SanDisk ships 1GB SD and delays Wi-Fi SD solutions
This week SanDisk ships its first 1GB Secure Digital (SD) cards made using the stack packaging developed together with Japanese Sharp. The package enabled SanDisk to double card capacity at the same physical dimensions and manufacture technology.
According to company estimations, this packaging technology can be used in other Flash media, CompactFlash and Memory Stick, in particular. The price of 1GB SD SanDisk should make about $500. 1GB should be enough for 1000 digital photos / 30 hours of music / 5 hours of MPEG-4 video (these might naturally change depending on compression, etc.)
Just for your info, here are Secure Digital card specs:
- SD/SPI interface
- 2.7-3.6V voltage
- 250 µA standby power, 50mA read, 75mA write
- Up to 1000g operating/non-operating shocks
- over 1 million hours MTBF
- <1 unrecoverable error for 1014 bits read
- 32±0.1mm length
- 24±0.08mm width
- 2.1±0.1mm thickness
- 1.5g weight
So, the most of you impatient owners of SD-supporting devices might obtain these novelties in the nearest future. But those Palm owners awaiting for Wi-Fi SD cards will be disappointed as, according to various sources, including Brighthand, the company delayed the release dates again, and the driver for Palm OS 5 is to be issued in Q2 only.
Initially these solutions were introduced more than a year ago, and the Pocket PC variant was released last Summer. In December SanDisk reasoned the delay by discrepancies between it and PalmSource related to intellectual property rights. If you remember, PalmSource was at that time parting from the parental Palm Inc.
Besides, SanDisk warned customers that as Wi-Fi support wasn´t a part of the original develoment requirements, most Palm OS-based PDAs won´t work with Wi-Fi SD media not being able to provide enough power for such "hybrids". Still there´s hope: SyChip, the developer of Wi-Fi SD for SanDisk, announced a new model with lower energy consumption. Maybe now these cards will have higher capacity?
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