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Add 8GB of Storage to Your Cell Phone 138

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sticky-storage dept.
gd writes "MobileTechNews is reporting that a company called US modular has put out a device that taps into your existing mobile phones microSD or Tflash slot to add up to 8GB of storage. The Stik&Stor adds a memory chip to the back side of the battery pack and only costs $199 to add 8GB to your music phone."
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Add 8GB of Storage to Your Cell Phone More

Add 8GB of Storage to Your Cell Phone

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  • I see trouble ahead (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:24PM (#14778089) Homepage
    Tied up in DRM, all this memory kicking around is going to cause problems.

    "Where did I put that Elton John Album? On my IPod? No... On my mobile? No... On my works mobile? No... On my PC? No... On my IPAQ? No... oh bugger it, I'll just buy another electronic copy."

    Glad I stuck with LP's

    • Re:I see trouble ahead (Score:5, Funny)

      by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:39PM (#14778223)
      I can't refrain from a chuckle imagining you in the morning commute, dragging along your recordplayer and soundsystem, and listening to some good morning tunes.

      I don't see your problem though: Most mobile phones use flashcards for their storage, and until now I have not yet encountered one which was protected against using any of my images/sounds/music/videos.

    • Tied up in DRM, all this memory kicking around is going to cause problems.

      "Where did I put that Elton John Album? On my IPod? No... On my mobile? No... On my works mobile? No... On my PC? No... On my IPAQ? No... oh bugger it, I'll just buy another electronic copy."

      Glad I stuck with LP's

      "In the garbage?" Yes.
       
      There you go, problem solved. :P

      • Re:I see trouble ahead (Score:5, Funny)

        by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:46PM (#14778300) Homepage
        >"In the garbage?" Yes.

        Maybe Elton John was a bad example :o)
        • And that's what's so difficult to understand: The most prevelant copyright infringemant occurs with songs/artists that most people claim are too [something] to be interesting music... why are people "stealing" stuff they claim is so bad they don't even want to listen to?
          • why are people "stealing" stuff they claim is so bad they don't even want to listen to?

            Because they are "sampling" it to verify how bad it is. Uh, yeah, that's it. That doesn't explain the people that store hundreds of gigs of audio though. As much as I don't like the copyright cartels, I don't think this is right either. The people that don't like the mainstream stuff can always buy independent music, there's even plenty of good indie music that has tracks available free and legal, so there's really li

  • Lame (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    Most people get their cell phones cheap (or free) on various plans because people are CHEAP. they won't want to spend a couple of hundred bucks for extra memory when they likely already have an MP3 player, PDA, etc.

    This thing will fail miserably.

    • You're full of it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@keirstead . o rg> on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:31PM (#14778149)
      I also already have a toaster and an oven. That doesn't mean there's not a market for toaster ovens.

      People don't want to carry 15 different devices when one can do the job of all good enough. Why is it some /.'ers can't understand that?

      My V635 is a perfectly capable MP3 player and also a very decent phone. Why should I have to carry around a whole other device to listen to a bit of music one in awhile. Simmilarly, the 1.3 MP camera is "good enough" for what I use it for, quick snapshots.


      • Want to bet a $20 Amazon Gift Certificate? :)
        How do we determine if it's a failure or a hit, though...
      • My V635 is a perfectly capable MP3 player and also a very decent phone.

        My a950 is a perfectly capable camera (for snapshots) and a decent phone, but I'll be damned if I can figure out why I'd want to pay even more just to be able to use the MP3 player capabilities. No, they don't bundle the cable, no I'm not paying airtime + >$1 per song to download them. It's stupid enough that the phone doesn't include any normal human being type ringtones.

        • I can guarentee you if you bought it stock or from a 3rd party you'd have the cable and software to transfer whatever the hell you want.

          And my phone (and all the ones this thing is for) has a removeable transflash card I can just plug in my PC. Also my phone came with the cable - and I can set it so that when I plug it into the PC it shows up as a USB flash drive.

          • I can set it so that when I plug it into the PC it shows up as a USB flash drive.

            Yeah. That's how I transferred the MP3's from the lifedrive into the transflash card. I would have used my PC except my PC doesn't currently have an SD slot. As for the software, yeah, I have a copy of Media Player 10 too. Hello? The MP3's weren't recognized by the phone, and I don't think Verizon was sitting there saying "nope, we didn't authorize these".

