1" Hard Drives in Cellphones on the Rise

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."

Comments

define: DAP

[Caspian]

I had to think about this for a moment. "DAP" means "Digital Audio Player". (e.g. iPod, etc.)

I believe this is the first time this term has appeared in a SlashDot article. (Perhaps a SlashDot Glossary would be a good idea?)

Re:define: DAP

[winse]

or a link in the comments to wikipedia The funny thing is DAP doesn't commonly mean much to most people except maybe directory access protocol or some kind of german caulk company or something.

Re:define: DAP

[poot_rootbeer]

Perhaps a SlashDot Glossary would be a good idea?

Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.

This is common sense. I will grant, due to Slashdot's subject matter there are some acronyms that are common enough that they don't need to be defined (GNU, MS, RIAA) but if, as you suggest, this is the first time the term 'DAP' has appeared in a Slashdot story summary, the reader is owed a definition.

Re:define: DAP

[madfgurtbn]

Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.

That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.

Slashdot covers many esoteric subjects, so it's not likely that you will know every acronym or the name of every obscure language, technology, or application. Many times I have had to go into the threads to get more info about what the article was about, and many times I have learned interesting and very useful information that way.

Just sayin'.

Re:define: DAP

[poot_rootbeer]

That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.

That's the attitude of someone who has no respect for other peoples' time. You're allowed, but I expect better of Slashdot's editorial staff. What is their function if not to save readers from unnecessary effort?

Re:define: DAP

[AnyoneEB]

Yeah, whatever happened to that?

Although, I agree that Wikipedia would be a better choice.

Re:define: DAP

[Tingler]

That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.

Thanks, but what does RTFA mean?

I kid, I kid! ;)

Re:define: DAP

[bufalo_1973]

They could use to show what an acronym is.

Profit

[SilverspurG]

This is the sort of thing that would've been profitable to be in the correct social circles and invest in the company about 1-2 years ago.

Imagine the donations you could make to sf.net and debian.org after a windfall like that hits.

custom OS?

[Janek Kozicki]

With so much space in average cellphone I imagine that lots of people will try to run linux on them.

Maybe finally with dosbox on an average cellphone (not something extra expensive like treo) I'll be able to play elite2, and adom. Just some perfect entertainment on may way to work :)

Re:custom OS?

[emptycorp]

do be sure to let us know where abouts you live so we can avoid you while you drive and play on your cell phone.

Re:custom OS?

[Ced_Ex]

Is it supposed to mean you are trying to be funny? Or maybe you just haven't realised, that some people, instead of bringing everywhere tons of gadgets, with backpack full of different rechargers for each of them, prefer to have only one; which could provide phone, internet, digital-camera, entertainment in the form of MP3 player, games, video, act as place to store notes and reminders, and provide all kind of different services at the suitable time when you choose to use them (hint: not necessarily all at once while driving)?

I'm still waiting on a company to build a commercial level tri-corder. I'm getting sick of having to carry so much crap.

What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[gd23ka]

Since all phones are locked down DRM-wise why do I need a hard drive in them? Give me an open platform where I have complete access to the integrated phone and I'm interested. Not that anybody is going to especially when you look at providers like Verizon who go out of their way to cripple their customers phones instead.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Dionysus]

The drives shows up as USB storage devices (at least they do in the newer Nokia models). You can just access them that way and copy the music or whatever over. That's what I do.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Anonymous Coward]

"Since all phones are locked down DRM-wise why do I need a hard drive in them?"

"Not that anybody is going to especially when you look at providers like Verizon who go out of their way to cripple their customers phones instead."

Have consider that:
- most cell phone users don't live in US and thus couldn't care less about Verizon
- in most countries you can buy a cell phone that isn't tied to a certain operator
- in some countries it is illegal to sell these locked and crippled phones altogether

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Vo0k]

But before you can play the music, you must cripple it with some stupid program to let the phone read it - it won't read plain .mp3, but some proprietary Nokia format which is essentially encrypted mp3. Supposedly to make copying mp3s using your phone harder. Practically, making it suck a big time because the program is a huge uncomfortable "media manager" that scans your whole harddrive and creates an encrypted copy of every single mp3 file it finds before you are able to upload a single song to the phone. It also breaks file associations and does some more evil&rude stuff to your disk.
Of course you can upload files to the phone using standard "usb storage" interface, but then it acts just as a flash drive. It can't play mp3s. You have to upload the crippled mp3 versions instead.
Talking about Nokia 5510.
(Luckily there's a simple Linux program that does the conversion of a single pointed-to file without all the nastiness of the original Nokia software, and you can just upload the converted version normally then. Just don't forget to call 'sync' before 'umount' or you'll have fun of fsck'ing the flashdrive, doesn't sync automatically.)

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Saint37]

If this is the case, then your phone will have more functionality than your ipod. Your ipod doesn't let you download music back to your PC. If this is seen as a USB drive then you would be able to do it. Of course this is assuming that the industry doesn't strap some nasty DRM on it. You know what we do when we assume don't you?

http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[DJCF]

I have a Nokia 7610 / Symbian OS v7.0 / Series 60 with a rather nice 512 MB of RAM thanks to the expansion slot. I know the latest Symbian OS (v 9) does show up as a universal mass storage device and I would really, really love it if my phone did this too -- so I don't have to carry around a thumbdrive all the time.

Does anyone know of a Symbian app that will simulate the phone as a mass storage device, or, failing that, does anyone know a way to upgrade a 7610 to the latest Symbian version?

Cheers,
Daniel

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Splintax]

Your iPod does let you download music back to the PC. Copy the iPod_Control folder. It's hidden under Windows. Not sure about Mac.

