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Mass Storage For Phones

Posted by kdawson on Tue Jan 30, 2007 09:54 PM
from the pocket-jukebox dept.
Communications Data Storage Toys Hardware
The Demo conference started today, and the first news out of it comes from Seagate, which will be introducing pocket-sized, 20-GB, Bluetooth-equipped drives for cellphones this summer. They call this tech "DAVE" (one wonders whether the acronym or the expansion came first). Quoting: "DAVE-based products will be about the size of a credit card and less than half and inch thick, with an operating range of up to 30 feet from the connected phone... Software to hook the drives up to cellphones has already been produced for J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, Symbian and XCCC. Palm compatibility is forthcoming. The platform is open source..."
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[+] Hardware: Wireless Portable Cell Phone Drive Unveiled 62 comments
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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  • Uh oh! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 30 2007, @09:55PM (#17823286) Homepage Journal
    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?
  • Will apple let you use this with the iphone?

  • obligatory (Score:4, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:05PM (#17823354) Homepage
    DAVE-based products will be about the size of a credit card and less than half and inch thick, with an operating range of up to 30 feet from the connected phone

    Great ideas like this are a HALmark of Seagate's R&D division.

    • "Credit-card sized" is an abused term these days. And the Seagate press release [seagate.com] is self-contradictory:

      The DAVE reference design is about the size of a centimeter-thick credit card, with dimensions of 3.5 x 4.7 x .47 inches (61 x 89 x 12 mm) and weighing only 2.5 ounces (70 grams)

      So which is it? 3.5 x 4.7 inches (89 x 120mm), or 61 x 89mm (2.4 x 3.5 inches)? The latter sounds more credit-card sized to me.

  • Interesting Question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:05PM (#17823358)
    How long will it be until, for some users, the home pc is phased out? Take your mass storage cell-phone, drop it in a dock, and have word processing, email, and web access displayed on a LCD? Have the same setup at your work, your school, or your home.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LaughingCoder (914424)
      The home PC will be replaced by the XBox or equivalent. Some small portable device will replace the various portable electronic devices like cell phones, home phones, mp3 players, PDAs, watches, portable media/video players, radios, portable TVs, remote controls. And with Zune and XBox, Microsoft has a contender in both markets. Wouldn't that be wierd if in the end Microsoft became a hardware company.

    • Sure. The CPU won't be up to heavier tasks, but there's no reason it can't display a remote desktop on your home server for that.

      I'm almost at that stage right now with my Hermes, to where I don't need my laptop as much anymore. With the right data plan & HSDPA/wifi I don't even need a local HDD. Built-in or BT keyboard is fine, the only thing that's lacking is the display - a mini-HDMI connector or built-in laser projector would enable a whole new class of computing.

      • Likely the PC will become a sort of a "light server" in the futuristic world of ultra-mobile computing - a speciality product for businesses (and nerds). Since there will obviously be a void for processing(as parent mentions)/hard disk space requirements between these new ultra-mobile devices and full sized servers (the type full-sized businesses would use), I'm guessing that's where the PC will end up.
        As for laptops/notebooks, who knows? The only thing they'd have on these ultra-mobile devices is that y

    • Re:Interesting Question (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SleepyHappyDoc (813919) on Wednesday January 31 2007, @01:10AM (#17824632)
      Who needs a dock? This device is a 20GB drive that can sit in the bottom of your bag and connect wirelessly to your phone. How much of a stretch is a drive with Bluetooth or whatever (wireless USB?) that sits in the bottom of your bag, syncs to your phone or iPod when you're out, syncs to your PC when you get home or to work (from the bottom of your bag), syncs to your girlfriend's PC when you're at her place, etc., and contains your entire setup, say, in some kind of self-contained cross-platform VM? Is such a device possible with the technology we have now?
      • I think such devices are certainly possible. At least, all the technologies are available. The trick will be (1) having them all in one device, and (2) writing the software. Many devices currently only include a subset of the technologies they would need to interact with _everything_ (e.g. they have WLAN xor Bluetooth). Also, many portable devices are closed or semi-closed platforms that you can't easily develop your own software for.

        Solving (1) is only a matter of time. Devices with all the needed connecti

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by clonmult (586283)
      Aspects of that are already here, although not that widespread.

      You can get bluetooth keyboards for Symbian phones, and with Quick Office, you're set to go with wordprocessor and spreadsheets, albeit relatively limited, but good enough for keying in small documents. The only real catch is that the S60 screens are generally not that large (at the moment).

