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Comments: 62 +-   Wireless Portable Cell Phone Drive Unveiled on Friday February 02 2007, @08:56AM

Posted by Zonk on Friday February 02 2007, @08:56AM
from the handy-little-guy dept.
communications
storage
hardware
An anonymous reader writes "According to Ars Technica Seagate has unveiled a new portable drive that fits in the palm of your hand and has a 20GB capacity, but most importantly features Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. It's called DAVE, which stands for Digital Audio Video Experience and it lets you stream music, videos and other data to your mobile. It can also interact with a variety of other devices, such as PDAs, laptops, PCs and cameras, making it perfect for transferring data from your phone to another device or vice versa." Update: 02/02 14:06 GMT by Z : Indeed, you may have enjoyed our recent discussion on this technology. Feel free to draw from it for another round of portable-cell-drive-related conversation.
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  • Dupe... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled (634315) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:00AM (#17857906) Homepage Journal
    DAVE: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
    HAL: Affirmative, DAVE, I read you.
    DAVE: Can you check for dupes please?
    HAL: I'm sorry DAVE, I'm afraid I can't do that.

    Here [slashdot.org]

  • Car audio (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joebert (946227) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:00AM (#17857908) Homepage
    I can't wait to attempt a DRM protected transfer from this thing to my car stereo, just so I can hear the stereo give me the error, "I'm sorry, I can't do that dave".
    • Better do it quick, as I fear in the next year a similar attempt to transfer DRMed stuff will be met with:
      "You tried to steal intellectual property. I'm alerting the BSA police of your conduct as instructed by PATRIOT ACT IV. Better hide that illegal linux box polluting the home subnet." :)

  • Sharing? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eggoeater (704775) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:00AM (#17857910) Journal
    I wonder how the MAFIAA will feel about people using this device to share music to multiple devices?
    They'll probably try to outlaw it.


      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by QuickFox (311231)

        And now they're pretending it was deliberate. What a pile of shit.
        Are you seriously saying that you don't notice that Zonk's update is an embarrassed apology?

        "Pretending it was deliberate"? I hope you're trying to make some kind of joke.
          • People would be annoyed if they started deleting ongoing discussions.
            • People would be annoyed if they started deleting ongoing discussions.

              What ongoing discussions? Anyway, they could just take it off the "featured" list or whatever it is that makes it appear on the front page. Anyone in a flame war/discussion will still get notified of replies and can continue their argument, without being interrupted by all the "DUPE! posts.

  • Not that new. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:02AM (#17857936) Homepage
    My second Generation Aireo had a 20 gig drive that was smaller and thinner than a matchbox that took quite a pounding and survived. I think Hitachi has had sub 1 inch drives available for a really long time as well.

    Now, get the power draw to below that of Flash and they have something. Inside cellphones power useage is everything. My Razr lasts 6 times longer than my blackberry does or the treo did.

    People want longer battery life way more than being able to download at $0.99 each (Plus airtime) 20 gigs of music on their phone.
    • You grossly misunderstood the article. The novelty is not "small hard drive." The novelty is "20G hard drive with its own Bluetooth and WiFi radios and battery."
      • Ok but at the size of a razor, remind me again how big 2.5 drives are and their capacity. Then look at the size of a bluetooth chip and battery. I will take the extra inch on the device and the extra 140GB capacity.

        Hell, I will take a 3.5" drive if it were the size of a brick if I could set it next to my laptop, PC, PDA or whatever and have it act like a NAS. Why create the storage space, if I were a competitor I would create a happy little USB adapter that you can plug any device into and hand the inf

  • A hard disk crash on my cellphone. Yay.
    • Because the device is separate from your cellphone, a "hard drive crash on your cellphone" is prevented by design. The device is a peripheral. Your cellphone OS should be able to tolerate the failure of a peripheral.

      The device is a storage peripheral for mobile devices.

  • Seagate expects DAVE's battery life to be able to handle about 14 days of standby and 10 hours of media streaming performance.