You want the filenames to make sense? Use PodPlayer's integrated "extract" wizard. This also has the advantage of being able to play your music on-the-fly from a Windows PC without downloading the music first. Excellent tool. I have it set up on the right-click menu for my iPod (in autorun.inf), and I hook up my iPod and run the program whenever I'm at work. Charge and listen at the same time.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[grimJester]

In some countries it's illegal to couple a service with a product. Specifically, illegal to demand you buy a specific phone to get connected at a given price, and illegal to offer cheap phones only if you sign up for a connection at a given price.

Funny how the US is so soft on anti-competitive tactics while claiming to be the dream country for free markets.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Dionysus]

What are you talking about? My Nokia N70 reads normal mp3 files.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Bake]

So, tell Verizon where it can shove it.
Switch to a GSM operator.
Buy a GSM phone off the web and not tied to a specific operator.
Stick your new GSM SIM card into your GSM phone and start talking.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Dionysus]

Sorry, missed that you talked about Nokia 5510. I think all the N-series are running 'normal' mp3 files. At least N70 does. Probably all the Series 60 systems

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Dionysus]

I think iPod nano and mini will probably be killed by the next generation mobile phone/mp3 players. At least outside the US, where the mobile phones are further along. The Sony Ericsson ones have close to the same battery life as the nano (9 hours for the Sony Ericsson vs 14 hours for the nano).

I'm not sure what the industry can do with products that are already in the markedplace. Unlike desktop OS, the mobile phones don't get updated.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Millenniumman]

So how is it that these other countries' greater restrictions on businesses make them more free? If a company wants to sell a service with a product, it should be free to do so.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[DietPepsiAddict]

My Nokia 6255i has a space (under the battery, *dipshits*) for an MMC card & SIM card. I can load a 1Gig MMC full of mp3's, pull it from my PC reader, slip it in the phone, and play them until the battery dies. No need for tweaking them - the phone plays them just fine. And that works for some video's too. Granted, the screen is REALLY small to be watching video on, but it adds to the geek factor when your peers realize you're watching a movie while they're playing lame-ass games in the waiting lines... MUH HAhahahahh...

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[grimJester]

Cartels and monopolies. The telecom field is full of dinosaurs who own the infrastructure and provide crap service and vendor lock-in at outrageous prices.

Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone??

[Millenniumman]

If you think that, then don't get the service. You can't force them to provide good service at affordable prices. If these companies are so bad, and you think you could do it much better and as a result make more money, then start your own telecom business. And before you mention that you would have to invest in the infrastructure to provide this, remember that the other companies did too.

What's interesting about this...

[Sheetrock]

The size of the R/W (read/write) heads is the second-biggest determinant, after the size of the platter(s), of the size of the drive.

By harnessing the power of the microwaves inherent in the phone -- part of the electromagnetic spectrim -- it's possible to write to the drives simply by beaming the proper electromagnetic frequencies at the platters, and to read from the drives by doing the same thing in reverse.

Unfortunately, 10GB is probably as dense as these things can get, scientifically speaking.

Re:What's interesting about this...

[Smidge204]

I hope that post was a troll. I don't know what's worse... the fact that none of what you said makes sense or the fact that apparently people think it's correct.

For the mods who rated that post "informative" and "interesting":

Microwaves have wavelengths measurable in centimeters. This makes them very bad for data storage. The whole reason the industry is trying to move to Blu-ray and similar technologies is because blue colored light has a much SHORTER wavelength than the traditional red colored lasers used in established data storage devices. The "size" of the bit being stored (and therefore the number of bits you can store in a given area) is directly proportional to this wavelength.

The wavelength of the microwave radiation emitted by the phone is roughly 35 centimeters. The wavelength of light used in CD drives is roughly 0.000078 centimeters. That's nearly 13000 times larger! So you'd think you could store 1/13000th the data in the same spot using microwaves than you could fit using regular CD laser tech.

All this ignores some other very serious technical issues, of course... like how the unfocused microwave energy emitted by the antenna (or anywhere else in the phone) is directed and focused towards the HD platter, and how the microwave energy is able to interact with the platter to read and toggle magnetic bits considering microwaves bounce right off metal surfaces.

------------------

The size of the R/W heads is NOT a limiting factor.It is easy enough to use MEMS technology to make them only a few billions of a meter wide, so they can be built plenty small enough. The real limiting factor is how closely you can back the magnetic regions that encode the data before they interfere with each other and lose the ability to retain their state.

I need another cup of coffee...
=Smidge=

whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[Shivetya]

I do not want a harddrive in my phone. My phone gets more abuse than any other gadget I have. Granted its cheaper than using flash but hell I would rather pay for something that isn't going to possibly be toast when it bounces once off the pavement.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[__aammuz5019]

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

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[Kufat]

I was in the Verizon store yesterday (for an hour and fifty minutes, argh, but that's another story) and saw several reasonably nice, small phones without cameras. Nothing as small as a razr, but a few things smaller than, say, my Motorola E815.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[mnemotronic]

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.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[itsthebin]

flash media is my choice for my portable devices. My dell axim x50v is encased in an innopocket magnum magnesium case and I have confidence in it protecting my device if it is dropped , but if I had rotating media in the axim I doubt it would survive. As CF cards get bigger and cheaper why would you want to use a hard drive?

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[jurt1235]

Wishlist for a mobile phone for people who really use the thing professionaly:
1. Can call with it and has good sound
2. Carkit/headset
3. Good battery life
4. Sturdy
5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
6. Normal size and lightweight

Wishlist according to mobile phone manufacturers:
1. Portable data storage
2. Possibility to open you documents on the phone so while you are calling you can read the numbers of a spreadsheet from a screen the size of the palm of your hand and have a discussion about that
3. Ofcourse a music player, so that the long battery life is really useless. By the time you want to call you have to recharge your phone.
4. Photocamera just in case you want to take a 2 megapixel photo with a lense which is totally inadequate.
5. GPRS/MMS/UMTS/Internet: Anything for the old fashioned super high prices +super high margins which were once normal in the fixed telehpone line services.