      Heck, I'm pretty sure one of the keyboards had a phone dock in it - unfold the keyboard, stick the phone in the dock at the top, and you've got quite a nice
    • Actually, wha not just add Bluetooth functionality to the terminal and take the phone out of the loop altogether?

      I'm one of those folks who think that mobile phones (need to be on all the time) and mobile computers (should be in standby when you don't need them) don't make a good package. Why not put everything on portable storage and use terminals with or without an own OS? You start the terminal, you connect your storage, your OS is loaded. If a mobile is supposed to be able to pull that off an energy-e
  • What about battery life on both the phone and the drive? I know bluetooth has gotten alot better but what about when downloading the kind of video that is on euro and asian sets and on its way here. The concept seems really cool but the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.

    • Re:Seems cool but.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by KoldKompress (1034414) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:19PM (#17823454)
      Engadget says 10 hours of continuous use.
      Source: Here [engadget.com]

    • Re:Seems cool but.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ScrewMaster (602015) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:27PM (#17823516)
      the locking of American phones is sure to make its usefullness less.

      ... is sure to make it useless. I just bought a Samsung phone from Sprint, and the Bluetooth headset works great but that's about all you can do with the thing. Oh, you can blow "business cards" back and forth, but only one at a time, and forget about up/downloading images from the camera. Unless, of course, you want to pay more juice to Sprint for their "PCS Vision" service, which I refuse to do because I don't think I should have to pay to send my own data two feet to my PC. It is a nice phone (the camera is just a gimmick to me at 640x480) and that's all I bought it for, but the attitude of these companies irritates me.

      Gagh. Honestly, the overall sleaziness of U.S. carriers is enough to make you want to throw up.

    • Re:Seems cool but.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by gsn (989808) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:41PM (#17823664)

      Seagate won't, however, be making consumer drives itself: Dave is for telcos and handset OEMs for sale under their own brands. Furthermore, the package isn't merely Seagate drives and an application framework, as Dave includes proprietary technology: even with WiFi blaring and BlueTooth listening contstantly, a Dave drive offers 10 hours of active use and up to 14 days standby. Thusly-equipped drives will also work with standard computers.
      (emphasis mine)

      RTFA seriously. Both your questions answered in two lines. The carriers won't lock you out of a device that they carry which is about the only way you will get your hands on this since Seagate won't be selling them directly. Of course that means that the retail price will include a big fat carrier markup.

      And they probably won't let you use it with your PC because oh noes you could your (illegal) music on it and listen to it with your phone instead of using their overpriced service, and share it over bluetooth or WiFi even. So its usefulness is still limited. So using it as secondary service for an iPhone is straight out.
        • Of course they sell these to OEMs. There is a market outside the USA and at least in Europe mobiles and carriers are coupled less tightly than in the States. IIRC in Germany the apex of coupling is that you can get a phone for one Euro if you sign into an X month contract. After the contract's out you can continue using the phone (and indeed I do use a Nokia 6210 we got via contract; it runs on prepaid now).

          If they only sold to carriers that'd mean that they make it very hard to sell these in Europe.

  • Security? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Edis Krad (1003934) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:15PM (#17823418)
    Now, I haven't red TFA, but I'm hoping it has some sort of security/encryption support. What's the chance of someone in a 30ft radius peeking at the 10Gbs of data I'm carrying in my pocket, just using another cellphone?...

  • why not put it in the phone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by neax (961176) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:15PM (#17823422)
    if they can make a 20gb drive that small, why not just build them into phones. I do really need mass storage in my cell (well actually my smartphone/PDA), but one thing that i do not need is another thing to have to carry around... I look forward to the day that the phone/PDA/camera/mp3 player/video camera are all rolled into one nice device.
    • Make a box the width and height of a CC, and 1 cm thick, and weigh it to match what this thing will weigh. Then tape it to your cell. Then you'll know why it's not built in to a phone.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by CastrTroy (595695)
        But wouldn't it be cool if you only had 1 storage device, which could be used for all your devices, such as PDA, Phone, MP3/Media Player, Camera, Laptop, along with a few others i'm probably forgetting? I think this device could be really nice if many different types of devices started to support it.

          • Sure, it's called a "laptop". Does everything, even phonecalls (with Skype or a 3G card), but it's unfortunately not that convenient.