            • Check if they are VBR, my phone won't play VBR MP3s.

              Also try re-naming them to something somple, like File.mp3, see if they show then. There may be filesystem limitations.

              Also make sure they're in the right folder.
            • "...I don't think Verizon..."

              And here we reach the root of the issue. j/k
              I have this argument with my fiance all the time: she is on Verizon and has a great connection all of the time. I am on Cingular and have a great connection most of the time. She is not able to download her own pictures from the phone without going through Verizon or voiding the warranty to use a USB cable and "hack" into it(it's not really hacking or cracking, but just using a different piece of software to analyze all the phone's
            • I just bought an A950, picking it over other phones mainly for its music capabilities.

              Since the Verizon outlet I bought it at was inside a Circuit City, I picked up a 256MB microSD card and a USB SD card reader for $20 a piece so I could have my music on the phone.

              However, after formatting the card as FAT32 and inserting it into the phone so its directory structure was created and then filling it up with my MP3s, I was annoyed to see the phone's "MP3 Maestro" didnt recognize a single of my songs. After lot
      • We do understand that. It's that the unified device trys to do everything and fails at all of it, including the original purpose. Specialization has worked since the dawn of life. As for toaster ovens, most people don't have one in addition to a toaster, and in any case they're more convenient (and effecient) for cooking small items like hash brows or reheating a couple slices of pizza or whatever.
    • "they won't want to spend a couple of hundred bucks for extra memory when they likely already have an MP3 player, PDA, etc"

      Youre busted son, turn in your Ti-85, and all your caffinated gum. If we ever see your like around /. again we'll hax0r you. Seriously. This turns your (well, apparently My) cell phone into an ipod nano.

  • Porn
    • What kind of LOSER would want to watch porn on an inch-and-a-half screen? Other than, of course, those majestic shitheads who proclaim loudly and consistently that they love porn and then expect me to be impressed because they're rebelling against societal acceptability.
      • At the risk of feeding a troll...

        What kind of LOSER would want to watch porn on an inch-and-a-half screen? Other than, of course, those majestic shitheads who proclaim loudly and consistently that they love porn and then expect me to be impressed because they're rebelling against societal acceptability.

        Not me, because I don't have a phone. But I know plenty of so-called "majestic shitheads" who like nothing more than seeing porn on their phones, and spend lots of money downloading it and/or sending it on to
    • Or in this case, microporn. It seems like viewing porn on a 1" screen would take away most of the fun, since all the naughty bits would only be a few pixels wide. However the sounds might be useful, especially on crowded buses (don't sit next to me with your screaming kids!) or in boring meetings (I am so bored, fire me right now!).
    • > You just wait! Perl 6 is coming... Any minute now... should be here soon... really... oh heck...

      What features of Perl 6 are you waiting for? Many are already available for Perl 5 on the CPAN [cpan.org].

  • Microdrives for 4/8GB (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SlashdotOgre ( 739181 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:28PM (#14778124) Journal
    I'd be a bit hesitant to add a microdrive to my cell phone. I'm a fairly careful person, but I tend to keep phones for roughly 2 years (for Verizon's New Every 2 Program), and my phone tends to have fallen at least a handful of times over that period. I've already heard stories of people with Palm LifeDrives which failed from less.

    • I'd be a bit hesitant to add a microdrive to my cell phone.

      I'd be a little hesitant to add a microwave to my cell phone too. I mean, all of that raditation so close to my head, not to mention the added weight....huh? What's that you say?

      um...nevermind.

  • How big ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by karvind ( 833059 )
    From the article I couldn't guess the size of the 8GB microdrive. Anyone has any idea ? One from Lacie [lacie.com] is rather big to be tagged along with a cellphone.

  • Nice! (Score:4, Funny)

    by xero9 ( 810991 ) * on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:31PM (#14778151)
    Nice! Now I can have 8GB of storage for all my phone numbers! Oh wait, that already fits on my 32k SIM. Nevermind.
    • Since my phone can contain 1GB, I really enjoy not having to bring along my MP3 player anymore: It's one of the few extras I -really- use on my phone (and one, imo that makes sense).

