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Data Storage

1" Hard Drives in Cellphones on the Rise 168

Posted by CmdrTaco from the coming-to-the-tipping-point dept.
Tomo Hiratsuka writes "The imminent 10Gb 1-inch hard drives we've been hearing about have been well covered but the maker, Cornice, reckons its product could end up in over 70 million cellphones by 2009. Kevin Magenis, one of the company founders, isn't shy about pointing out that this is 30 million units more than predicted DAP sales."
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1" Hard Drives in Cellphones on the Rise More

1" Hard Drives in Cellphones on the Rise

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @08:46AM (#14383864)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Those of us who own Distributed Array Processors agree with you. Mod parent +27.5 "Really Intelligent"

    • Re:define: DAP (Score:3, Insightful)

      by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 )
      Perhaps a SlashDot Glossary would be a good idea?

      Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.

      This is common sense. I will grant, due to Slashdot's subject matter there are some acronyms that are common enough that they don't need to be defined (GNU, MS, RIAA) but if, as you suggest, this is the first time the term 'DAP' has appeared in a Slashdot story summary, the reader is owed a defi

      • Re:define: DAP (Score:3, Insightful)

        by madfgurtbn ( 321041 )
        Perhaps Slashdot editors could do what every professional editor on the planet does, and define what an acronym means the first time it's referenced in every article.

        That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.

        Slashdot covers many esoteric subjects, so it's not likely that you will know every acronym or the name of every obscure language, technology, or application. Many times I have had to go into the threads to get more info about what the article was about, and many times I have
        • That would be nice, but you always have the option to, you know, RTFA.

          That's the attitude of someone who has no respect for other peoples' time. You're allowed, but I expect better of Slashdot's editorial staff. What is their function if not to save readers from unnecessary effort?

    • Yeah, whatever happened to that [everything2.com]?

      Although, I agree that Wikipedia would be a better choice.

  • Profit (Score:2, Funny)

    by SilverspurG ( 844751 ) *
    This is the sort of thing that would've been profitable to be in the correct social circles and invest in the company about 1-2 years ago.

    Imagine the donations you could make to sf.net and debian.org after a windfall like that hits.
  • With so much space in average cellphone I imagine that lots of people will try to run linux on them.

    Maybe finally with dosbox on an average cellphone (not something extra expensive like treo) I'll be able to play elite2, and adom. Just some perfect entertainment on may way to work :)
  • Since all phones are locked down DRM-wise why do I need a hard drive in them? Give me an open platform where I have complete access to the integrated phone and I'm interested. Not that anybody is going to especially when you look at providers like Verizon who go out of their way to cripple their customers phones instead.

    • Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone?? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dionysus ( 12737 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @08:59AM (#14383927) Homepage
      The drives shows up as USB storage devices (at least they do in the newer Nokia models). You can just access them that way and copy the music or whatever over. That's what I do.
      • But before you can play the music, you must cripple it with some stupid program to let the phone read it - it won't read plain .mp3, but some proprietary Nokia format which is essentially encrypted mp3. Supposedly to make copying mp3s using your phone harder. Practically, making it suck a big time because the program is a huge uncomfortable "media manager" that scans your whole harddrive and creates an encrypted copy of every single mp3 file it finds before you are able to upload a single song to the phone.
        • What are you talking about? My Nokia N70 reads normal mp3 files.
      • If this is the case, then your phone will have more functionality than your ipod. Your ipod doesn't let you download music back to your PC. If this is seen as a USB drive then you would be able to do it. Of course this is assuming that the industry doesn't strap some nasty DRM on it. You know what we do when we assume don't you?

        http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/ [stockmarketgarden.com]

        • Your iPod does let you download music back to the PC. Copy the iPod_Control folder. It's hidden under Windows. Not sure about Mac.

          You want the filenames to make sense? Use PodPlayer's [ipodsoft.com] integrated "extract" wizard. This also has the advantage of being able to play your music on-the-fly from a Windows PC without downloading the music first. Excellent tool. I have it set up on the right-click menu for my iPod (in autorun.inf), and I hook up my iPod and run the program whenever I'm at work. Charge and listen at

      • I have a Nokia 7610 / Symbian OS v7.0 / Series 60 with a rather nice 512 MB of RAM thanks to the expansion slot. I know the latest Symbian OS (v 9) does show up as a universal mass storage device and I would really, really love it if my phone did this too -- so I don't have to carry around a thumbdrive all the time.

