Nokia's still-unavailable N91 and Sony Ericsson's recent W950i have a new smartphone competitor in the WinMob-powered Samsung i310, just announced, with (wait for it) a 8GB hard disk. The world's gone mad....
Read on in the full article.
Battle of the music smartphones
The two main flaws here are Win Mob (btw, my c500 is looking for a new home where it won't be mistreated) & Hard disk. Believe me, there is nothing quite like a hard disk for hammering battery life. I've used iPod Nano & Video and even when you take the smaller screen into account, the battery life is vastly improved in the Nano. I've even experienced it from a PDA context as well. A few years ago, I used to own an iPaq 3870 (dodges thrown objects) with an expansion pack. The expansion pack had an additional battery and a CF slot, in which lived an IBM Microdrive. I was eternally paranoid about breaking it and as with my iPod Video, battery life took a pounding.
In short, if people really want mobile music to take off, a swap to Flash memory isn't just a good idea, it's essential, especially as faster processors and higher resolution displays come on in.
Couldn't agree more with Masamune. I don't see why there is this obsession with putting mini hard drives in phones and small MP3 players. There is no reason why you can't have 6GB of flash in a device. I can't see anyone choosing a fragile 8GB device with crap battery life over a 6GB solid state device with good battery life. That 2GB just isn't worth it. So where does the advantage come from apart from the fact that Samsung manufacture these hard drives AND have agreed to sell most of their flash to Apple until 2009?
As far as I'm concerned, if it's less than 20GB, it should be flash. It's only around that capacity that the extra fragility and power requirements become acceptable prices to pay.