Future Treo Memory Card Options
Late yesterday afternoon rumours began circulating that Hitachi’s next 6GB Microdrives would be built in a ‘new generation’ of Palm devices. Of course this ‘new generation’ is likely going to be an updated LifeDrive and not our Treo though…
There have been numerous discussions here and elsewhere about what our future Treo could/should look like but at present it would seem unlikely that it would incorporate a microdrive of any size since the battery drain is significant and would make our Treo nearly unusable.
However, someone I met with recently offered what I thought was a nearly perfect alternative to expanding the memory storage on our Treo. Namely, palmOne could simply add a miniSD card slot under the battery and Treonauts could then choose to add up to 1GB of miniSD storage here and also up to 2GB via the standard SD slot. This would in effect provide us with a dual SD card slot with the standard one at the top for a full size SD and one for example under the battery – it’s so obvious I kicked myself for not having thought about it before…
miniSD was developed specifically for mobile phones and as you can see from the image on the right it is significantly smaller (and also thinner) than a normal SD card.
SanDisk state that: “The miniSD memory card offers all of the benefits of a standard SD card, but in a much smaller size. In fact, it is over 60% smaller than a full-sized SD card.”
The fact is that with a 1GB miniSD card retailing for $99 and a 64MB one for about $20 I can’t think of a more straightforward way to upgrade the memory on our Treo in such a practical way.
So, by the end of this year I would like to see our next generation Treo with 64/128MB of Flash memory, a miniSD card slot somewhere on the device and also our standard SD card slot – now that would really make me happy.
The increased Flash memory would allow me to install and use all of my applications directly from the Treo, the 1GB miniSD card I would like to use as a portable drive and the many SD cards that I have would accomodate even more of my music, movies, business documents and other files.
Future palmOne devices will include 6GB hard disk [CanalPDA]
Treonauts are building the future…
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Tracked on Mar 20, 2006 3:36:48 AM
Comments
Except that you never put data near magnetic fields. Pop off the back of your Treo and look under the battery. Between the battery and the components of the Treo itself is a shielded piece of plastic (shielded as in a piece of plastic with a metallic finish/coating one side). Putting the miniSD directly under the battery, would likely cause some magnetic interference between the battery and miniSD. As a comparison, there is a Motorola worldphone offered by Verizon that is both CDMA and GSM. The install the SIM, you do have to remove the battery, however only to install the SIM as it slides upwards into its slot. In the end, the SIM is not directly near the battery and thus interference is a non-issue (or at least within acceptable ranges).
It is a great idea, though, especially since miniSD is likely to be up to 2GB around the same time as can actually get our hands on 4GB regular SD cards.
A.Davis - the 'under battery' idea is based on other cellphone designs. I guess that if they've been able to figure out how to make it work then palmOne shouldn't have any trouble either...
Glad you like the overall concept though! ;-)
Cheers, A.
Whilst we're at it, how about doing what all other mobile phones do, and put the SIM card (for GSM phones) under the battery too. That would be one less bit of clutter on the exterior of the phone.
Calroth - great idea. One could then use the current space occupied by the SIM card for the miniSD - a much better option.
Cheers, A.
Pretec have a 12Gb CF Card. http://www.pretec.com/product/SSD/CF_Commercial/Cheetah80X.htm
Leaves Hitachi's 6Gb Microdrive for dead. Lower power consumption, more reliable (no moving parts) with transfer rate of 12/10Mbs. I wouldn't mind the Treo 650 being a little thicker to accomodate the CF Card. :) Maybe a CF WiFi card will work too?
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