        Does anyone know of a Symbian app that will simulate the phone as a mass storage device, or, failing that, does anyone know a way to upgrade a 7610 to the latest Symbian version?

        Cheers,
        Daniel

    • Re:What do I need a hard drive on my phone?? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Since all phones are locked down DRM-wise why do I need a hard drive in them?"

      "Not that anybody is going to especially when you look at providers like Verizon who go out of their way to cripple their customers phones instead."

      Have consider that:
      - most cell phone users don't live in US and thus couldn't care less about Verizon
      - in most countries you can buy a cell phone that isn't tied to a certain operator
      - in some countries it is illegal to sell these locked and crippled phones altogether
    • So, tell Verizon where it can shove it.
      Switch to a GSM operator.
      Buy a GSM phone off the web and not tied to a specific operator.
      Stick your new GSM SIM card into your GSM phone and start talking.
  • The size of the R/W (read/write) heads is the second-biggest determinant, after the size of the platter(s), of the size of the drive.

    By harnessing the power of the microwaves inherent in the phone -- part of the electromagnetic spectrim -- it's possible to write to the drives simply by beaming the proper electromagnetic frequencies at the platters, and to read from the drives by doing the same thing in reverse.

    Unfortunately, 10GB is probably as dense as these things can get, scientifically speaking.

    • Mr. Spock was the science officer on the Enterprise, whose quotes should indeed be noted in "stardates." Dr. Spock was a 20th-century pediatrician and anti-war activist; Julian calendar dates would be more appropriate.

      Now, which one did you mean?

    • Re:What's interesting about this... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:39AM (#14384144) Journal
      I hope that post was a troll. I don't know what's worse... the fact that none of what you said makes sense or the fact that apparently people think it's correct.

      For the mods who rated that post "informative" and "interesting":

      Microwaves have wavelengths measurable in centimeters. This makes them very bad for data storage. The whole reason the industry is trying to move to Blu-ray and similar technologies is because blue colored light has a much SHORTER wavelength than the traditional red colored lasers used in established data storage devices. The "size" of the bit being stored (and therefore the number of bits you can store in a given area) is directly proportional to this wavelength.

      The wavelength of the microwave radiation emitted by the phone is roughly 35 centimeters. The wavelength of light used in CD drives is roughly 0.000078 centimeters. That's nearly 13000 times larger! So you'd think you could store 1/13000th the data in the same spot using microwaves than you could fit using regular CD laser tech.

      All this ignores some other very serious technical issues, of course... like how the unfocused microwave energy emitted by the antenna (or anywhere else in the phone) is directed and focused towards the HD platter, and how the microwave energy is able to interact with the platter to read and toggle magnetic bits considering microwaves bounce right off metal surfaces.

      ------------------

      The size of the R/W heads is NOT a limiting factor.It is easy enough to use MEMS technology to make them only a few billions of a meter wide, so they can be built plenty small enough. The real limiting factor is how closely you can back the magnetic regions that encode the data before they interfere with each other and lose the ability to retain their state.

      I need another cup of coffee...
      =Smidge=

  • whats the fascination with stuff that breaks? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @08:52AM (#14383893) Homepage Journal
    I do not want a harddrive in my phone. My phone gets more abuse than any other gadget I have. Granted its cheaper than using flash but hell I would rather pay for something that isn't going to possibly be toast when it bounces once off the pavement.

    • Re:whats the fascination with stuff that breaks? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by __aammuz5019 ( 678894 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:02AM (#14383949)
      I agree totally with not wanting a hard drive in my cell phone, but... has anyone tried to buy a cell phone *without* a camera in it lately? I don't want a camera in my cell phone either, because I work in the defense industry and I cannot take my phone into many buildings due to security restrictions. But, when I tried to purchase a cell phone without a camera, I found my only choice was a klunky offering that was too big for me and looked like it was several years old in design. I fear that the idea of having a hard drive in one's cell phone will "catch on," and shortly after, one will not be able to find a cell phone without one. Sigh! smp
      • I was in the Verizon store yesterday (for an hour and fifty minutes, argh, but that's another story) and saw several reasonably nice, small phones without cameras. Nothing as small as a razr, but a few things smaller than, say, my Motorola E815.