    It will also be an open-source system, allowing third-party developers to write apps to interface with DAVE from various devices.

    Where do I sign?

  • Useful, but (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SighKoPath (956085) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:04AM (#17857964)
    I wonder how strong DAVE's security is? Will malicious individuals be able to snoop into my files? I see no mention of security anywhere in the article.

  • Unless your carrier is Verizon... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by timbck2 (233967) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <2kcbmit>> on Friday February 02 2007, @09:05AM (#17857972) Homepage
    ...in which case this would be useless to you, since Verizon disables Bluetooth file transfer on their phones.
    • Not all phones. Bluetooth transfers to the 2GB Micro SD card in my Verizon LG VX8600 works just fine. I don't know if it would be able to access external storage though.

      The other downside to using this would seem to be power consumption. I seem to get about half the phone battery life listening to music through my stereo bluetooth headset. Can't imagine that streaming audio off of a bluetooth drive would be any better.

      I also don't know if bluetooth is cable of doing 2 things at once. Could I play

  • Pics and video... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Odiumjunkie (926074) on Friday February 02 2007, @09:05AM (#17857978)
    here [mobilemag.com]
  • I have 5 phones in my house that all in theory have the ability to mate with my PC to do 'something'. But here's the funny part. Only one does and only through Bluetooth and only in a very limited way. The rest, well you can BUY a cable to connect them but in fact there is no software in existence in the world that can make any use of it. Not even the 'software' you can buy with the cable. All it can do, and this is a crapshoot at best, is sometimes enable your cell phone to be a modem.

    Carriers specify that

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tony Hoyle (11698)
      Carriers specify that all the other features be crippled because they want you to use THEIR services. Why synch jpegs with your PC when you can PAY to use picturemail? Why download ringtones when you can BUY them.

      Get a new carrier. No good carrier would restrict a phone in the manner you describe - only a crappy one.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by SaDan (81097)
        Or get a non-locked phone. The carrier only screws with phones they subsidize.

      • Or pay for your phone yourself and get an uncrippled one. Or move away from the US and even get an uncrippled subsidized one. Your horizon seems quite narrow.

        Yes, dipshit, I think most people's horizons are too narrow to actually MOVE TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY to get a better cell phone. If you actually did that, you're probably insane.

        • Yes, dipshit, I think most people's horizons are too narrow to actually MOVE TO A DIFFERENT COUNTRY to get a better cell phone.
          The nationalistic pride that you Americans display really goes too far sometimes. Come on, if you'd just look a little further, there's a whole world out there, full of fascinating possibilities and opportunities. You could save several cents on your phone bill by moving to Europe.

          • "The nationalistic pride that you Americans display really goes too far sometimes. Come on, if you'd just look a little further, there's a whole world out there, full of fascinating possibilities and opportunities. You could save several cents on your phone bill by moving to Europe."

            I can see the commercials now:

            Yeah, sorry, you're fired. But there is some good news: I saved hundreds on my phone bill by moving to Europe!
            So easy, a Frenchman can do it!

        • Why are you Americans getting fucked so badly, though? I don't recall seeing a mobile phone that didn't implement standard IrDA or bluetooth for several years now, and I know that at least Nokias and Ericssons allow for trivial downloading and uploading of pictures, ringtones, midlets, etc., since I have dabbled in creating my own ringtones and java games. A trivial download of Nokia PC suite and the J2ME Wireless toolkit, and you're all set (on windows, at least).

          Is this just a GSM thing, with only cripple

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by silas_moeckel (234313)
      Sounds like your phone carrier likes to cripple there phones. If your carrier is GSM get an unlocked phone and do whatever you would like they are not that expensive.
      • For people with Verizon's V3m, V3c, and some other Motorola CDMA cells, you can flash the phone with Alltel's version of the OS.

        Hack Your RAZR [howardforums.com] and you should be able to use bluetooth the way it was intended.

        Research your model and I am sure you'll find countless hacks if you want to enable bluetooth. You can even configure most phones for free WAP access. --have fun.

