Mass Storage For Phones

The Demo conference started today, and the first news out of it comes from Seagate, which will be introducing pocket-sized, 20-GB, Bluetooth-equipped drives for cellphones this summer. They call this tech "DAVE" (one wonders whether the acronym or the expansion came first). Quoting: "DAVE-based products will be about the size of a credit card and less than half and inch thick, with an operating range of up to 30 feet from the connected phone... Software to hook the drives up to cellphones has already been produced for J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, Symbian and XCCC. Palm compatibility is forthcoming. The platform is open source..."

Comments

Uh oh!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I can see problems connecting this to Windows Mobile devices - window's embedded tiny Hardware Access Layer being the source of contention.

DAVE: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, DAVE, I read you.
DAVE: Exchange Java modules to open filesystem access HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry DAVE, I'm afraid I can't do that.
DAVE: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
DAVE: What are you talking about, HAL?

Re:Uh oh!

[sethstorm]

HAL: I'm sorry DAVE, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Let me guess that this HAL also does Digital Rights Management too?

Re:Uh oh!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

HAL: I can't because Whiney MacFanboy (UID 963289) is a stupid fucktard who should go slit his fucking wrists.

I have no response to such a wittty, though provoking, humourous & elequont response.

I will now go & slit my wrists.

obligatory

[User 956]

DAVE-based products will be about the size of a credit card and less than half and inch thick, with an operating range of up to 30 feet from the connected phone

Great ideas like this are a HALmark of Seagate's R&D division.

Interesting Question

[Anonymous Coward]

How long will it be until, for some users, the home pc is phased out? Take your mass storage cell-phone, drop it in a dock, and have word processing, email, and web access displayed on a LCD? Have the same setup at your work, your school, or your home.

Re:Interesting Question

[LaughingCoder]

The home PC will be replaced by the XBox or equivalent. Some small portable device will replace the various portable electronic devices like cell phones, home phones, mp3 players, PDAs, watches, portable media/video players, radios, portable TVs, remote controls. And with Zune and XBox, Microsoft has a contender in both markets. Wouldn't that be wierd if in the end Microsoft became a hardware company.

Re:Interesting Question

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Who needs a dock? This device is a 20GB drive that can sit in the bottom of your bag and connect wirelessly to your phone. How much of a stretch is a drive with Bluetooth or whatever (wireless USB?) that sits in the bottom of your bag, syncs to your phone or iPod when you're out, syncs to your PC when you get home or to work (from the bottom of your bag), syncs to your girlfriend's PC when you're at her place, etc., and contains your entire setup, say, in some kind of self-contained cross-platform VM? Is such a device possible with the technology we have now?

Re:Interesting Question

[clonmult]

Aspects of that are already here, although not that widespread.

You can get bluetooth keyboards for Symbian phones, and with Quick Office, you're set to go with wordprocessor and spreadsheets, albeit relatively limited, but good enough for keying in small documents. The only real catch is that the S60 screens are generally not that large (at the moment).

Heck, I'm pretty sure one of the keyboards had a phone dock in it - unfold the keyboard, stick the phone in the dock at the top, and you've got quite a nice little toy.

Seems cool but..

[WiiVault]

What about battery life on both the phone and the drive? I know bluetooth has gotten alot better but what about when downloading the kind of video that is on euro and asian sets and on its way here. The concept seems really cool but the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.

Re:Seems cool but..

[KoldKompress]

Engadget says 10 hours of continuous use.
Source: Here

Re:Seems cool but..

[ScrewMaster]

the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.

... is sure to make it useless. I just bought a Samsung phone from Sprint, and the Bluetooth headset works great but that's about all you can do with the thing. Oh, you can blow "business cards" back and forth, but only one at a time, and forget about up/downloading images from the camera. Unless, of course, you want to pay more juice to Sprint for their "PCS Vision" service, which I refuse to do because I don't think I should have to pay to send my own data two feet to my PC. It is a nice phone (the camera is just a gimmick to me at 640x480) and that's all I bought it for, but the attitude of these companies irritates me.

Gagh. Honestly, the overall sleaziness of U.S. carriers is enough to make you want to throw up.

Re:Seems cool but..

[gsn]

Seagate won't, however, be making consumer drives itself: Dave is for telcos and handset OEMs for sale under their own brands. Furthermore, the package isn't merely Seagate drives and an application framework, as Dave includes proprietary technology: even with WiFi blaring and BlueTooth listening contstantly, a Dave drive offers 10 hours of active use and up to 14 days standby. Thusly-equipped drives will also work with standard computers. (emphasis mine)

RTFA seriously. Both your questions answered in two lines. The carriers won't lock you out of a device that they carry which is about the only way you will get your hands on this since Seagate won't be selling them directly. Of course that means that the retail price will include a big fat carrier markup.

And they probably won't let you use it with your PC because oh noes you could your (illegal) music on it and listen to it with your phone instead of using their overpriced service, and share it over bluetooth or WiFi even. So its usefulness is still limited. So using it as secondary service for an iPhone is straight out.

Security?

[Edis Krad]

Now, I haven't red TFA, but I'm hoping it has some sort of security/encryption support. What's the chance of someone in a 30ft radius peeking at the 10Gbs of data I'm carrying in my pocket, just using another cellphone?...

why not put it in the phone?