      • There are modern phones without cameras (Score:4, Informative)

        by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:23AM (#14384050)
        Your issue is exactly why enterprise and government wireless providers offer versions of modern phones without cameras, such as the no-camera Treo 650NC offered by Sprint [sprint.com].
        • Unfortunately, GP is neither an enterprise nor a government.
          • Unfortunately, GP is neither an enterprise nor a government.

            Well, he said:

            I don't want a camera in my cell phone either, because I work in the defense industry and I cannot take my phone into many buildings due to security restrictions.

            Sounds like government and/or enterprise to me. But that is beside the point: if you're saying that he, personally, isn't an "enterprise" or "government", that's still irrelevant, because - and I know this is hard to believe - you can still get the non-camera versions of many
      • flash media is my choice for my portable devices. My dell axim x50v is encased in an innopocket magnum magnesium case and I have confidence in it protecting my device if it is dropped , but if I had rotating media in the axim I doubt it would survive. As CF cards get bigger and cheaper why would you want to use a hard drive?
      • has anyone tried to buy a cell phone *without* a camera in it lately

        Yep, I bought a Nokia 3120 last August. I actually didn't even buy it; it came free with a year of Cingular service.

        cheers, -b.

      • Wow! That looks almost exactly like a post I made to slashdot a few months ago. I work in defense too. At my old location, cell phones were allowed but camera phones were prohibited so I bought a new phone without a camera. Shortly afterward, I started working on another project in a facility with no restrictions on cameras. Now I'm working in a facility where all cell phones are prohibited (cameras or not).

        Despite being 'stuck' without a cameraphone, I'm not disappointed at all. Even when I had a camera

    • My clunky old Nokia 6310 lasted 2 weeks without a recharge, but my new super-fantabulous 6230i with colour screen, mp3 playback and movie capture barely lasts four days - without even using any of that crap!

      What's a hard drive going to do to already crappy battery performance? Bring us back to the 90's routine of charging every single night?
    • Very small drives are ... a little different. You're probably thinking of Z-axis damage, where the heads "slap" into the media after the drive is dropped "face down". What's kewl about these tiny drives is that everything (including the head or heads) is smaller and lighter, with less mass, which means less momentum, which translates into fewer chances for this kind of damage. Another way to prevent damage is use an accelerometer which the embedded F/W will use to sense impending doom and park the heads on a non-data portion of the media, or to remove the heads from the media entirely (ramp loading).

      But in the end, you're right - Flash [wikipedia.org] is much more tolerant of these kinds of environments. Yes it's expensive, but there's that Moore's Law thing [wikipedia.org] that, for a few years now, has given us smaller, denser, and cheaper circuitry. There's also the limited number of rewrite cycles, but in the sub 1.8 inch drive arena, I think (MHO) Flash will be the ultimate winner. Until then, those of us using micro drives thank those of you who fork out the Really Big Bucks for Flash-based products (like the Nano [wikipedia.org]) - you're helping drive down the cost for us all.

      • Another way to prevent damage is use an accelerometer which the embedded F/W will use to sense impending doom

        I love that! What we really need is some sort of device that makes it jump up in the air and levitate at around 5 feet whilst beeping and flashing some bright LED's so we can find the little buggers when they get lost. Just an idea though. Anyway, back to the drawing board.

    • Wishlist for a mobile phone for people who really use the thing professionaly:
      1. Can call with it and has good sound
      2. Carkit/headset
      3. Good battery life
      4. Sturdy
      5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
      6. Normal size and lightweight

      Wishlist according to mobile phone manufacturers:
      1. Portable data storage
      2. Possibility to open you documents on the phone so while you are calling you can read the numbers of a spreads
      • Wishlist for a mobile phone for people who really use the thing professionaly:
        1. Can call with it and has good sound
        2. Carkit/headset
        3. Good battery life
        4. Sturdy
        5. Address book: Plain simple, no big screen with lots of info. Just the seeing the name of the person in the list is enough.
        6. Normal size and lightweight

        I have a phone that meets those specs. It's the Sanyo VI-2300. It has excellent call quality, it's a decent size, it's pretty durable (has survived several drops onto concrete), has exce

        • I haven't seen Sanyo for sale in the Netherlands. Maybe I have to look better. I used to have a 4 year old Nokia (6210?), borrowed it after my other Nokia broke down, the battery got a bit loose causing the phone to turn of by itself (7110). I now have a $40 siemens. The sound is not really great, but for the rest it works pretty good.
          About the webbrowsing: The use of the phone for a map of the city is handy.
    • I do not want a harddrive in my phone.