  • But it adds an ugly 'wart' on your phone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TeeJS ( 618313 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:32PM (#14778162) Homepage
    I think it's a great idea in concept, but the bump it adds to your phone would be seriously annoying. I'm very happy with a Treo 650 w/ 4GB SD card. If you're a serious user of data on your phone, why wouldn't you buy one with real expandability built in?

    The picture in the article does not truly represent how big the patch is - a better example is on the mfr's page here [usmodular.com]

  • 8 Gig - Now I can run ....

    [wait for it...]

    ...

    Windows Vista !!

    Bill Gates will be so pleased.

  • hrm (Score:3, Funny)

    by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:35PM (#14778195)
    Well a byte will store two digits or one letter. So if we need a 10 digit number that's five bytes, then we'll be generous and leave 35 characters for first and last name. That would give us 40 bytes for each phone # and name... allowing you to store two hundred million phone numbers. Wow, I've gotta run out and get me one of these!

    Sigh. Now if only I had someone to call.

    • Re:hrm (Score:2)

      by GiMP ( 10923 )
      To disprove your assumption that 1 byte == 2 digits, I only need to point to 0xFF which is 255, clearly 3 decimal digits.

      However, you are right, a 10 digit phone number would use 5 bytes.. beginner's luck, I suppose.
    • Sorry, but phones use one byte per number, and while yes, they could use two, they use one, because it is esaier to deal with, because then they see that 1=a certain tone, 2=..., etc..., whereas you are suggesting that they say, hmm, split 18 into 1 and 8, then deal with it. It is also easier to convert from hex without dealing with two digits, because then they just look at the last digit of the hex, rather than doing math (i.e. : 0x01 0x08 vs. 0x12, the 0x12 is smaller, but would you immediately know that
    • No, one byte will store 8 bits. With 8 bits you can count up to 255, starting at 0. For a basic telephone number you would need 10000000000 log 10 / 2 log 10 = 10 / log 2 ~ 33,2 bits, or 2 bits more than 4 bytes. Since national telephone numbers start with a 0 you could do with 4 bytes instead of 5. And then you could use frequency detection on the names. Store e's and other more frequently used characters in less bits then others. My guess is that you can easily get up to 300,000,000 telephone numbers. Or

    • Actually a great idea! - The global phone book. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, I think you've hit on a great idea, a global - built in - phone book.

      Forget calling information, when you could store all the white pages of all major US cities,
      and even add in the yellow page ads to display on the little color screen...

      Great Idea!
  • It'd be much easier to just use an 8 gig flash drive, not to mention that there are SD cards out now that are half that size. It's not really a question of space, though, for cell phones. It's all about functionality. The two ideas have to work together to make something useful; they are mostly useless, or equatable to today's cell phones, if you have one without the other.

  • WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheSkepticalOptimist ( 898384 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:40PM (#14778234)
    I think that the cell phone market has it all wrong if they are aiming to add massive amounts of storage to a cell phone.

    If I was a supposed industry leader in the cell phone market, I would announce that my phones would NEVER have more then a few megs of storage in them. Here is why!

    Cell phones are ALL ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION and PAY PER USE services. The only reason why you have a camera on your cell phone is so you either pay a monthly service charge to allow x number of pictures/kilobytes to be transmitted for free, OR you pay $.10 - $.20 for each picture sent. Same with text messaging, same with video on a cell phone, same with music on a cell phone. These features are not added to benefit mankind, but to drive up your cell phone bills and make the phone companies more money.

    I.e. the cellphone is a money making device. It makes money from its very existence, you can't use or even have a cell phone without spending money.

    This is unlike mp3 players, PDA's, computers, etc, where you buy the device, it comes with X amount of storage, and you fill the device with hopefully legal content that you can listen or watch at your convenience without paying a dime extra.

    So, when someone decides to turn a cellphone into a ubiquitous multimedia player with ample storage, why should ANY cell phone maker rush to implement these feature? Why should a cellphone company allow the user to store gigabytes of high resolution pictures so they can return home to their PC and download the pictures FOR FREE to their computer. Why should a cellphone company allow people to listen to hours of music or watch hours of video FOR FREE. Why should a cellphone company allow ANY feature to be used for free on a cellphone.

    Instead, the future of cellphone multimedia lies squarely in subscription services. You can stream music from the cellphone network, FOR A PRICE. Stream pictures taken to an online storage facility, FOR A PRICE. Stream video and data services FOR A PRICE. Even for those people that want to buy a song online with a cellphone, buying the music only puts the song into some online storage container that is streamed to your cellphone, for a price of course.

