Samsung Announces All In One High Capacity Memory Chip
Samsung today announced that it has developed a multi function chip for cell phones that combines the operating and storage memory that is used by many phones with 4GB of additional memory for storing multimedia. Phones with expansive built in memory have been limited in recent years, with most phones using a separate expansion slot that allows users to add additional memory. The new chip uses the standardized eMMC interface to address problems faced by manufacturers when attempting to build support for different types of flash memory into the same device. The new chip may allow manufacturers to save precious space in cellular phones where space is at a premium.
As more mobile phones are expected to do double duty as digital entertainment devices the ability to store music and larger video files is an important feature. Most phones use expansion slots that can use one of several different formats. The smallest of these, Micro SD, is currently only available to consumers with a maximum capacity of 2GB, although Samsung earlier this month announced that they will be making available an 8GB Micro SD card.. Phones such as Apple's upcoming iPhone or Sony Ericsson's W950 are skipping the expansion slot to provide users with a large amounts of built in memory. As the price of flash memory drops and consumers expect to be able to carry a large number of multimedia files on their devices we expect this trend to accelerate.
