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Handhelds Communications Wireless Networking Hardware

Samsung Cell Phone Features 3GB Hard Drive 290

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we're-getting-close-on-this-one dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Samsung will be showing off a new cell phone which runs on Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system which features a built-in hard drive. The SGH-I300 will offer 3GB of storage which allows you to store up to 1,000 songs on it for playback through the music player. The 3GB hard drive is similar to the type of hard drive that is found in Apple's Mini iPod. These 1-inch drives with very low power requirements, are ideal for cell phones and other mobile devices."
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Samsung Cell Phone Features 3GB Hard Drive More

Samsung Cell Phone Features 3GB Hard Drive

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  • More Details (Score:5, Informative)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:01PM (#11903013) Homepage
    The friendly article is pretty light on details, given it's overclockerclub.com.

    Engadget [engadget.com] stated that the phone supports MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ audio files, and a plug-and-play drag-and-drop no-brainer way of transferring files as you please.

  • Amazing how far things have come (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:02PM (#11903034)
    That's amazing how far things have come. I remember only ten years ago we were lucky to have 3GB in a desktop computer let alone something like a phone :lol:. then again most of us didn't have or need cellphones :shakehead:

    Makes you wonder if we'll have 120 and 200GB drives in our cell phones in 2015 :worry:

    • Re:Amazing how far things have come (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:19PM (#11903248)
      Makes you wonder if we'll have 120 and 200GB drives in our cell phones in 2015 :worry:

      You worry about that?

      Luddite.

      By 2015, I want a cell phone with a 200GB HD installed sub-dermally in my jaw!

      And where's my damn flying car!?!?!?

    • Re:Amazing how far things have come (Score:4, Insightful)

      by servognome ( 738846 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:42PM (#11903560)
      Makes you wonder if we'll have 120 and 200GB drives in our cell phones in 2015 :worry:
      Why would a phone need a hard drive in the future? I would imagine you could have an advanced wi-fi type internet phone, that does VOIP, and allows you to access your home network to allow you to stream music and movies directly to your phone. It would also be able to take pictures/video and stream them directly to your computer at home.

  • yay. thanks.

  • Maybe I should just RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pjt48108 ( 321212 ) <{mr.paul.j.taylor} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:04PM (#11903064)
    ...but how long do you think it will be, before this opens up the door to massive conversation-recording? All it needs is an ambitious hacker, right? You have the phone, and you have an integrated audio storage device. Oy, the possibilities...
    • It could come as an option out of the box. Recording conversations in which you're involved is NOT illegal (as far as i know) - and it could actually be very useful in certain situations.
      • Actually, many states require informed consent and/or an audible beep indicating that the conversation is being recorded...

      • Re:Maybe I should just RTFA... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:16PM (#11903211)
        > It could come as an option out of the box. Recording conversations in which you're involved is NOT illegal (as far as i know) - and it could actually be very useful in certain situations.

        That depends on what state (of the US) you're in.

        In some states, both parties have to consent to the call's being recorded, and/or an audible "beep" has to play at specified intervals as a reminder that the call is being recorded.

        You could actually do this in firmware; cell phones have locator technologies, and are theoretically capable (over the data stream as a back channel) of exchanging information regarding in which state each party to a call is physically present.

        From that, it's a small set of if/then logic to work out whether the "beep" comes on automatically, and/or whether consent is required ("Press 'GO' to consent to monitoring") of more than one party to the call.

        There lots of legitimate (banking/finance) commercial applications where users (both clients and brokers, for instance) might want their calls recorded.

        Of course, real men don't need recording devices to back up their phone conversations. They just casually mention materials that have high neutron cross sections, mention the curve of binding energy a few times, and NSA records their calls for them.

      • In California at least, you cannot legally record a phone call without permission of both parties, or maybe you have to announce it at the beginning and put in that periodic beep.

        I personally think it a waste of a law which can't be enforced except as to making it inadmissable in court, and simultaneously wish it were enforceable. As far as I am concerned, that conversation belongs to everyone in the conversation, and they should all have veto over its uses. I really resented Amazon making purchase histo

  • Apple vs Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:06PM (#11903079) Homepage
    "The 3GB hard drive is similar to the type of hard drive that is found in Apple's Mini iPod."