    I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.

    Unlike digital multimedia players, cell phones are tied to a network. Given sufficient bandwidth, constant "always-on" music and video and data streaming should be possible, if for a price. I think cell companies are going to want to implement these subscription based features rather then slapping 8gb of hard drive into a cellphone so the end user doesn't spend a dime on ring tones, games, music, video, and other subscription services because they can find content on bit torrent or eDonkey.

    In the end, perhaps only PDA based cellphones will get the boost in storage, but I can't see the average cell phone coming with gigabytes of storage, it just doesn't make sense.

    • So, when someone decides to turn a cellphone into a ubiquitous multimedia player with ample storage, why should ANY cell phone maker rush to implement these feature? Why should a cellphone company allow the user to store gigabytes of high resolution pictures so they can return home to their PC and download the pictures FOR FREE to their computer. Why should a cellphone company allow people to listen to hours of music or watch hours of video FOR FREE. Why should a cellphone company allow ANY feature to be u

    • Re:WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @02:02PM (#14778437)
      I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.

      Last I checked, my manufacture of my cell phone is not the same as my cell phone service provider. Sure, it says SprintPCS on the phone, but it's just painted on by Toshiba.

      Does Toshiba cell phone service? Not to my knowledge. Do they make money me directly when I download ring tones? Not directly. The only money they made is when I paid $50 for the phone and Sprint gave them a rebte cut of about $150 when I signed a two year contract.

      Even T-Mobile and Verizon do not make their phones. You've got Erikson, Nokia, Samsung, Keyocera, and various other companies who make the phones. They make the hard ware and in theory you can get a branded phone to work on another service provider if you get the correct ID car put it in. (not that they are going to give you hell about it and the first 3 sales reps you talk to know nothing about this but they can do it)

      So... Sure the cell phone makers make money by selling cheap ass phones to the providers who in turn give money directly to the manufactures, but the cell phone makers are competing with each other and in order to remain competative they are having to put more features on their phones.

      The providers may not like and ask if they can make it so you have to go through them to get content out of the box, but there are ways of transfering content to and from your cell phone through 3rd party sources.

      In fact, with the introduction of VoIP wifi phones, I'd say we'll stop seeing content lock in as hard core as it is now.
    • So the cell phone company stores and owns all of my music, photos, video, documents... Sound's like a fantastic idea!

      ..not really

      I know what you are saying, how this makes a lot of business sense, but this trend toward giving the consumer less and less control has to stop.

    • Re:WHY? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not if you buy the right phone, I have the rokr - people that hate it have never really looked at what it can do, Right now I have 150 songs on it - that's right not 100, "one five zero" The 100 song limit is the number of iTunes songs. 4 hours of TV shows and a few dozen pictures of my grandkids. I have custom ring tones for each of my family members and haven't paid for a single one yet, When I use the cam, I just download via USB no cost to me for that ether.

      Maybe you should do a little bit better job of
    • Your questions remind me of his attitude [webpronews.com] :-)

      Why should a cellphone company allow the user to store gigabytes of high resolution pictures so they can return home to their PC and download the pictures FOR FREE to their computer. Why should a cellphone company allow people to listen to hours of music or watch hours of video FOR FREE. Why should a cellphone company allow ANY feature to be used for free on a cellphone.

      And we give a flying fuck about the phone company because...?

      My phone allows me to do all

    • Cell phones are ALL ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION and PAY PER USE services. The only reason why you have a camera on your cell phone is so you either pay a monthly service charge to allow x number of pictures/kilobytes to be transmitted for free, OR you pay $.10 - $.20 for each picture sent. Same with text messaging, same with video on a cell phone, same with music on a cell phone. These features are not added to benefit mankind, but to drive up your cell phone bills and make the phone companies more money.

      You're c

    • If I was a supposed industry leader in the cell phone market, I would announce that my phones would NEVER have more then a few megs of storage in them. Here is why! Cell phones are ALL ABOUT SUBSCRIPTION and PAY PER USE services.

      And as a customer in the cell phone market (no hypotheticals required), I get sick of paying bills, and will buy a cellphone with some storage space so I can just copy over my music once and for all.