And who ends up buying the telephones?
15 year old with no money to spend on the high priced services of the provider, downloading mainly ringtones from a crazy frog at $4 a week, and who will soon have 10GB available for that. So it sells, everybody happy! And if the telephone drops on the floor and breaks the useless full color screen, it means that the 15 year old will just have to get a new phone again. So the fascination with stuff which breaks is not to weird for the manufacturers: Easy breakage which can be blamed on the user means more sales.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[stunt_penguin]

At the same time, surely it's possible to use the same type of accelerometer that gets used in notebooks to detect falling motion and move the heads away from the platter when the phone is dropped.

Also, I'd imagine that a 1" HD is less succeptible to sudden deceleration than a larger model. That said, there are lots more things to go wrong in a HD as opposed to on a flash memory card.

Anyway to hell with phones (though a usb/wifi phone that is a 10GB hard drive would be nice) , I want to know when they're going to put these things into digital cameras and music players.

Also, when will I be able to get one for my PSP? My journey to my parents house at home can be 6 hours by bus. 10GB of documentary goodness would be cool compared to my current 1GB (about 2 hours) of entertainment.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[Tetsugaku-San]

The drives have accelerometres in them and don't break when dropped. My 5year old creative only finally died because of the battery after being dropped literally 20-30 times from over a metre onto concrete, my new Sony NW-A3000 has survived 2 drops from the same height onto concrete in the month I have had it and still works fine.

Hard drives in phones are coming, the sooner the better, and watch iSheep disapear when they do :)

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[b0s0z0ku]

has anyone tried to buy a cell phone *without* a camera in it lately

Yep, I bought a Nokia 3120 last August. I actually didn't even buy it; it came free with a year of Cingular service.

cheers, -b.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[WebCrapper]

You obviously haven't ever worked for the government.

Its not just government either - some companies don't let their users use thumb drives because of IP theft issues.

While I work for part of the government that currently doesn't care about my cell phone, I've been applying to various parts that do care (Computer shtuff) - my current phone has a camera on it and if I get one job or another, I'll have to get a second phone (no camera) and change my card out daily. Heck, my father-in-law can't carry around a phone with a camera due to gov contracts...

BTW - its soooo much easier here in Europe than it is in the US when it comes to cell phones. I tried to get a cell phone for my sister for Xmas and found that I would have to enter into a contract with any number of companies that serviced the area she lives in. Even the "prepaid" phones like Virgin had this issue. Here in the EU, I would have been able to buy a prepaid phone and send along a damn prepaid card with it. After that ran out, she would have been able to choose from any number of prepaid cards to use.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[djdavetrouble]

Another way to prevent damage is use an accelerometer which the embedded F/W will use to sense impending doom

I love that! What we really need is some sort of device that makes it jump up in the air and levitate at around 5 feet whilst beeping and flashing some bright LED's so we can find the little buggers when they get lost. Just an idea though. Anyway, back to the drawing board.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[Dionysus]

Nokia's E-series is probably for you.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[lowrydr310]

Wow! That looks almost exactly like a post I made to slashdot a few months ago. I work in defense too. At my old location, cell phones were allowed but camera phones were prohibited so I bought a new phone without a camera. Shortly afterward, I started working on another project in a facility with no restrictions on cameras. Now I'm working in a facility where all cell phones are prohibited (cameras or not).

Despite being 'stuck' without a cameraphone, I'm not disappointed at all. Even when I had a camera phone, I only used it the first month or two that I owned it. I usually carry around a Canon SD300 (not at work though!), which is a 4MP digicam that's smaller than my cellphone and takes better pictures than any cellphone camera.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[lowrydr310]

Wishlist for a mobile phone for people who really use the thing professionaly:
1. Can call with it and has good sound
2. Carkit/headset
3. Good battery life
4. Sturdy
5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
6. Normal size and lightweight

I have a phone that meets those specs. It's the Sanyo VI-2300. It has excellent call quality, it's a decent size, it's pretty durable (has survived several drops onto concrete), has excellent battery life (recharge it every 2-3 days or so) and it has a few extra features that I actually use like speakerphone and web browser. Just about every time I'm in a different city, I use Google Local to find the exact address/phone number (and a map!) of a store or restaurant I'm trying to find.

An even simpler phone is the Sanyo "Voice Phone 200". It appears to look just like the VI-2300, but doesn't have the Sprint Vision features. I'm not exactly sure what Sprint's 'Vision' is all about, but I think it's just the ability to download games, wallpaper, and polyphonic ringtones.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[RESPAWN]

BTW - its soooo much easier here in Europe than it is in the US when it comes to cell phones. I tried to get a cell phone for my sister for Xmas and found that I would have to enter into a contract with any number of companies that serviced the area she lives in. Even the "prepaid" phones like Virgin had this issue.

You know, that's funny. I decided to purchase a prepaid phone after evacuating New Orleans. The whole 504 area code was so screwed up that I was lucky to receive a phone call. (We can thank our telcos for not properly protecting their switches from the imminent flood disaster that New Orleans was sure to have.) Anyway, getting back to the point. I really don't remember having to enter into a contract with them. Yeah sure, they wanted my address and various other information, but I don't remember having to sign any sort of contract perse. I just bought a cheap GSM phone and the prepaid $50 card and went to town. I could be wrong, but I really don't remember signing anything other than the credit card receipt.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[glesga_kiss]

I do not want a harddrive in my phone.

Fine then. Don't buy one. What the hell is your problem? Just because you don't want it, it's a bad idea? I'd kill for 10G, my 1G SD card is always full up. Hell, I'm hoping for 80G so I can get my mp3 collection on it!

The day a phone comes out with the present features of my phone (a WiFi PDA) plus a harddrive, I'll be upgrading. Well, in honesty, I'll wait a month or two for buyer feedback and ironing out the manufacturing problems, but that's just good practice for any new tech.