    But Apple has the good sense not to try to cram OS X-mini onto the iPod hard disk. Instead a much simpler, special purpose OS does the job simply and well. But cram Windows-mini onto a hard disk, and well, you've wasted a lot of space for no real valid reason.

    Plus the delicious treat of viruses headed your way as a brand new target sits there and says, "Attack me, please."

    Why can't people realize that special-purpose devices work best with special-purpose OSes?

    • Re:Apple vs Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Except that Windows Mobile *is* a special-purpose OS. Are you actually trying to say that it's some kind of subset of XP? Wrong.

      Anyone out there who has done some development on Windows Mobile ... what is your estimate of the size of the OS? 64 MB maybe?

      Oh noes, 64 MB taken on a 3 GB drive!!!11
    • If Windows were there just to support the MP3 player, then of course this would be overkill. But it's obviously there to support PDA functionality and general-purpose apps. As with a lot of other smart phones.

      Which is not to say that you're wrong about the security issues. Or that cramming MP3 and PDA functionality into a phone is a good idea. But Samsung and its competitors seem to prefer feature-bloated phones to simple phones that interoperate -- probably because they don't make any money off of the de

      • I don't know why, but your title made the following pop into my head:

        A stoat is a stoat, and bloat is bloat,
        and nobody wants to bloat a stoat,
        unless that stoat is full of bloat,
        and then you've bloated a stoat!

        Sorry, your points were valid, but my mind is weird.

    • "Why can't people realize that special-purpose devices work best with special-purpose OSes?"

      Cell phones aren't really special purpose devices anymore. At least in comparison to an iPod...

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by bartyboy ( 99076 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:06PM (#11903083)
    Samsung announced today their new line of hernia belts and corsets. "These will keep our customers from injuring themselves when they have to lift our new phone," said the CEO of Samsung.

  • When did the 'song' become the standard... (Score:5, Funny)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:09PM (#11903113) Journal
    ...unit of memory? I guess we can blame it on Apple. How long before we start seeing hard drives advertised as storing megasongs or gigasongs? My first computer didn't even hold a millisong!
  • I never tought I was gonna see this at slashdot, it is mainly marketing buzzwords. How many songs depends on bitrate! If they by this means that the FS only can handle 1,000 files (I guess not), then this is bad.
    • indicating the capacity with the number of songs may have started as a marketing tool, but it is increasingly becoming popular. the main memory consuming use of these HD is for music anyway.

      car's gas milage depends heavily on the driving condition/pattern. so what? it's still a fairly useful metric. same thing here.

  • I sure don't. As flimsy as today's cell phones are, they are susceptiple to failing from a slight shake without the added risk of a hard disk. Add another fragile device to this picture.. Oh my god... I personally prefer not to have a moving part other than the flip cover and the pull out antenna on my cell phone.

  • Uh, oh... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 )
    Instead of your call being dropped for whatever reason, Windows Mobile will reboot the cell phone automatically to prevent the user from seeing the blue screen of death. Great...

  • Windows and 3gb HD (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by G00F ( 241765 )
    That must mean they have a max 1 gig of free space?

  • Battery life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ColonelFubster ( 758353 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:16PM (#11903209) Homepage Journal
    Those hard drives must be hell on battery life, low-power or not.

  • And if you have US Cellular... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:17PM (#11903223) Journal
    ...you still won't be able to get anything onto or off of that drive without paying for both a monthly subscription and a per-file fee.

    (USCC will sell you a camera phone, but thy have disabled the phone to disallow the use of a local connection cable to upload or download any audio or graphics. Nice, huh.)
  • run on the OS, the OS runs on the Cell phone.

    Try to get the whole hardware/software thing sorted; it sounds a lot more credible.

  • this Sparc... (Score:2, Funny)

    by J_Omega ( 709711 )
    3GB?!? That's 3x more HD space than this Sparcstation5 I'm trying to install linux on. Cripes!
  • The real reason Motorola delayed unveiling their iTunes compatible phones TODAY. As they said, it was NOT the carriers that caused it. The more things change the more they stay the same, thanks a lot Bill.