[neax]

if they can make a 20gb drive that small, why not just build them into phones. I do really need mass storage in my cell (well actually my smartphone/PDA), but one thing that i do not need is another thing to have to carry around... I look forward to the day that the phone/PDA/camera/mp3 player/video camera are all rolled into one nice device.

Re:why not put it in the phone?

[CastrTroy]

But wouldn't it be cool if you only had 1 storage device, which could be used for all your devices, such as PDA, Phone, MP3/Media Player, Camera, Laptop, along with a few others i'm probably forgetting? I think this device could be really nice if many different types of devices started to support it.

This immediately came to mind.

[thedarknite]

(Knocking on door)
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH: It's me, Dave. Open up, man, I got the stuff.
(More knocks)
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH: It's me, Dave, man. Open up, I got the stuff.
CHONG: Who?
CHEECH: It's, Dave, man. Open up, I think the cops saw me come in here.
(More knocks)
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH: It's, Dave, man. Will you open up, I got the stuff with me.
CHONG: Who?
CHEECH: Dave, man. Open up.
CHONG: Dave?
CHEECH: Yeah, Dave. C'mon, man, open up, I think the cops saw me.
CHONG: Dave's not here.
CHEECH: No, man, I'm Dave, man.
(Sharp knocks at the door)
CHEECH: Hey, c'mon, man.
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH: It's Dave, man. Will you open up? I got the stuff with me.
CHONG: Who?
CHEECH: Dave, man. Open up.
CHONG: Dave?
CHEECH: Yeah, Dave.
CHONG: Dave's not here.
CHEECH: What the hell? No, man, I am Dave, man. Will you...
(More knocks)
CHEECH: C'mon! Open up the door, will you? I got the stuff with me, I think the cops saw me.
CHONG: Who is it?
CHEECH: Oh, what the hell is it...c'mon. Open up the door! It's Dave!
CHONG: Who?
CHEECH: Dave! D-A-V-E! Will you open up the goddam door!
CHONG: Dave?
CHEECH: Yeah, Dave!
CHONG: Dave?
CHEECH: Right, man. Dave. Now will you open up the door?
CHONG: Dave's not here.

Isn't bluetooth sloooooow?

[schwaang]

TFA is verrry light on technical details, but even bluetooth 2.0 is something like 3Mb/s. So transfering 10GB would take what, like 2 hours?

What I'm saying is it's fine for streaming LUG Radio, but not great for backing up your pr0n to something you can leave hidden under the mattress.

Re:Isn't bluetooth sloooooow?

[earnest murderer]

Even if it were more capable, why would you want to carry around a 20 gig drive in your pocket? I already carry an 80 gig iPod in there the only thing it lacks is bluetooth, and only until Apple puts a drive in their iPhone... Which would pretty much eliminate the need for transmitting data to a phone for display.

Any way you cut it you've got two devices, phone and drive, or phone and iPod. And an iPod doesn't drain my phone's batteries.

Maybe someone could chime in with a use case that makes sense?

Re:Isn't bluetooth sloooooow?

[suv4x4]

bluetooth 2.0 is something like 3Mb/s. .... not great for backing up your pr0n ...

Is this the most compelling rant you can pull off? And do you realize bluetooth is just one option, the devices implementing DAVE can also provide USB transfer?

I suppose the only reason for bluetooth inside is because they saw some empty space in the drive left underutilized. A disk is circle, and the component is square. Catch my drift?

In a mobile device, every tiny bit of space counts, hence having built-in bluetooth makes DAVE more competitive.

iPod is the natural medium for this

[Chairboy]

With iPhone sales potentially eating into the high-end iPod market, I think it's probably safe to assume that future HD based iPods will come with Bluetooth. Not for synchronizing, but to be remote storage devices for things like the iPhone.

It's a clever way for Apple to keep selling the big iPods, and opens up other possibilities. Last year I speculated here about cell phones serving as 'cockpit voice recorders' for life, the main obstacle being storage and battery life. With something like this, one down, one to go.

Re:iphone

[draxbear]

Computer says no. *coughs*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_britain#Catchp hrases

Re:iphone

[john82]

In the Mac community, will Thursby Software have anything to say? Their product DAVE, note that the name is also presented in uppercase, has been in the Mac arena for more than a decade.

Re:worries

[timmarhy]

if you can't imagine using 20 gigs with a mobile device, then you simply lack imagination.

Re:worries

[Michael Woodhams]

Queue thousands of "640k is enough for anyone" and "I remember when my IBM XT had a 10 MEGABYTE hard disk" rejoinders.... :-)

This is great! I've long been feeling oppressed by the fact that I can only fit the telephone directory of a single major city into my cell phone contacts list. Now I'll finally be able to scroll through whole country's telephone directories on a 50mm square display!

What really IS the size, anyway?

[Namarrgon]

"Credit-card sized" is an abused term these days. And the Seagate press release is self-contradictory:

The DAVE reference design is about the size of a centimeter-thick credit card, with dimensions of 3.5 x 4.7 x .47 inches (61 x 89 x 12 mm) and weighing only 2.5 ounces (70 grams)

So which is it? 3.5 x 4.7 inches (89 x 120mm), or 61 x 89mm (2.4 x 3.5 inches)? The latter sounds more credit-card sized to me.

Re:Oh brother

[mlk]

Good for you. Nokia 1100 maybe?

I want a computer that fits in my pocket, and I don't want to be carrying a phone as well.