? Links to an article with no meat (manufacturer mentioned as "the firm"), and it only points to a webpage with an email address and the same graphic in the article.. My guess is someone was playing with Photoshop.