Mass Storage For Phones 107
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..."
Interesting Question (Score:5, Interesting)
why not put it in the phone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Seems cool but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Gagh. Honestly, the overall sleaziness of U.S. carriers is enough to make you want to throw up.
Re:why not put it in the phone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Interesting Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Isn't bluetooth sloooooow? (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
What really IS the size, anyway? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Credit-card sized" is an abused term these days. And the Seagate press release [seagate.com] is self-contradictory:
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.
Re:Interesting Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Interesting Question (Score:2, Interesting)
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 little toy.