      I have they money, you (as a hypothetical player in the cell phone market) wan

    • Yes actually only verizon screws you in the ass with all these fees that you mention above. I have nextel/t-mobile and I dont pay a dime for any of the pay services that you have mentioned. What you say makes verizon alot of money right now in a near monopolistic environment but market forces are squashing all of that (thank god).
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Cell phones might be all about subscription and pay per use, but they should be about low latency, high availability bandwidth. High availability in both the geographic and time senses. If a cell phone company took the ?foolish? step of charging a reasonable rate for usage without the shenanigans surrounding contracts and cheap loss leader phones and shit, people would flock to it.

      This is something google gets right by providing pop access for gmail; barriers to exit are barriers to entry. The contract base
    • it's lucky that your hypothetical phone company has a complete monopoly so that people can't just walk across the street to a competitor that doesn't sell such horribly crippled phones.

    • Re:WHY? (Score:2)

      by ghjm ( 8918 )
      Your post summarizes the thinking of U.S. mobile phone operator CEOs, up to mid 2004. Then Apple came along and sells 4.4 million iPods for $1.3 billion in revenue (Apple fiscal year ending September 2004). Operator CEOs predictably say: $1.3 billion is a lot of money, and we want a share of it next year. So they instruct their product development teams to figure out whatever magic pixie dust iPods have, and put it into their phones.

      The secret, of course, is that the iPod magic pixie dust is the same as the
      • What will happen in 2006? Personally I don't think the iPod has peaked yet; I think 2006 figures will be higher than 2005, though not as spectacularly. I don't think any music phones will break the million-unit barrier. Mobile operators will probably give up on the concept of a music phone.

        Have you looked at some of the phones that are coming out from Sony-Ericsson or Nokia? Those that don't come will 4 Gb internal memory, all come with some removable memory. I have an easier time filling up my Nokia N70
    • Because phone makers != network providers
  • I can't stop wondering where this is going to take us. In the near future, all of us will be carrying all our data right inside our pockets. Will PCs be reduced to a dumb terminal instead of the computer it is now? Only time will tell.
    • Dumb terminals? Given that you can stick more and more powerful chips in smaller and smaller devices - with less electrical consumption, it would seem the opposite. Right now, a very good many computing devices are so small that the largest impediment is the *input* - trying to type into the things.

      steve

  • Backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:50PM (#14778326) Homepage
    The utility of having this much space on your phone isn't just storing MP3s, videos, and whatnot. The real potential is in what this means you can create.

    I'd like to have my phone be a constant or voice activated recorder. I have my phone on me at all times, it has a microphone, why not have it provide me a 'cockpit voice recorder' of sorts for life? No more guessing exactly what my wife told me to do, or having to write down phone numbers.

    Generation 1, your phone just records MP3s of life as it happens to you. If anything interesting happens during the day, you save the file on your computer.

    Generation 2, it meta overlays GPS data and is automatically stored as part of your 'diary'. You store it in an encrypted location so it can't be used against you unless you choose to release it, and you have a perfect alibi showing what you said and where you were.

    Generation 3, combine voice processing to index everything spoken around you into a searchable form, recognize phone numbers, voices, etc, and create a full digital assistant. At some point around here, it can also store a digital video feed from any cameras you or your personal equipment might have that's synchronized with everything.

    Generation 4, it hunts down Sarah Conner.

    Everytime someone puts a bunch of storage into something, someone else says "what's the use?" And human nature being what it is, some other asshole decides to invent something cool to use that storage/capabillity for just so they can give the finger to the first person.

    • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Funny)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      No more guessing exactly what my wife told me to do...

      Oh man I so badly want one of these now. Now I will have PROOF that she didn't ask me to take out the trash two hours ago.

      Sadly she will now have proof of all the stupid crap that I have blurted out , and can now nag me about it without even saying anything by playing it over and over.

    • Or just backup IMDB to your phone and OWN the Kevin Bacon arguments

    • I'd like to have my phone be a constant or voice activated recorder.

      Not constant (it doesn't have the memory for that), probably not voice activated (unless you meant 'activated via a voice command'), but my cell already does voice recording.

      My mp3 player does voice-activated recording though.

    • Re:Backwards (Score:3, Interesting)

      by syukton ( 256348 )
      At 96kbit/sec, 8gb (67,108,864 kbits) would net you about 699,051 seconds of recording.

      That's eight days of recorded audio.