Granted its cheaper than using flash but hell I would rather pay for something that isn't going to possibly be toast when it bounces once off the pavement.

Hard-drives have come a long way. When was the last time you saw a head crash? My laptops have taken a fair amount of abuse over the years, and some of them are so old the HD is only 2gig. Yet, the resilience of them is amazing, out of all the HD failures I've had (many), not one has been a laptop drive. I move them about all the time, even while the unit is running.

Did you see the IBM add where the HD realises the unit is in free-fall and prepares the drive for the inevitable impact? These drives will have similar features, it's pretty much guaranteed. I've always wondered though; what would happen if you took one on an oribiting vessel, in virtal 0G....

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[WebCrapper]

Had to be the fact that I was purchasing over the web since I'm stationed in Germany.

Virgin wanted my info and CC so they could setup their system to alert me when the minutes got low and needed a quick recharge.

Others had contracts that I didn't agree with.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[RESPAWN]

Hmm... with my Cingular phone I just get a text message reminder of the minutes periodically. I also get a verbal reminder that I'm low on minutes when I try to make a call. That said, I just tried to check my minutes and found that my minutes had "expired". What the crap is up with that? It's not like minutes go bad and you have to refrigerate them after opening. I only had a couple of dollars left, but that still angers me that I paid for something that I never had the opportunity to use.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[jurt1235]

I haven't seen Sanyo for sale in the Netherlands. Maybe I have to look better. I used to have a 4 year old Nokia (6210?), borrowed it after my other Nokia broke down, the battery got a bit loose causing the phone to turn of by itself (7110). I now have a $40 siemens. The sound is not really great, but for the rest it works pretty good.
About the webbrowsing: The use of the phone for a map of the city is handy.

Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks?

[lowrydr310]

I believe Sanyo only makes CDMA phones, though I could be wrong. I like my phone a lot, but the only thing I don't like is that it doesn't have a SIM card.

A little more info

[dcsmith]

This article has a little more info, including a projected price of $18.50/GB.

it could be imminent

[digitaldc]

Make up your mind, is it imminent or could it be something else?

Coming soon: An mp3 player with a cell phone in it.

Good article

[cgenman]

The maker of a product that nobody currently uses boasts that it will be the next iPod in half a decade.

Quick! Someone get this guy a job at Napster.

Re:Good article

[tompaulco]

It still pales in comparison to the overhyping of the Segway Scooter.

Mod Parent

[Anne Thwacks]

Those of us who own Distributed Array Processors agree with you. Mod parent +27.5 "Really Intelligent"

Cornice who?

[sstidman]

Cornice?!? I've never heard of them. It seems they did not exist before 2000, but now, just a few years later, they sound like a serious player. Too bad their privately held...might make a decent investment.

Re:Cornice who?

[sstidman]

Your write, eye due no bedder. Eye maid a misteak. Sari.

Re:That depends.

[Dogers]

RAID5 could be good with these puppies, they're weeny!

Sort of review here (it's in a USB enclosure: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28642

But what I really like the look of is this solid state "drive": http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28647
Seems to be lacking a battery though..?! Nice idea all the same :)

Of course he's going to predict that

[DrSbaitso]

I read an article about Cornice a while back (upon further googling, here it is). They were approached by Apple to be the exclusive supplier of HDs for the iPod Mini. They ended up turning Apple down in order to focus on the phone hard drive market. Time will tell how smart of a decision that was, but if there's one thing you can say about their CEO it's that he's got some brass ones. I think it was a pretty stupid move, but then Apple would be done with this tech by now (only flash in the Nano, bigger HDs in the 5G iPod) so maybe they will sell a lot of phones with hard drives and become rich.

Excited

[EBFoxbat]

I'm excited about this and the prospect of more powerful low-heat CPUs. Soon there will be computers everywhere... oh wait. But really. There can be PCs everywhere.

Hurrah for competition

[hattig]

This is what competition (in this instance, between flash memory and tiny hard drives) is all about - better products for less money.

$18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure ...

What's more interesting is that these drives are so thin - under 4mm thick! That's kinda sexy. Would I want it in a battered cell phone? Dunno. Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player. It'll be a 'hit' in the integrated phone/media player market I'm sure. Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it - but one day they'll get it right.

Re:Hurrah for competition

[glesga_kiss]

$18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure ...

Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.

The real battle will be on the size front. I think the HDs will maybe win this one.

Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player.

My phone is my digital camera / tiny media player (you insensitive clod!). I want it now!!!

Somehow these devices take the worst aspect of every platform they try to integrate and reproduce it

I disagree; there's nothing the dedicated devices do better. The only real argument is that the GUI is simpler to navigate, as they do less. In addition to the media applications, I have to cope with the inhumane world where I also have SSH, VNC, IMAPS and GPS running. Won't someone save me from the complexity, please think of the children!! ;-)

Re:Hurrah for competition

[pthisis]

Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.

No moving parts also means relative silence and lower heat generation.

gigabit?

[johnnybaluba]

When did they start releasing harddrives with gigabit specs? Isn't that tricking the customers even more than the usual giga/gibi confusion? or is the manufacturer just ignorant?

"... by 2009..."

[Slartibartfast]

Huh? Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash? Lessee:

Flash uses less energy
Doesn't need to spin up
Won't "crash" [flash can have its own problems, but the heads ain't one of 'em]
Can be easily extracted and plugged into external devices
Etc.

I love hard drives, but the super-duper-really-small stuff has never (and, IMHO, will never) catch on; flash has that pretty much sewn up.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[Tetsugaku-San]

well maybe because that's 3 years away at minimum and the average replacement lifetime for a phone (with the people this is aimed at) is around 12months?

