SUNNYVALE, Calif.-Memory card company SanDisk Corp. announced its new T-Flash removable storage format, a technology the company said will even further expand the capabilities of advanced mobile phones. And as evidence of its claim, the company announced Motorola Inc. is using the T-Flash technology in its two recently announced W-CDMA handsets.
SanDisk said its new T-Flash memory card is half the size of a standard Subscriber Identity Module card, or about the size of a fingernail. The card can hold between 32MB to 128MB of memory. SanDisk said the card can be built directly into a mobile phone, or be inserted and removed through a card slot.
“Prior to T-Flash, mobile phone manufacturers have been using embedded flash memory, which is easy to implement but cannot be flexibly upgraded once soldered onto the motherboard during the manufacturing of the cell phone,” said Bo Ericsson, SanDisk’s vice president of OEM marketing. “With T-Flash, the handset manufacturer can now design the smallest amount of embedded flash memory required for the basic operation of the cell phone, and let the customer decide how much additional flash memory is desired for storage of personal content. Since the T-Flash memory is readily transportable, the consumer is inclined to upgrade his handset more frequently. With the new T-Flash form factor, we believe mobile phone designers will have a much easier time and greater freedom in fitting flash storage into their handset designs.”
SanDisk said mobile phone users will be able to store MP3 files, video games, personal information, Multimedia Message Service messages and other information on the card, and will be able to remove it from the phone.
Memory has become one of the most important issues in the mobile phone industry as users download more and more applications to advanced devices. One of the recent innovations in the market is removable storage cards.
