32 GB SDHC cards to be released January '08- 8GB micro SDHC on the horizon?

[pseudofinn]

Intomobile.com

32 GB SDHC memory card announced; Available in January

Seems that Toshiba will have the 32 GB SDHC cards ready for retail sale in January. Pretty exciting. I'd imagine it will only be a short time after that we'll see 16 and 32 GB micro SD cards.

Go check out intomobile.com's bit on the story. They've got a picture of the cards next to an 8GB micro SDHC card. I think it can't be too long before we see these things.

I'm excited.

Oh- the 32GB card is gonna run about the price of your N95 when it comes out in January. About $695 the story says. Three hundred something for the 16 gig. Yikes.

[gadgetman]

LOL, but it'll sure piss off the iMoan, erm i mean iphone brigade!

[pseudofinn]

Nothing can piss them off. They're oblivious to present day technology.

It might piss off the 8GB N95ers though...

[Sp00k]

Well, I was undecided about the 4GB, wondering whether to hang on for an 8... Finally got me a 4 and then saw the price drop in the next few days... Typical!

I think I'll be staying with 4GB for a good while though, I can get pretty much all I need on it, Video, Audio, backups of installation files and storage used by various programs... ALL my programs are installed to the phone, not the card and I've still got room for plenty more on the phone.. And about half a gig spare on the card for extra pics, vids, etc.

Plus I've no intention of paying premium prices for the bigger cards... I remember buying a 128MB Compact flash for my camera from Amazon.com, had to get a friend of a friend in the States to purchase it and send it over, Amazon.com wouldn't export it. Their price was 160 USD, Amazon UK price was 160 UKP... about twice the price!

Look at the cost now of a 128 MB CF... peanuts!... Sickener or what!

[dayene]

i posted this already somewhere.

[pseudofinn]

Sorry- I must have overlooked it. Just saw the post.

[DaveW]

Originally Posted by dayene

i posted this already somewhere.

That is becasue this is your post.

If you look carefully, pseudofinn's post at the top is really your post. He edited it by removing your name and inserting his.

Seriously, I do not believe we will see 32 gig micro sd for quite a while. The cards you are talking about are much larger. An 8 gig micro makes a 32 gig larger card possible. Size does matter in this case.

[pseudofinn]

I'm sure it will be a while, but it's in the works. The big thing for me is the possibility of seeing the 8GB micro soon.

[NZtechfreak]

I think the 8GB cards will be around by Christmas, and the development will probably hasten from there towards the 16GB cards.

They better be around by Christmas anyway, since one of those bad boys is meant to replace my current 4GB card as a Christmas present!

[Tizbad2k]

I think the issue is not whether or not they need to be developed, I believe they already exist or can easily be made, I think the issue may be cost. The problem as I see it is that the size of microsd is so small there is not much room to play with. They need to be able to fit in a memory controller and the actual nand array. I believe most current microsd's are manufactured using a 63nm process (generally determines geographical area of a given amount of memory), so when you go from 4gb to 8gb you need double the size for the array, and 32gb would be 8 times the size of the 4gb. Manufacturing cost depends heavily on the amount of area taken up by the design. So when they do become available I expect the cost to be very high, and remain this way until they start using a different process or can find cheaper manufacturers (there are not many in the world, probably less than 10).

Either way Im sure they will be commercially available in the next 6 months or so, but will likely be very expensive.