  • What I'm looking for (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:22PM (#11903300) Homepage Journal

    Is a cell phone that does everything. Yes, I've heard the whining from people who just want a cell phone to be a phone, but from my perspective, the fewer devices I have to manage, the better.

    Imagine you're going on vacation. You could pack:

    • Your camcorder
    • MP3 player
    • digital camera
    • PDA
    • Personal video player
    • Personal tv
    • Cellphone
    Or, you could just take your:
    • Cellphone

    Right now, we do have the technology to incorporate all of these features into one device with the form factor of a small notebook or PDA. Instead, people spend 5 times the amount of money on discrete appliances, and then have the added burden of having to carry them all. And then they whine because their phone isn't just a phone - as if they enjoy having dozens of electronic gadgets lying around the house, waiting to get lost, stolen, forgotten, etc...

    I'm tired of using a dozen different gadgets to do what could easily be integrated into one. If cellphone manufacturers are going to break into new markets, their phones are going to have to be more than just phones.

    • Re:What I'm looking for (Score:5, Funny)

      by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:30PM (#11903401) Homepage
      Why stop there? Here's what I expect in a cell phone (one that weighs less than 6 oz. too):

      camcorder

      MP3 player

      digital camera

      PDA

      Personal video player

      Personal tv

      Cellphone

      toothbrush and toothpaste

      shampoo AND conditioner

      toilet paper

      hairbrush

      credit cards

      week's worth of clothing

      golf clubs

      my car

      Chinese hooker

      Anyone who doesn't think these belong in a phone is simply a luddite who resists technological evolution.

    • Why on earth would you pack a personal TV? And if you do need TV access and really can't rely one having one in your hotel, then sure as hell a real TV (even if it's a small portable one) is going to give you a lot better quality than a cellphone. So your imaginary super-cellphone is by no means equivalent to the sum of your first list of stuff.
    • Yes, technically you could have all these devices as an all-in-one solution. All these really depend on is a processor that does sound, audio, and video, some memory, some storage, and a reasonably decent display.

      The only problem I see is making a decent interface for user input that excels at all these functions.

      I can dial my cellphone with one hand.
      I can navigate my iPod with one hand.
      Yet these are two vastly different interfaces.

      Coming up with a universal interface that allows easy user input and sti

    • Re:What I'm looking for (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:50PM (#11903655) Homepage Journal
      "Right now, we do have the technology to incorporate all of these features into one device with the form factor of a small notebook or PDA. Instead, people spend 5 times the amount of money on discrete appliances, and then have the added burden of having to carry them all. "

      Well... I think you're both getting the point and then missing it at the same time.

      A lot of Slashdotters in a rush to get the first +3 Insightful are quick to poo-poo integration. They don't care about a camera in a cell phone because it only does 640 by 480 and they've got some whiz-bang digital camera that does 5 megapixels. They paid considerably more for that camera, and they also got considerably better quality out of it. The point has been made ad-nauseum here that the more something can do, the less competent it is at doing it. It's a valid point. However, this is where they miss they miss the point entirely: That 5 megapixel camera is only good when you have it on you to use. Common sense, right? You'd think so, but when people poo-poo phones with cameras built in, they suddenly forget this point. (Race to get that +3 Insightful?) A cell phone is a nice convergence device because it stays with people at all times. I go to work: There's my cell phone. I go to an arcade: There's my cell phone. I take my family out to dinner: There's my cell phone. I take a dump: There's my cell phone. (yeah yeah, I know that'll attract smart ass comments, oh well.) Would I take my 5mp camera to an arcade? Dinner with the family? Not likely. While I'm taking a... err. Okay, that was a really bad example. I was actually thinking more about cell phone with built in games/internet etc. You get the point. Value. My cell phone does MORE. It may not be perfect, but it's better than nothing. I have photos of my nephew being silly at dinner that I simply would not have captured if my phone didn't have a camera. (I could keep going but I think the point was made right there.)

