DailyTech - Seagate 12GB Cell Phone Drive

Submit News

Hardware Seagate 12GB Cell Phone Drive
Kristopher Kubicki (Blog) - February 13, 2006 5:10 PM

E-mail

del.icio.us

15 comment(s) - last by thachamp05.. on Feb 15 at 11:37 PM

Seagate ST1.3 12GB 1" hard drive

12GB in a 40x30x5 millimeter housing. What will they think of next?

Earlier today, Seagate announced its 12GB 1-inch hard drive, the ST1.3. The miniature drive is one of the first commercially announced drives to use perpendicular recording, and only the second drive to be manufactured of this form factor. Furthermore, the ST1.3 uses slightly more efficient power management than the ST1, giving an additional 30% decrease in overall power draw.

The ST1, announced earlier this year, was an 8GB version of the ST1.3 designed specifically to replace CompactFlash cards. Seagate expects the ST1 and the ST1.3 to replace NAND based media in cameras and phones.

Seagate's ST1.3 will ship to manufacturers with or without a drop sensor. With the drop sensor, the drive heads will seize up to survive a 2000G shock -- this is the equivalent of dropping the drive 1.5 meters onto concrete. The NAND media that Seagate expects to dethrone can withstand physical impacts in excess of 10000Gs, but they also do not contain any moving parts.

Unfortunately, as exciting as the ST1.3 is, Seagate estimates that they will not start shipping drives to manufacturers until Q3'06. The price of the drive was not disclosed.

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Photo captions

By bhigh on 2/13/2006 8:27:55 PM , Rating: 2

So what's the second drive in the photo? Is it a competitor's product, or another Seagate?

RE: Photo captions

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 2/13/2006 8:28:30 PM , Rating: 2

It's the same drive with the CompactFlash adaptor.

Kristopher

Parent

RE: Photo captions

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 2/13/2006 8:29:18 PM , Rating: 2

Errr... by same drive I meant the CT1. The CT1.3 is on the left.

Kristopher

Parent

RE: Photo captions

By niknik on 2/14/2006 5:36:44 AM , Rating: 2

An edit option would be good, wouldn't it? :)

(preview just isn't enough for our happy clicking trigger fingers. ehehe)

Parent

RE: Photo captions

By blobguy on 2/14/2006 9:11:01 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
An edit option would be good, wouldn't it? :)
(preview just isn't enough for our happy clicking trigger fingers. ehehe)

I'll second that and while we are at it a working quote feature would also be nice! When I hit the quote button all I get is

quote:
Text

; anybody else?

Parent

Who needs an iPod

By Tegeril on 2/13/2006 7:53:41 PM , Rating: 1

Seriously, iPods are going to go the way of the Dodo.

RE: Who needs an iPod

By Enoch2001 on 2/13/2006 11:16:41 PM , Rating: 4

quote:
Who needs an iPod - By Tegeril on 2/13/2006 7:53:41 PM:
Seriously, iPods are going to go the way of the Dodo.

I seriously doubt that. Just because your cell phone has a 12 GB hard drive doesn't change it into anything nearly as elegant - or as big - as an entry level iPod Video. Do you even own an iPod?

Parent

RE: Who needs an iPod

By GoatMonkey on 2/14/2006 12:14:56 PM , Rating: 2

The main problem I see with that is battery life. Your cell phone is something you want to keep charged in case of emergency calls or something. It would really suck to have wasted your cell phone's battery listening to music all day only to have an emergency call you need to make, but can't because you wasted the battery on music.

The UI and physical controls of the ipod is the second reason. navigating through music on cell phones is a secondary tacked on function for most of them. The iPod is specifically designed to make it easy to get to your music.

Parent

RE: Who needs an iPod

By thachamp05 on 2/15/2006 11:37:54 PM , Rating: 2

Why doesen't apple just start making phones? Motorola, Sony, and the rest of the electronic world can see that this is the future but they lack the design and expertise of apple, especially in the u.i. area. I got an ipod photo last year basically because it was trendy and what not and i really don't use it that much. I listen to music on my sony s710's bluetooth headphone just as often, i can also make calls, and take pix with the 1.3 mp camera. The sound quality isn't near that of my ipod but sometimes it is just a pain to have to carry something else. I'm sure its not as bad for girls(they have a purse), but I can't ever see myself carrying around a phone, a camera, and an mp3 player in my pockets. Right now i only take my ipod with me to the gym because i have no need for a phone. Mobile technology is getting so high tech right now, 1.3mp camera phones are going mainstream(new razr) and cutting edge phones are up to 2.0 megapixels(sony k750i). I think a phone should stick with flash memory because these new small hard drives will fail too easily. If they can fit 4gb flash memory in the nano they can easily get 12gb+ in a package the size of the ipod video. At the rate apple is going they could charge $1k+ for a phone like this and maybe start to make up for all the years they have lagged behind in the pc market.

Parent

microHDD !!

By Xajel on 2/14/2006 5:28:59 AM , Rating: 2

how big will be the smallest phone that uses this mHDD ??

RE: microHDD !!

By xAnder from Russia on 2/15/2006 3:00:08 AM , Rating: 2

i think not bigger, than today's offerings. 5x3 cm is small enough

Parent

RE: microHDD !!

By xAnder from Russia on 2/15/2006 3:00:44 AM , Rating: 2

sorry, 4x3

Parent

The perfect combination

By electriple9 on 2/15/2006 10:13:54 AM , Rating: 2

This will make me very amazed. Seeing I am crazy for music, and when I put on by music, I cannot hear anything not evena cellphone. Seeing all of these amazing flipphone mp3, camera phones. I would love to see an IPOD like mp3 cellphone, that support video, and music, with really good sound quality, high quality camera, and with this huge hard drive, so when anyone calls me, and I am enjoy my music (the music will pause and let me talk, then resume) This as allready been done. But I still cannot find the perfect mp3 phone, with video and mp3, IPOD + CELL PHONE in one thing. The only downsite is the price, and many people may disagree with my idea.

RE: The perfect combination

By y2chuck on 2/15/2006 12:33:26 PM , Rating: 2

get a PDA, my Audiovox does all that....except right now it's limited to a 2 gig SD card.

Parent

Hmmm.

By drinkmorejava on 2/13/2006 7:42:34 PM , Rating: 2

I guess there won't be any throwing of these phones against a wall. I do tend to drop my phone a bit more than I want to though. Without a drop sensor I'm sure it'd be dead by now.