      Relatedly: 86,400 seconds in a day * 96kbit/sec = 8,294,400 kbits per day, or 0.988769531 gigabytes per day.

      Definitely within the realm of feasibility.

    • Generation 2, it meta overlays GPS data and is automatically stored as part of your 'diary'. You store it in an encrypted location so it can't be used against you unless you choose to release it, and you have a perfect alibi showing what you said and where you were.

      The argument about a "documented life" revolves around trust of the encryption mechanism and keys, and trust of the authorities allowed to use those keys. But the latter is an oxymoron for most as long as those authorities are human.

      That's

    • why not add video on top of that? most cell phones are already camera phones and newer ones have capability of recording video. have it set in your chest pocket and record where ever you are and what you're doing.

  • Vaporware Indicator: Falsified images (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Garridan ( 597129 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:51PM (#14778340)
    Look at the shadows & bright spots on the "memory chip" and the cell phone. They don't line up.

    If this thing is real, why'd they have to photoshop an image of it?
    • My suspicions are aroused by the fact that they're starting off on 8GB. To demonstrate that it is an effective storage technique, I'd expect them to come out with a more profitable-per-byte lower capacity model, such as a $120 4GB one, possibly even less.
      • It's hard for me to tell if the shadows are lining up or not (the bright spots do seem to line up, although the picture does have that photoshopped look to it).

        However, the pages lists a 1, 2, and 4GB model and respective price points.

        The only other question I have is: What would I use that space for? I/O on those phones is dog slow (USB1) and the ROKR in particular is limited to 100 songs anyway. The camera certainly isn't the issue--even with a full load of songs you can take over 1,000 pictures wi
    • I was going to point that out. Actualy, I am pretty sure that is just a real live sticker :P

  • Looks Fragile (Score:3, Insightful)

    by youngerpants ( 255314 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:52PM (#14778346)
    OK, I actually quite like this idea. I've had my P900 for a few years now as I cant really see the point of giving up a phone that does everything for me (phone, browser, email, ssh ferchristsakes). A boost in storage for MP3's sounds like a great idea.


    However, just look at the flimsy ribbon connecting it, imagine the poor quality adhesive that will rip the bugger off when my phone is in the same pocket as my keys. Nah, I'll wait until they get it out of prototype phase.

  • Radical! (Score:4, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @01:59PM (#14778415) Homepage Journal
    A memory card in a memory slot!

  • how much usable, how reliable (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Wednesday February 22, 2006 @02:23PM (#14778630) Homepage Journal
    This reminds of the old MS DOS 3.1 days, when we could use all sorts of tricks to upgrade to more memory, but wheather wwe could use it at a particular time was dependent upon the phase of the moon, the distribution of the electrons, or whatever. One would have all the formats, all the drivers, and hope for the best.

    It seems that this might be the same case. First, the connection seems a bit fragile. Second, the current specificatins for some motoralo phone already include a memeory slot, but the maximum memory is listed at 256MB even though the current maximum memory module is 512K. This indicates that phones may have a less than GB limit, perhpas they do not include 32 bit addressing.

    • Oh man, FLASHBACK, I clearly remember the dark days of DOS memory managers. I was working support at the time, and I remember one of the first questions to ask was what memory manager they were using and how many drivers were loaded into low mem. What a f-ing nightmare. I was so happy when NT came out because that BS was finally going to go away forever. Now, I can just imagine mem mgrs coming full circle and coming back for a visit ... on cell phones. I guess the form factor will always limit the expandabi
  • Terrific. I have it syncing under Linux. TF card (with SD card adapter) just mounts nicely. A1000 is Symbian OS, so I added an Ebook reader, GPS program, and MP3 program. Oh and some nice file management tools:) The ONLY issue is the limit on the TF capacity. 8gb would mean my dream all in one device is not so limited, and no ipods for me. Thats exactly what I wanted!!!
  • But does it run Linux?
  • Would you buy a product from a company too retarded to spell Stick and Store?

    OK, so they do it because it's easier to get a trademark on "Stik&Stor". But it's a disturbing trend. Handi Paks, Intel's unpronouncable "VIIV"... every new product or technology has to have a stupid name now. In Nero, they don't say "we put in a buffer so you don't get underruns", they say "UlraBuffer!!!!!!!!!!!" How times have changed.
  • Damn. You'd think they could package something up for us treo users too.

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