Quite a profit window I think, and in 3 years, their HDs will be better capacity.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[biraneto]

I agree... Having a HD is like having an analogic camera in your cell phone. Is weird that I can't wait for the time computers won't need HD's while some people are still thinking in ways of pluging it in devices that don't need it.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[sstidman]

Because by 2009 the HD capacity will be 100 GBs and cost less than your 8 GB flash card. And by that time we'll all be bitching about the uselessness of 8 GBs of storage. Batteries will likely have significantly higher capacity by then so we won't care as much, the hard drives will surely have some energy saving optimizations and the hard drives will surely be every bit as pluggable as compact flash. And if the phone/PDA/MP3 player has a GB or 2 of memory built-in (which it surely will by then), the device could spin up the drive, copy off the next few songs/videos from the disk, and then spin down the disk drive, saving tons of energy.

Remember when your PC had a whole gigabyte hard drive? Remember wondering how you could ever fill that massive beast? Okay, I'm old.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[glesga_kiss]

And if the phone/PDA/MP3 player has a GB or 2 of memory built-in (which it surely will by then), the device could spin up the drive, copy off the next few songs/videos from the disk, and then spin down the disk drive, saving tons of energy.

They already do this. Some devices can access HD-based storage over bluetooth*, and the some of the media player applications support this today. Mostly for music; I don't know how it would work for exceptionaly large files, e.g. video. Some sort of "chunk" based system I'd presume, or a dynamic cache that spools up the drive as it's emptying.

* you can also get a portable WiFi access point that can provide SMB shares if you throw a laptop drive in it. Very cool.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[poot_rootbeer]

Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash?

Well, ten is two more than eight, innit?

We also don't know yet just what kind of "higher premium" you'll pay for Flash over microdrives three years from now. If, in 2009, a 10GB microdrive costs $100 to an OEM, and an 8GB Flash unit costs $250, which do you think designers of cell phones and MP3 players are going to choose for their devices?

Re:"... by 2009..."

[smart_ass]

Remember when your PC had a whole gigabyte hard drive? Remember wondering how you could ever fill that massive beast? Okay, I'm old.

You are dating yourself, but not as old. Many here (myself included) will remember computers with 100MB HDDs ... and others still with no HDD.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[m50d]

Old, you whippersnapper? I remember wondering what I'd put on these newfangled 720k floppies.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[ColdWetDog]

Remember when your PC had a whole gigabyte hard drive? Remember wondering how you could ever fill that massive beast

No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.

I'm really old.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[RESPAWN]

Heck. I remember wondering how I was going to fill up a 400MB drive. I then remember filling it up and purchasing a (parallel port driven) Zip drive to increase my capacity. But I remember the most was my experiment to play Doom off the Zip drive. That was an interesting experience with gameplay measured in seconds per frame instead of frames per second.

Ahhh... those were the days. Now I have a 400GB RAID array and am still wondering what I can delete/burn to DVD in order to free up space.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[tompaulco]

No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.
I'm really old.
The first PC that I had that had a hard drive had something like 7 MB. Before that, it was just two floppies. And the one before that was just ONE floppy. "Please insert OS disk", "Please insert Lotus 1-2-3 Program Disk", "Please insert OS disk".

And I am not particularly old.

Re:"... by 2009..."

[Slartibartfast]

Valid point re: bitching about 8 GB. BUT, batteries are the one place in miniaturization where substantial improvements have been lacking. I still think I'll stand by my words -- that we'll see 8 GB (or maybe 16 GB) flash cards before we'll see widespread acceptance of hard drives. Small hard drives have been out for

OVER TEN YEARS

and have never caught on; there was even a 1.6" standard back in the early 90's that went NOWHERE. I see no reason to start believing it'll change now, especially when flash does have many advantages.

As for remembering small hard drives, well... my first, second, third, fourth, and, yes, fifth computers didn't even HAVE hard drives. (Respectively: Vic-20, Kaypro IV, C=64, C=128, and Amiga.) Hell: I was happy when we bought the FLOPPY drive for my Vic, and I could stop using the datasette.

And, yes, I -did- learn to type on punch cards. ;-)

MiniSD is already better

[michaelmalak]

It is already possible to get (I've had one for a month) 1GB of RAM in the mini-SD format, not to be confused with SD, which itself is smaller than CompactFlash. The miniSD is about the size of a fingernail, and that adapter you see at the bottom of the sandisk.com page is a slipcase to bring the miniSD up to the size of SD.

By 2008, the projected release date of the 1" hard drive, I'm sure miniSD's will be up to at least 4GB if not 8GB, without the power drain of spinning platters, without the seek and latency, and in a much smaller form factor.

We can see from IBM's CompactFlash hard drives how limited the market is -- basically photographers who can't afford the time to change their "film". But the trend is to smaller and more personal devices, and the market for tiny hard drives will be even smaller in 2008.

Re:MiniSD is already better

[j-pimp]

By 2008, the projected release date of the 1" hard drive, I'm sure miniSD's will be up to at least 4GB if not 8GB, without the power drain of spinning platters, without the seek and latency, and in a much smaller form factor.

I know a few professional photographers, and the thinking amongst them is to limit themselves to 1 gig compact flash drives. Anthing more dense is percieved as unstable.

Personally my 2 gig USB flash drives work just fine. However, what I do is not very I/O intensive. The most I've done is work on a sharp develop project (less than a thousand lines of code probally) directly on said thumb drive. Other than that I sneaker net things around. I'm not exactly pushing my thumb drives to the limit.

Re:MiniSD is already better

[Tetsugaku-San]

Except from TFA:

"The company's fourth-generation drive will be available in 8Gb and 10Gb versions later in the first quarter, said Kevin Magenis,"

so in about 3 months max, not 2008.

Re:MiniSD is already better

[jabuzz]

Indeed miniSD are rather expensive. More sensible to compare a 1" drive to either a CF or regular SD. You can already get a 4GB SD card in the UK for the equivalent of about 350 USD. If past market trends follow through to 2009, then a 8GB SD card will cost less than 100 USD. You can already get an 8GB CF for the equivalent of about 700 USD.