            Size and cost are limiting factors. One day UMPCs might get there, but until now a smartphone is about as close as you'll get. Of course, putting a 10-20GB HDD in a smartphone will double the size (and likely cost as well), so it's probably best to keep it a separate, optional extra for the time being.

  • This immediately came to mind. (Score:3, Funny)

    by thedarknite (1031380) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:16PM (#17823430) Homepage
    (Knocking on door)
    CHONG: Who is it?
    CHEECH: It's me, Dave. Open up, man, I got the stuff.
    (More knocks)
    CHONG: Who is it?
    CHEECH: It's me, Dave, man. Open up, I got the stuff.
    CHONG: Who?
    CHEECH: It's, Dave, man. Open up, I think the cops saw me come in here.
    (More knocks)
    CHONG: Who is it?
    CHEECH: It's, Dave, man. Will you open up, I got the stuff with me.
    CHONG: Who?
    CHEECH: Dave, man. Open up.
    CHONG: Dave?
    CHEECH: Yeah, Dave. C'mon, man, open up, I think the cops saw me.
    CHONG: Dave's not here.
    CHEECH: No, man, I'm Dave, man.
    (Sharp knocks at the door)
    CHEECH: Hey, c'mon, man.
    CHONG: Who is it?
    CHEECH: It's Dave, man. Will you open up? I got the stuff with me.
    CHONG: Who?
    CHEECH: Dave, man. Open up.
    CHONG: Dave?
    CHEECH: Yeah, Dave.
    CHONG: Dave's not here.
    CHEECH: What the hell? No, man, I am Dave, man. Will you...
    (More knocks)
    CHEECH: C'mon! Open up the door, will you? I got the stuff with me, I think the cops saw me.
    CHONG: Who is it?
    CHEECH: Oh, what the hell is it...c'mon. Open up the door! It's Dave!
    CHONG: Who?
    CHEECH: Dave! D-A-V-E! Will you open up the goddam door!
    CHONG: Dave?
    CHEECH: Yeah, Dave!
    CHONG: Dave?
    CHEECH: Right, man. Dave. Now will you open up the door?
    CHONG: Dave's not here.

  • Isn't bluetooth sloooooow? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by schwaang (667808) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:16PM (#17823432)
    TFA is verrry light on technical details, but even bluetooth 2.0 is something like 3Mb/s. So transfering 10GB would take what, like 2 hours?

    What I'm saying is it's fine for streaming LUG Radio, but not great for backing up your pr0n to something you can leave hidden under the mattress.
    • Even if it were more capable, why would you want to carry around a 20 gig drive in your pocket? I already carry an 80 gig iPod in there the only thing it lacks is bluetooth, and only until Apple puts a drive in their iPhone... Which would pretty much eliminate the need for transmitting data to a phone for display.

      Any way you cut it you've got two devices, phone and drive, or phone and iPod. And an iPod doesn't drain my phone's batteries.

      Maybe someone could chime in with a use case that makes sense?
      • Maybe someone could chime in with a use case that makes sense?

        I think I figured it out. It's a stop gap for people who don't own iPods but own Bluetooth phones. A ghetto stop gap anyway. Maybe someone will come up with a better idea.

        • Until then, this is a good way to beef up the storage of your smartphone.

          Maybe sales of this will prompt Apple to add BT etc to future iPods. Maybe Apple are already planning to announce this next month, to "further revolutionise the phone industry". Maybe that's a team of Apple lawyers I hear, knocking at my door.

      • Obviously many phones of the future will be small and thin enough that they can't possibly hold much data. They will also include the ability to take pictures and well as function as a rudamentary PDA, thus the need to store data. Yea its kinda silly, but people seem to enjoy the ability to seperate their headsets from their phones, now you can seperate the phone from itself.. I mean its data. Mostly this is useful for a camera phone with lots of storage. Trust me, when it comes to cellphones, if you buil

    • Re:Isn't bluetooth sloooooow? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by suv4x4 (956391) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @11:00PM (#17823842)
      bluetooth 2.0 is something like 3Mb/s. .... not great for backing up your pr0n ...

      Is this the most compelling rant you can pull off? And do you realize bluetooth is just one option, the devices implementing DAVE can also provide USB transfer?

      I suppose the only reason for bluetooth inside is because they saw some empty space in the drive left underutilized. A disk is circle, and the component is square. Catch my drift?