      Fine then. Don't buy one. What the hell is your problem? Just because you don't want it, it's a bad idea? I'd kill for 10G, my 1G SD card is always full up. Hell, I'm hoping for 80G so I can get my mp3 collection on it!

      The day a phone comes out with the present features of my phone (a WiFi PDA) plus a harddrive, I'll be upgrading. Well, in honesty, I'll wait a month or two for buyer feedback and ironing out the manufacturing problems, but that's just good practice

  • A little more info (Score:3, Informative)

    by dcsmith ( 137996 ) * on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @08:58AM (#14383922)
    This article [com.com] has a little more info, including a projected price of $18.50/GB.
  • Make up your mind, is it imminent or could it be something else?

    Coming soon: An mp3 player with a cell phone in it.

  • Good article (Score:2, Funny)

    by cgenman ( 325138 )
    The maker of a product that nobody currently uses boasts that it will be the next iPod in half a decade.

    Quick! Someone get this guy a job at Napster.

  • Cornice?!? I've never heard of them. It seems they did not exist before 2000 [corniceco.com], but now, just a few years later, they sound like a serious player. Too bad their privately held...might make a decent investment.

  • Of course he's going to predict that (Score:4, Informative)

    by DrSbaitso ( 93553 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:12AM (#14383994)
    I read an article about Cornice a while back (upon further googling, here [inc.com] it is). They were approached by Apple to be the exclusive supplier of HDs for the iPod Mini. They ended up turning Apple down in order to focus on the phone hard drive market. Time will tell how smart of a decision that was, but if there's one thing you can say about their CEO it's that he's got some brass ones. I think it was a pretty stupid move, but then Apple would be done with this tech by now (only flash in the Nano, bigger HDs in the 5G iPod) so maybe they will sell a lot of phones with hard drives and become rich.
  • I'm excited about this and the prospect of more powerful low-heat CPUs. Soon there will be computers everywhere... oh wait. But really. There can be PCs everywhere.

  • Hurrah for competition (Score:2, Insightful)

    by hattig ( 47930 )
    This is what competition (in this instance, between flash memory and tiny hard drives) is all about - better products for less money.

    $18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure ...

    What's more interesting is that these drives are so thin - under 4mm thick! That's kinda sexy. Would I want it in a battered cell phone? Dunno. Do I need 10G
    • $18.50 a gigabyte is pretty nice for such a small device. Flash isn't near that currently, but probably will be in 6 to 12 months time. Of course flash pushers will come up with other advantages for their side I'm sure ...

      Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.

      The real battle will be on the size front. I think the HDs will maybe win this one.

      Do I need 10GB in a phone even? I'd prefer it in a digital camera, or tiny media player.

      My

      • Battery life and reslilience. No moving parts, that's flash's one advantage that results in both benefits.

        No moving parts also means relative silence and lower heat generation.

  • gigabit? (Score:1, Funny)

    by johnnybaluba ( 761558 )
    When did they start releasing harddrives with gigabit specs? Isn't that tricking the customers even more than the usual giga/gibi confusion? or is the manufacturer just ignorant?

  • "... by 2009..." (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Slartibartfast ( 3395 ) * <ken@jot[ ]rg ['s.o' in gap]> on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:17AM (#14384020) Homepage Journal
    Huh? Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash? Lessee:

    Flash uses less energy
    Doesn't need to spin up
    Won't "crash" [flash can have its own problems, but the heads ain't one of 'em]
    Can be easily extracted and plugged into external devices
    Etc.

    I love hard drives, but the super-duper-really-small stuff has never (and, IMHO, will never) catch on; flash has that pretty much sewn up.