    • Does anyone seriously believe that there will ever be PDA-like software that can sync the phone to the PC? Stop smoking weed, please.
      just buy a smartphone. ActiveSync will do the synchronization for you and you're allowed to do filetransfer so you can up/download sounds/pictures/whatever.

      for the record, I've stopped smoking weed a long time ago, and my smartphone has been doing exactly what you want for more than 2 years now.

      • Sorry but I'm not the kind of person to just spend hundreds of dollars on a phone for the sole purpose of a workaround. And when they have 30, 60, 80GB phones, unless and until the carrier allows them to be used to their fullest I won't get one. They are of course all free to go broke marketing them to me though.
    • ... we're tired of the crap that normal phones force upon us.

      Expecting commercially-oriented and service-tied phones to do what *we* want is futile.

      Take your destiny in your own hands and help us build something that suits our community needs and your personal needs, not those of the carriers.

      Official site [openmoko.com]
      Pictures and press info [openmoko.com]
      Blogs and notices [openmoko.org]
      Mailing lists [openmoko.org]

      ... and join us on IRC at freenode #OpenMoko. (Don't ask "When can I get it?" on the channel, just type "counter" for the countdown to the various de

      • Interesting. What chipset do you use for the GSM / WCDMA? Where do you get the network signallig stacks from?

        How will you get an open source phone through type approval?
    • I have a razr v3 from cingular, and by DL'ing some interesting apps from the interweb I can do lots of neat things using the "special" cable which I happen to have laying around (usb-usb is special?).

      I adjusted the gain table to increase the volume and installed some games, themes, and ringtones no problem. The v3 doesn't come with a calculator so I installed a java RPN calculator I found online. I can also apparently enable some disabled features such as clublights and so on.

      Maybe cingular didn't hav
    • I just got a Sony Ericsson k790a this week and it allows me sync with outlook and it will transfer anything I want with the included software. For the transfers I have the option of using bluetooth, infrared or the included usb cable. The only crippling thing I have found so far is I can't set an mp3 as a ringtone unless I download it from Rogers. Although I have heard of ways to get around that. One of the interesting features is I can use the phone to control media player or slideshows on my computer over
  • Anyone else read that as "Wireless Portable Cell Phone Unveiled". I thought some company thought it had the greatest thing ever and reinvented the cell phone or something...:-p
  • Who gives a crap about cell-phones - 20 gigs of storage that I can blue-tooth into unwired glasses and ear phones - add in an input device for the hand (how about a blue tooth wireless controler?) and I could mod up a "cheap" wearable that could play some old games, show me my documents/pictures/videos - the link in the cell phone for internet access and some chat capablility..

    Give it 10 years... you'll be using something like that.

    -GiH
  • Is it just me or, with a little software, could this become the platform for the, previously hypothetical, wireless "Pushed" advertising campaigns.
    At the very least I think Retailers may try to offer in store downloadable freebies like wallpapers or movie trailers.
  • The real question is: Can you wirelessly share files using it with your friends now?
  • ... I still think it's a good idea [slashdot.org].

    The trick will be getting device makers to leverage it.
  • The low bandwidth of Bluetooth and the high power consumption of WiFi make this device highly unattractive for streaming multimedia. Why not an Ultra Wide Band (UWB) Certified Wireless USB connection? It has much more bandwidth and low power consumption as well.
  • 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?

    (Hey...you duped the article, might as well dupe the comments. This
  • . . . the iPod HAL.
  • I think it would be nice to have a 20GB hard drive in my back pocket that I could connect to any computer to share files with friends without having to remove it from my pocket. For the computers that do not have bluetooth support or wifi, a USB thumbdrive with built in bluetooth or wifi would allow connection to my personal server. Additionally a portable application could be built to make use of the bluetooth or wifi on the USB thumbdrive that would not need to be installed on the host computer to work.
  • Yay! 20GB! Now I have space for all my friends' phone numbers! Well... both of them.
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