      In a mobile device, every tiny bit of space counts, hence having built-in bluetooth makes DAVE more competitive.
      • "do you realize bluetooth is just one option, the devices implementing DAVE can also provide USB transfer" "I suppose the only reason for bluetooth inside is because they saw some empty space in the drive left underutilized"

        You've missed out on the main value of BlueTooth, which is universality. All high-end phones provide bluetooth, so they could work with DAVE devices by adding software. According to TFA that means Java, BREW (ick), Symbian, Windows Mobile, and (soon) Palm, which covers the vast majority

    • not great for backing up your pr0n to something you can leave hidden under the mattress
      Kids today! Back in my day, pr0n wasn't something you backed up, you just hid it directly under the mattress. Then hoped Mom didn't want to wash the sheets...

    • 54 Mb/s ought to be enough for anyone's pr0n.

      I don't think that's the point, though. Who's going to transfer 10GB to or from their phone, in one go? It's just for a file archive you can access or stream from, music/video or docs or GPS maps etc. The bulk filling or backup would be done via USB2 to a PC, most likely.

      Actually, it also supports USB On-The-Go, which will be handy for some devices like digital cameras and phones like the HTC Universal. The BluOnyx [bluonyx.com] is a similar device, but has even less detai

      • is *how* this'll be used. I've never seen a handset that'll connect to a network share over bluetooth, although I could have missed it. How are you going to receive files from it?
        • According to the PR, pairing with the device pushes a java applet to the phone that allows you to browse the drive's filesystem, do file management, presumably push or stream files to the phone etc. Wifi connections may be more advanced, who knows.
    • More moving parts that can break in my mobile phone.
  • Software to hook the drives up to cellphones has already been produced for J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, Symbian and XCCC.
    Let me guess that Verizon is going to not carry this, or they're going to make a pure revenue generator of this - by controlling how it talks to the disk.

    The platform is open source...
    Given how that's currently played out with phones, I'll not hold my breath on it being such.


    Seagate won't, however, be making consumer drives itself: Dave is for telcos and handset OEMs for sale under their o

  • iPod is the natural medium for this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chairboy (88841) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @10:28PM (#17823530) Homepage
    With iPhone sales potentially eating into the high-end iPod market, I think it's probably safe to assume that future HD based iPods will come with Bluetooth. Not for synchronizing, but to be remote storage devices for things like the iPhone.

    It's a clever way for Apple to keep selling the big iPods, and opens up other possibilities. Last year I speculated here about cell phones serving as 'cockpit voice recorders' for life, the main obstacle being storage and battery life. With something like this, one down, one to go.

  • So how is this different from the Agere BluOnyx [bluonyx.com], announced 6 weeks ago? Looks remarkably similar to me.

    Oh right. "DAVE Technology" is designed to hook seamlessly into the geek propensity for 2001 jokes. "BluOnyx" is clearly a rushed-to-market moniker which misses its target market completely.

    • If it is much more than a phone, then you want a reasonable screen etc. Once you start messing with hard drives, the whole usage scenario changes and you need to start thinking of charging the puppy every night.
    • Good for you. Nokia 1100 [nokiausa.com] maybe?

      I want a computer that fits in my pocket, and I don't want to be carrying a phone as well.
    • Queue thousands of "640k is enough for anyone" and "I remember when my IBM XT had a 10 MEGABYTE hard disk" rejoinders.... :-)
      Seriously though, a mobile with 20Gb of storage - potentially the phone can continue its trend to replace every pocket-based device under the sun. Obviously it would replace the ubiquitous USB stick, but could then compete as an integrated iPod style device, have enough storage to be a graphical GPS/google earth (yum), digital camera, etc. I already run a truecrypt'ed 1Gb usb stick

      • Re:worries (Score:4, Funny)

        by Michael Woodhams (112247) on Tuesday January 30 2007, @11:10PM (#17823926) Journal
        Queue thousands of "640k is enough for anyone" and "I remember when my IBM XT had a 10 MEGABYTE hard disk" rejoinders.... :-)

        This is great! I've long been feeling oppressed by the fact that I can only fit the telephone directory of a single major city into my cell phone contacts list. Now I'll finally be able to scroll through whole country's telephone directories on a 50mm square display!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by timmarhy (659436)
      if you can't imagine using 20 gigs with a mobile device, then you simply lack imagination.

      • Agreed. Some games weigh in at 700meg+, sat nav maps for the UK alone are around 200meg. I've got another gig of music on my 2gb SD card and no video. Give me 20 gig and I'll fill it in a month easily.

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