Who the hell is going to buy a more expensive 10GB hard drive over the lower power more reliable flash laternative? If they don't come up with significantly more capacity then they are going out of business quickly.

Re:MiniSD is already better

[glesga_kiss]

Who the hell is going to buy a more expensive 10GB hard drive over the lower power more reliable flash laternative?

I would, just for the extra space. I carry a 1GB SD card (and a 256 spare) and I'd be very able to fill it up. What would be ideal would be an SD-card compatible harddrive.

Besides, flash more reliable than HD? Not in my experience, in four years of using SD cards I've trashed way more of them than I have harddrives. I would not argue that they were reliable at all, in fact I would never put mission critical data on one. I've owned approx 10 cards and only three still work.

The HD is not more expensive, dollar per meg. By 2009, the 10GB harddrive will be a 100GB one. Flash can't keep up the size race; it will compete on it's other merits.

Re:MiniSD is already better

[tlhIngan]

I know a few professional photographers, and the thinking amongst them is to limit themselves to 1 gig compact flash drives. Anthing more dense is percieved as unstable.

Less that, and more of - if this card dies, so does my revenue. By artificially limiting yourself to smaller memory cards, you use more of them. So that if one dies, well, you've just lost 1/nth of your photos - a bit of a revenue hit, but not so much as losing *all* your photos in a session! For casual photographers, if you lost those vacation photos, no big loss, you have memories. For pros, lose the photos in a shoot, and there goes the earnings for the day (and additional earnings on selling you those photos). And some PO'd customers - how'd you like it if your only wedding photos were only available in 4x6's shot by your family using disposable cameras?

They'd like nothing more than to have one magic data dump where they can take a million photos without changing cards, but if that data dump fails just once, that can easily mean a loss in revenue. One of the first things they do as soon as they get a chance is to dump the memory card to a backup medium, but they still keep the card (redundancy). This can be a portable hard drive with CF reader, or they may wait until they get back, copy the photos, and burn a CD or DVD immediately. There's never enough backups...

Re:MiniSD is already better

[dimension6]

MiniSD cards are not expensive IMHO. A 1GB Kingston card is around $60-$70, which is really plenty of space for all the movies and music most people would listen to or watch for any flight/etc. (I use a Sharp 903SH phone, and can play full-screen videos; the pictures it takes use almost 1MB each, so external storage is necessary).

Bad move but a gutsy one

[gelfling]

This all assumes that people will want ginormous all in one electronic devices that are phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Probably that's not a safe bet. It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one. The transition costs for the consumer are quite high. If you for example get a new phone/MP3 player what do you do with the iPod you just paid 300 bucks for?

And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will of course charge a huge premium for the MTV factor alone plus you're still limited by the cell phone carrier itself. We already see that most people - maybe as many as 85% never use most of the features of the picture - ringtone - video etc etc phone they already have today. What would you do with a MP3 player that could only download tunes through the cell phone's carrier for a huge premium? What happens when you drop it?

Why don't they focus on the hand held video camera market which needs this kind of capacity and doesn't give too much of a crap about the iPod-Cribs-Spinners-Nerd I'm so cool I diss myself market?

Re:Bad move but a gutsy one

[glesga_kiss]

This all assumes that people will want ginormous all in one electronic devices that are phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Probably that's not a safe bet. It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one.

It's way too early to say that. "Enhanced" phones have been out for what, four or five years max. The present problems are size and complexity as you suggest, but both are changing.

And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will of course charge a huge premium for the MTV factor alone plus you're still limited by the cell phone carrier itself. We already see that most people - maybe as many as 85% never use most of the features of the picture - ringtone - video etc etc phone they already have today. What would you do with a MP3 player that could only download tunes through the cell phone's carrier for a huge premium?

Then you suck as a consumer and did not do your research. My uber-phone has no restrictions on it whatsoever. Actually, I lie, there is one...unsigned applications cannot access the phone (viruses and premium rate numbers...ouch!), but it helps me, not some exec.

Why don't they focus on the hand held video camera market which needs this kind of capacity and doesn't give too much of a crap about the iPod-Cribs-Spinners-Nerd I'm so cool I diss myself market?

They likely are. The company that makes the drives probably doesn't care where they end up. Slashdot has a weird luddite tech attitute in some areas, one of which is phones. The submission for the HD video camera story probably got passed over.

Re:Bad move but a gutsy one

[DuBois]

The company that makes the drives probably doesn't care where they end up.

Correct. These drives have been put in cameras, thumb drives, video accessories, GPS boxes, etc. etc.

What about battery life?

[antifoidulus]

This is obviously targeting the whole "convergance device" market, but I have to wonder, will the battery life be able to keep up? I personally don't like these "all in one" type wonders because a)the interface usually sucks(possibly fixable, but we humans aren't changing form factor any time soon) b)if the battery dies, I not only lost my mp3 player, but I lost my phone, my video game machine, my address book etc. and c)(somewhat related) if the device gets lost/stolen then I am not only out my phone but mp3 player and video game machine as well.
I personally carry around a cheapie phone that *gasp* makes phone calls, an iPod and a DS. I usually have my backpack with me, and when I don't, I have enough pocket space to carry the stuff. Also, when I go to an event where my toys may be put at risk(say out drinking) I usually only carry my phone with me. If someone wants my 40 euro phone with about 20 euros of talk time on it bad enough to steal it, they need it more than I do.
Neat device, but not for me.

Re:What about battery life?

[glesga_kiss]

if the battery dies, I not only lost my mp3 player, but I lost my phone, my video game machine, my address book etc.

Agreed, I do find this an annoyance. However, instead of carrying an extra device or two, I just carry a spare battery. If I'm away for a few days, I also bring the USB charger. My backpack is way lighter than yours! ;-)

Also, when I go to an event where my toys may be put at risk(say out drinking) I usually only carry my phone with me.