    • Re:"... by 2009..." (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sstidman ( 323182 )
      Because by 2009 the HD capacity will be 100 GBs and cost less than your 8 GB flash card. And by that time we'll all be bitching about the uselessness of 8 GBs of storage. Batteries will likely have significantly higher capacity by then so we won't care as much, the hard drives will surely have some energy saving optimizations and the hard drives will surely be every bit as pluggable as compact flash. And if the phone/PDA/MP3 player has a GB or 2 of memory built-in (which it surely will by then), the devi
      • And if the phone/PDA/MP3 player has a GB or 2 of memory built-in (which it surely will by then), the device could spin up the drive, copy off the next few songs/videos from the disk, and then spin down the disk drive, saving tons of energy.

        They already do this. Some devices can access HD-based storage over bluetooth*, and the some of the media player applications support this today. Mostly for music; I don't know how it would work for exceptionaly large files, e.g. video. Some sort of "chunk" based syste

      • Old, you whippersnapper? I remember wondering what I'd put on these newfangled 720k floppies.
      • Remember when your PC had a whole gigabyte hard drive? Remember wondering how you could ever fill that massive beast

        No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.

        I'm really old.

        • No, I remember when my PC had a whole 5 MEGA bytes of hard drive capacity and I wondered how I could fill it up.
          I'm really old.
          The first PC that I had that had a hard drive had something like 7 MB. Before that, it was just two floppies. And the one before that was just ONE floppy. "Please insert OS disk", "Please insert Lotus 1-2-3 Program Disk", "Please insert OS disk".

          And I am not particularly old.
      • Heck. I remember wondering how I was going to fill up a 400MB drive. I then remember filling it up and purchasing a (parallel port driven) Zip drive to increase my capacity. But I remember the most was my experiment to play Doom off the Zip drive. That was an interesting experience with gameplay measured in seconds per frame instead of frames per second.

        Ahhh... those were the days. Now I have a 400GB RAID array and am still wondering what I can delete/burn to DVD in order to free up space.
      • Valid point re: bitching about 8 GB. BUT, batteries are the one place in miniaturization where substantial improvements have been lacking. I still think I'll stand by my words -- that we'll see 8 GB (or maybe 16 GB) flash cards before we'll see widespread acceptance of hard drives. Small hard drives have been out for

        OVER TEN YEARS

        and have never caught on; there was even a 1.6" standard back in the early 90's that went NOWHERE. I see no reason to start believing it'll change now, especially when flash do
    • Why, in the world, have a 10 GB HD, when -- by 2009 -- you'll be able to have (for a slightly higher premium) 8 GB of flash?

      Well, ten is two more than eight, innit?

      We also don't know yet just what kind of "higher premium" you'll pay for Flash over microdrives three years from now. If, in 2009, a 10GB microdrive costs $100 to an OEM, and an 8GB Flash unit costs $250, which do you think designers of cell phones and MP3 players are going to choose for their devices?
    • Let's see what happens with products like the Carte Orange from LaCie. 8GB (not GiB, unfortunately), the size of two or three stacked credit cards, pull-out USB connector, ~$150. You can carry a DVD image plus several OS's in your wallet, much cheaper than a flash solution like the PQI "Intelligent Stick". If you're brave enough to put precision moving parts into your wallet.

      Isn't Apple still selling hard-disk iPods even after releasing the flash-based Nano?

  • MiniSD is already better (Score:5, Informative)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @09:19AM (#14384028) Homepage
    It is already possible to get (I've had one for a month) 1GB of RAM in the mini-SD [sandisk.com] format, not to be confused with SD, which itself is smaller than CompactFlash. The miniSD is about the size of a fingernail, and that adapter you see at the bottom of the sandisk.com page is a slipcase to bring the miniSD up to the size of SD.

    By 2008, the projected release date of the 1" hard drive, I'm sure miniSD's will be up to at least 4GB if not 8GB, without the power drain of spinning platters, without the seek and latency, and in a much smaller form factor.

    We can see from IBM's CompactFlash hard drives how limited the market is -- basically photographers who can't afford the time to change their "film". But the trend is to smaller and more personal devices, and the market for tiny hard drives will be even smaller in 2008.

    • By 2008, the projected release date of the 1" hard drive, I'm sure miniSD's will be up to at least 4GB if not 8GB, without the power drain of spinning platters, without the seek and latency, and in a much smaller form factor.

      I know a few professional photographers, and the thinking amongst them is to limit themselves to 1 gig compact flash drives. Anthing more dense is percieved as unstable.