      I mentioned before that you got the point and then missed it. I think you get what I just said above. I think you understand why having this stuff in a cell phone is cool for a lot of people. But what I'm really replying to is "you're going on vacation". Ugh. That wouldn't be my first example. A stronger example would have been "going on a spontaneous trip". The "master of none" point still very much applies. You want a 5 megapixel photo of the Grand Canyon.

      So, yes, I agree: Cell phone convergence == generally good. Moaning about new features in cell phones == generally obnoxious.
    • Let me give you a big hint, the best vacation I ever took was one with ZERO tech involved. I went to a ranch [zionponderosa.com] where my cellphone didn't work, I stayed in a cabin where the only electricity was for the wall clock and a single bulb, and there was no phone in my cabin. It was the best week of my life. I rose when I wanted, communed with nature, and left being the most relaxed I have been since childhood. Getting away from technology for a while was truely refreshing. Then again the same argument for integration
    • The good news is we can make a device that does all this. The bad news is if you want to use it for more than an hour, you need to either plug it into the wall or carry around a 20lb (about 9kg for the metrically-enhanced readers) external battery.

    • I can tell by your post that you are not a photographer by any means, that you don't quite understand what vacations are for, and that you desire quality far, far less than convenience.

      Right now, we do have the technology to incorporate all of these features into one device with the form factor of a small notebook or PDA. Instead, people spend 5 times the amount of money on discrete appliances, and then have the added burden of having to carry them all.

      Not by a longshot. None of the integrated devices h

    • Imagine you're going on vacation. You could pack:
      • Your camcorder
      • MP3 player
      • digital camera
      • PDA
      • Personal video player
      • Personal tv
      • Cellphone
      Or, you could just take your:
      • Cellphone
      Or you could just relax and enjoy nature for a change.
    • So that when I lose my phone on my vacation, or it drops and breaks into 5 million peices I also lose my:
      • Camcorder
      • mp3 player
      • digital camera
      • PDA
      • personal video player
      • personal tv (??!)
      • cellphone

      or I could just lose my:

      • cellphone

      All this consolidation isn't a boon. I don't have masses of electronic items lying around waiting to get lost and honestly the only thing a phone should have in addition to the phone is the pda feature, since it can tell time and has a calendar. Everything else is extrava

      • An Apple Shuffle is $99. If a cellphone can duplicate that simple functionality and only cost $50 more than a similar model that does everything but mp3s, that would be a good deal to me.

        If I wanted a low-end, HD-based camcorder which used the same HD to playback video, and could use a TV module for playing and saving TV, even better. Yeah it might get lost, stolen, or crushed, but if it costs $700 instead of $400 + 400 + 100(TV), I might think it's worth it.

        Combine all of the above in one device for co

  • Swiss-Army Phones (Score:3, Funny)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:23PM (#11903315)
    Do you think in some secret lab somewhere deep within the walls of a mobile phone company there are prototypes of cell phones with all sorts of things attached to them?

    Things to Try Mounting on Phone:
    Philips-Head Screwdriver
    Can Opener
    Scissors
    Deathray
    • Umm.

      I'd buy a phone with a deathray, as long as it wasn't too much larger and had decent range (~50m or so against human opponents).

      I'm not a huge fan of device convergence but *that* I could go for.

  • Yay for Single Point Of Failure! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by simetra ( 155655 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:24PM (#11903320) Homepage Journal
    Now there's a way to lose your phone and mp3 player at the same time!


    Personally, I don't even want a portable phone, as people tend to annoy me.


    When will this end? What's next, a pacemaker with built-in mp3?

  • For those who are interested, here are some pictures of the cell phone from engadget.com

    http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000730035259/ [engadget.com]

  • The real question is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:27PM (#11903349) Homepage Journal
    Can you play the MP3's as hold music?
  • Maybe this is why Motorola has delayed their iTunes Phone launch today. [pcworld.com] It couldn't compete with this.

  • SMS and phone call saved on HD ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:28PM (#11903368)
    I mean, it is rather ralatively lackluster on detail, but if the HD is only for song and photo snapshot this is a utter waste. It would be interresting if this can also be used to save SMS data (and on 3 gb you can save a lot) or phone call... THAT last feature would be rather nice. There is a lot of phone call I would wish I had a way to save it ...
  • get added piecemeal to different products?