Likewise, and this I think is my advantage. When I'm walking home from the pub, I can pull out the headphones which is surprisingly good at stopping the rowdier drunks annoying you.

There are modern phones without cameras

[daveschroeder]

Your issue is exactly why enterprise and government wireless providers offer versions of modern phones without cameras, such as the no-camera Treo 650NC offered by Sprint.

Re:There are modern phones without cameras

[NardofDoom]

Unfortunately, GP is neither an enterprise nor a government.

Re:There are modern phones without cameras

[daveschroeder]

Unfortunately, GP is neither an enterprise nor a government.

Well, he said:

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.

Sounds like government and/or enterprise to me. But that is beside the point: if you're saying that he, personally, isn't an "enterprise" or "government", that's still irrelevant, because - and I know this is hard to believe - you can still get the non-camera versions of many phones as an individual from carriers as well.

Not to mention battery life

[scsa]

My clunky old Nokia 6310 lasted 2 weeks without a recharge, but my new super-fantabulous 6230i with colour screen, mp3 playback and movie capture barely lasts four days - without even using any of that crap!

What's a hard drive going to do to already crappy battery performance? Bring us back to the 90's routine of charging every single night?

Re:Not to mention battery life

[Dionysus]

One of the things I hate about Nokia phones is the battery life. I don't see why Sony Ericsson can get 9 hours+ talking time on their phone, and Nokia has less than 3 with the same functionality.

Re:That depends.

[jank1887]

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.

Sturdy?

[tsa]

That's all very cool, but many people are not so careful with their phones as with their other equipment. How many g's can these drives take? Can I drop my phone on a concrete floor without losing data?

Re:Sturdy?

[DuBois]

http://www.corniceco.com/technology/crashguard.htm l

Re:Sturdy?

[tsa]

Wow, with video's even! Nice!

Re:That depends.

[DrSkwid]

if you fronted it with an archived storage system such as Venti then it would be far more attractive.

see also :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system)

They act as a archive/cache type system so that only recently used data needs to be on the HD and archive older files but keep them available on the same filename AND you can also see all the versions of the file you've ever had :

------
To access a snapshot, one would connect to a running fossil instance ("mount" it) and change directory to the desired snapshot, e.g. /snapshot/yyyy/mmdd/hhmm (with yyyy, mm, dd, hh, mm meaning year, month, day, hour, minute). To access an archive (permanent snapshot), a directory of the form /archive/yyyy/mmdds (with yyyy, mm, dd, s meaning year, month, day, sequence number) would be used. Plan 9 allows modifying the namespace in advanced ways, like redirecting one path to another path (e.g. /bin/ls to /archive/2005/1012/bin/ls). This significantly eases working with old versions of files.

------

Erm.. what about those who didn't?

[grimJester]

It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one. If you for example get a new phone/MP3 player what do you do with the iPod you just paid 300 bucks for?

There are more of those who dod not recently buy an iPod than there are of those who did. I never bought a digital camera. When I bought a new phone, I got one with a camera because the added cost was next to nothing and it seems like a good idea to have a camera around. If I had a separate camera, I'd seldom or never carry it with me.

The only real "nah-not-for-me" issue I have with the drive is the cost. Of course I'd pay $30 extra to have an mp3 player with 10G space. The $180 price tag makes me want something more.

battery life

[stud9920]

moving parts is just what my anemic battery needs.

Gyroscopic effects?

[matt_wilts]

With a platter spinning at such speeds in a lightweight handheld device, would there be any gyroscopic effects when holding the phone?

Re:Gyroscopic effects?

[DuBois]

Not large enough a mass relative to the size of the phone to make any noticeable difference.

Re:Gyroscopic effects?

[speculatrix]

would there be any gyroscopic effects when holding the phone?

you'd have to have reinforced pockets so that if you made any sudden turns, the phone wouldn't rip itself out of your jacket!

Re:Family Guy

[digitaldc]

What do you think of Audiovox quality?

interesting thought.

[ladyjane_calm]

it's an interesting thought. the implications of smaller, maybe not faster, but SMALLER computing devices with internet "built in" is huge. why not hand out cell phones instead of working on cheaper computers to developing countries. it would definitly make the internet an even more world wide experience.

Re:Who would need this?

[dcsmith]

Who has that many friends that they need a 10GB hard drive to store all their phone numbers?

Yeah, becasue no one wants to use their phone for anything except making and receiving phone calls. Except taking photos. And surfing the internet. An sending e-mail. And, these days, watching streaming video. Besides that, nothing at all. Except for rest of the stuff I missed.

Simple compact phone.

[MaWeiTao]

What I want to see are simple but elegant, compact phones. I want something with the bare necessities but with an eye for design. I'm tired of all the silver crap we see in the United States. And I'm tired of phones with all kinds of useless functions, several-megapixel cameras and all the other features that most people tinker with for about a week and never touch again. And above all, I'd like these damn phones to stop being so expensive, at least not without having to sign my life away to these scam-artist service providers.

Slow

[Maajid]

With a 10 gb hard drive, it would take absolute light years to restart/turn on the phone.

Re:Slow

[MS-06FZ]

With a 10 gb hard drive, it would take absolute light years to restart/turn on the phone.

Light years are a measure of distance, not time.

Though I guess maybe if you were talking about this in the context of the Kessel Run...

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[AltGrendel]

WTF?
Why is this marked -1 troll?
Looks like a legit statement 2 me!!

learn some basic physics

[troon]

A light year is a measure of distance - the distance that light can travel in a year.

You mean "light light years", which is the time taken for light to travel one light year.

I can't wait!

[cciRRus]

I can finally store all my contacts in my cellphone. Yay...

Re:Who would need this?

[robgamble]

You can keep track of your enemies too!

Seriously I personally find "smart phones" unusable today, so enriching them with wads of data other than music doesn't make sense yet.