      Personally my 2 gig USB flash drives work just fine. However, what I do is not very I/O intensive. The most I'
      • I know a few professional photographers, and the thinking amongst them is to limit themselves to 1 gig compact flash drives. Anthing more dense is percieved as unstable.

        Less that, and more of - if this card dies, so does my revenue. By artificially limiting yourself to smaller memory cards, you use more of them. So that if one dies, well, you've just lost 1/nth of your photos - a bit of a revenue hit, but not so much as losing *all* your photos in a session! For casual photographers, if you lost those vaca
  • This all assumes that people will want ginormous all in one electronic devices that are phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Probably that's not a safe bet. It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one. The transition costs for the consumer are quite high. If you for example get a new phone/MP3 player what do you do with the iPod you just paid 300 bucks for?

    And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will of course charge a huge prem
    • This all assumes that people will want ginormous all in one electronic devices that are phones, PDAs and MP3 players. Probably that's not a safe bet. It's been tried before and people generally don't want the cost and complexity of an all in one.

      It's way too early to say that. "Enhanced" phones have been out for what, four or five years max. The present problems are size and complexity as you suggest, but both are changing.

      And how much will the consumer get screwed by the cell phone company which will

      • The company that makes the drives probably doesn't care where they end up.
        Correct. These drives have been put in cameras, thumb drives, video accessories, GPS boxes, etc. etc.
      • A company would prefer to sell to a cell phone carrier who already beats the phone manufacturer down because they can use that widget to upsell a bunch of overpriced features. An embedded drive in a camera that has 1% of the market has a much much lower markup.
  • This is obviously targeting the whole "convergance device" market, but I have to wonder, will the battery life be able to keep up? I personally don't like these "all in one" type wonders because a)the interface usually sucks(possibly fixable, but we humans aren't changing form factor any time soon) b)if the battery dies, I not only lost my mp3 player, but I lost my phone, my video game machine, my address book etc. and c)(somewhat related) if the device gets lost/stolen then I am not only out my phone but
    • if the battery dies, I not only lost my mp3 player, but I lost my phone, my video game machine, my address book etc.

      Agreed, I do find this an annoyance. However, instead of carrying an extra device or two, I just carry a spare battery. If I'm away for a few days, I also bring the USB charger. My backpack is way lighter than yours! ;-)

      Also, when I go to an event where my toys may be put at risk(say out drinking) I usually only carry my phone with me.

      Likewise, and this I think is my advantage. When I'

  • Sturdy? (Score:2)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    That's all very cool, but many people are not so careful with their phones as with their other equipment. How many g's can these drives take? Can I drop my phone on a concrete floor without losing data?

  • battery life (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Tuesday January 03, 2006 @10:39AM (#14384522)
    moving parts is just what my anemic battery needs.
  • With a platter spinning at such speeds in a lightweight handheld device, would there be any gyroscopic effects when holding the phone?
  • Lets see...

    2 years ago, there were 0 1" HDs in phones.
    1 year ago, there were 0 1" HDs in phones.
    This year, there are 0 1" HDs in phones (so far).

    I don't really see much to support "on the rise".

    Perhaps this article is just a slashvertisement. That is, a company that makes 1" HDs is just trying to create a market by asserting that it is already here and growing.

    Slashdot is pathetic. I was disappointed when news sources like CNN started to reprint press releases as "news". But at least I understand their prof
  • I don't want something so fragile (and expensive) in something I drop so much.
    I can't imagine a hard drive in a cell phone, one would not survive a week with my normal usage. Mine is always getting ripped of my belt by the seat belt or the dog lease or I knock it off the desk or what have you.

    I think this is a really bad idea.

    Besides, what's the point of having a hard drive in a cell phone anyway?
    I think it's dumb to use cell phones to listen to music, watch TV, take pictures or play games. I just need a
  • I drop my cellphone about five times a week. I buy phones that can take it. Last thing I want is a freakin' head crash in my phone.

  • "Drop Safe - The newest feature in the Crash Guard family allows the SE to actually sense being dropped. This means that even if the SE is in the middle of reading or writing data to the disk, it can immediately react and get the head under the safety of the active latch well before the unit actually strikes the ground. Tuned to respond in as little a distance as four inches, the SE simply protects itself from a careless or clumsy user."

    You should READ the article and visit the manufacturers home page.

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