    I want my 7 Megapixel Digital camera phone with the 3GB harddrive that I can boot my linux PPC system from...

    Oh, and $19.95 seems fair too!

  • Samsung released a phone with a 1.5GB HDD last year (Info [samsung.com]) and it's nothing short of awful. It's fat, heavy, only supports some silly proprietary format and has to check drive consistency when you copy any file onto it. If you want to copy numerous files, like say a collection of music, it checks after every single file not after all of them have been copied. They also recalled it before re-releasing it due to reliability issues. Fortunately, only Koreans will ever have to deal with it.

    I certainly hope Sa

  • I know this is touted as "convergence"... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jpellino ( 202698 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @03:31PM (#11903408)
    ...but come on - I guess I could conceivably end up with an uber-gadget that is my phone, gps, iPod, PDA, universal remote, pedometer, Speedpass, web browser, biometric verifier, flash drive, camera, pager, video player, voice activated game console, garage door opener, pill timer, and nose hair trimmer, but do I want it?

    It's pretty much the current definition of jack of all trades, master of none. The browsers all suck wind from the first click. No way the phone camera matches the 4MP with optical zoom and full controls. With my luck, I'd go to open the garage door and dial the Pentagon, who'd read the fix from my GPS and catch me screaming "Attack! Attack! - No, use the sniper rifle!" in the middle of a Halo session...

    So it's really just a away of any one manufacturer making sure you buy the whiz-bangiest phone instead of someone else's.

    What if I lose it? Right now I keep track of my GPS, iPod, camera and cell phone. Suppose I lose one device. I'm either out a copy of my music, or my most recent photos, or a location fix, or my phone. Lose the uber-device and I'm out all of them at once.
  • My phone gets abused. It goes for rides in bags pants and jackets, it tumbles with me through bike crashes. It will get dropped. it will take a hard falls.

    I don't think I want a mechanical drive in my phone.

    It's just another thing to break making me upgrade a piece of equipment that never really needed a hard drive in the first place.

  • Well, does it?
  • Too bad it'll be 10 years before we get decent phones like this in the US. Just because companies make them doesn't mean we'll ever get to use them.
  • Apple better launch an iPOD cell phone line. Watch out Apple.

  • Just 3 gigs? But I want a:

    Digital Camera
    MP3 Player
    Voice Recorder
    PDA
    TV
    GPS-Navigation Unit
    Scanner
    Video Game Machine
    Coffee Maker
    Dishwasher
    Car Remote Control

    That runs on Windows. Will 3 gigs be enough?

  • I'm not a fan of whizz-bang cellphones, BUT: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TexVex ( 669445 ) on Thursday March 10, 2005 @04:32PM (#11904122)
    So, my phone is just about as basic as it could get, and most of the bare minimum features it came with, I'm just not using. I store about two dozen phone numbers on it, I call people, I accept incoming calls, and I use my voicemail. I've never used text messaging, or played a game on my cell phone. I don't want my phone to be a substandard camera; if I want to take pictures I want a multi-megapixel digital jobbie with real optics in it. I think pop music ringtones are just stupid; I keep my phone in my pocket on vibrate most of the time just so I don't come off as a giant anus every time someone rings me up when I'm in a public place.

    But, instead of just ranting about how I think all this extra whizz-bang is wasteful, stupid, and whatnot, I spent a couple minutes thinking about what I *would* like to have in my cellphone. What extra feature would I pay to have? I've got a good idea. A genius one:

    Television and Radio. Once, many years ago, I owned a handheld backlit LCD television. It was a thing of beauty; a few ounces of mass, a two-inch screen, and a telescoping antenna. It was great to have in lots of places. It had a 1/8" mono jack for plugging in headphones or an earpiece. Its integrated speaker was adequate as well.

    Now, this was about ten years ago. I know the technology for LCDs has come a long way. I know that device would easily fit into a cellphone today. So, do it. And add AM/FM radio. Then, give me TiVo functionality for the TV and radio (I'm sure the television video scaled down for the phone display would compress pretty damn well!). If my phone had all that, I could justify paying for a hard drive in it.

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