Mumbling to myself.... Looking for Aunt Millie's phone number. Ok, press Menu (beep). Now Contacts (beep). Ok, now Search (beep). Alright, Millie is "6" (beep), wait, "4" "4" "4" (beep)(beep)(beep), wait, "5" "5" "5" (beep)(beep)(beep), wait....

For data entry, phones suck.

on the rise?

[YesIAmAScript]

Lets see...

2 years ago, there were 0 1" HDs in phones.
1 year ago, there were 0 1" HDs in phones.
This year, there are 0 1" HDs in phones (so far).

I don't really see much to support "on the rise".

Perhaps this article is just a slashvertisement. That is, a company that makes 1" HDs is just trying to create a market by asserting that it is already here and growing.

Slashdot is pathetic. I was disappointed when news sources like CNN started to reprint press releases as "news". But at least I understand their profit motive. What is the reasoning on slashdot? Slow news day? I think I'd prefer dupes as filler over these blatant press releases.

A positive development

[jejagua]

I'm all for this. I don't know why anyone would argue this is a bad thing. Sure, there are some concerns and not everyone may be interested or need the technology but I for one would benefit. I currently have a lot of data on my smartphone. This includes a 1GB TomTom map database, MP3's (music, Podcasts), audio dictations, images, videos and emails. Multi GB SD cards are expensive. Battery consumption of the mini-HD can be overcome by caching to device RAM and other smart power technologies. I'm sure these use much less power than the original mini-drives; The first one I owned drained my iPAQ in 45 min. This was fixed when I purchased the expansion sleeve with a built in battery but the whole setup was huge. As for speed, the drives will keep up with most applications. Sure, flash drives are quick but unless you're doing professional digital photograpy for example, that speed is not necessary. Similar small HD's are working out fine in the video iPods and other DAPs arent't they?

No thanks

[pair-a-noyd]

I don't want something so fragile (and expensive) in something I drop so much.
I can't imagine a hard drive in a cell phone, one would not survive a week with my normal usage. Mine is always getting ripped of my belt by the seat belt or the dog lease or I knock it off the desk or what have you.

I think this is a really bad idea.

Besides, what's the point of having a hard drive in a cell phone anyway?
I think it's dumb to use cell phones to listen to music, watch TV, take pictures or play games. I just need a phone that I can make and take calls on, I don't want all the extra bling-bling crap.

Re:What the phone manufacturer hears from this

[A beautiful mind]

Fuck off braindead mods, I only made a cynical point, didn't troll.

In the future do a better job, idiots.

But prices are dictated by the market in part

[gelfling]

A company would prefer to sell to a cell phone carrier who already beats the phone manufacturer down because they can use that widget to upsell a bunch of overpriced features. An embedded drive in a camera that has 1% of the market has a much much lower markup.

And camera makers are little nervous about this

[gelfling]

Because they understand that camera phones are a generation away from being able to replace low end digital snapshot cameras. But it's probably a mistake to think that after the first wave that people will trade what has to be some ease of use including the ability to lay your phone down and print a bunch of pictures for the ability to not carry around a camera. Likewise that a combination device: phone, MP3, camera, PDA, bottle opener, sex toy... will be anything other than limited and low function versions of each of those devices it attempts to replace.

-1 because I wnt to be in charge of my phone?

[gd23ka]

I don't usually whine but hey... whoever modded this down, one more time: what's the use of a phone with even a 100Gig hard drive when that is managed by DRM? The way phones are closed now it just opens a can of worms, for example How do I know they don't access the data on that drive over the air? I'm not saying anything here about the 10gig drive per se, as that is a good thing.

Micro-disk applications

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

Let's see what happens with products like the Carte Orange from LaCie. 8GB (not GiB, unfortunately), the size of two or three stacked credit cards, pull-out USB connector, ~$150. You can carry a DVD image plus several OS's in your wallet, much cheaper than a flash solution like the PQI "Intelligent Stick". If you're brave enough to put precision moving parts into your wallet.

Isn't Apple still selling hard-disk iPods even after releasing the flash-based Nano?

Not in my phone you don't.

[Syberghost]

I drop my cellphone about five times a week. I buy phones that can take it. Last thing I want is a freakin' head crash in my phone.

Re:Who would need this?

[Digital11]

I love Microsoft VoiceCommander.

Click a button, say "Show Aunt Millie"... Voila

Re:couldn't reach an agreement is more accurate...

[DrSbaitso]

I didn't re-read the article before posting, so I was relying on my memory of something I read while waiting for the dentist in early October. If the article portrayed the Cornice/Apple talks differently than I did, I apologize for my fuzzy recollection.

That said, I think all your comments are spot-on. I appreciate the info.

Just a suggestion for the cell phone designers!

[AZURERAZOR]

Make a great PHONE!
Yes, SMS is good
WAP not so much
Big Address Book is good
Slow unresponsive or stuttering menu's - VERY BAD!!
I like the responsiveness of the OLD Nokia models...
Touch the key and the menu changes instantly,
No stuttering and stalling...
JUST MAKE ME A #$%# Phone!!!!

Crash Guard

[Rick Richardson]

"Drop Safe - The newest feature in the Crash Guard family allows the SE to actually sense being dropped. This means that even if the SE is in the middle of reading or writing data to the disk, it can immediately react and get the head under the safety of the active latch well before the unit actually strikes the ground. Tuned to respond in as little a distance as four inches, the SE simply protects itself from a careless or clumsy user."

You should READ the article and visit the manufacturers home page.

Re:That depends.

[jank1887]

Wow, an AC that didn't follow the link, and felt the need to comment ignorantly anyway. Allow me to elucidate:

The article he quoted (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28647) is titled:

"Solid state DDR drive goes into prototype"

and in the picture, the device is labeled "DDRdrive X1"

and it looks like 4 RAM chips in a custom board. Main page with the picture HERE.

so, I think someone might have said something about DDR.