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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..."
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?
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
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.
Engadget says 10 hours of continuous use.
Source: Here
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.