Today one of these things pop through my door. At the time of writing it's the first ever 6Gb MicrosSD card and it's available exclusively from our mates at mobymemory.com for around £35.
6Gb. Just think! It was only a few years ago that 6Gb hard drives were considered huge and far more space than anyone could ever need.
Provided you have a Windows Mobile that supports it (HTC Touch, HTC S710, HTC Touch Dual etc), your phone can instantly become a humungous music / data / video storage device. This is a new super-breed of microSD card and it won't work on absolutely every phone. If you put one of these into a handset designed to use the previous SD specifications (1.0 and 1.1) it'll just say, "no card installed" and will simply ignore it.
I tried it on my T-Mobile Vario II (HTC TyTN I) and it simply smiled at me as it quoted "no card". During our testing we found that this 6GB MicroSD (SDHC) card worked on the HTC Touch, the HTC Touch Dual, the HTC TyTN II (T-Mobile Vario III etc) and the HTC S710 (Orange SPV E650 etc). I'm presuming it'll work on the upcoming S730 and future Windows Mobiles too.
As you can see above we also received some really tiny microSD card readers - these slot into the USB port of your PC and they're USB 2.0 for speedy transfer. They're small enough to carry around on your keyring and secure enough to hold your microSD cards, meaning you can effectively make high-capacity storage pens which are half the size of your normal USB pen drives. More on these later.
In the main Sandisk 6Gb SDHC MicroSD pack you'll not only get the card, but also an SD card reader. This, when you use the microSD to SD adaptor, lets you read the card on your PC..
Just slot the microSD card into the SD-card adaptor, then put the SD card adaptor into the reader. You even get a little plastic cover which, when it's not protecting the USB port from being bashed around, protects your card from damage too..
Now, because I need to make absolutely sure that the microSD card works on the devices I've chosen, I've inserted it into the HTC Touch, HTC Touch Dual and HTC S710 to be sure that it works. As you'll see it reports around 5.8Gb due to the formatting of the card...
Above is the result of the "Memory" application in the HTC Touch. Below is how much memory is shown as available on the HTC S710 (Orange SPV E650)..
So, if you've got a HTC Touch, get yourself one of these and you'll be getting (almost) the same storage space as an iPhone but you'll be paying a heck of a lot less. Let's compare - currently an 8Gb iPhone is selling for £269 here in the UK and you're trapped into an 18 month contract with o2. Compare this to a HTC Touch, selling for around £257.99 with NO contract. Stick this card in (for just over £36) and sure, you'll spend a little more up-front, but you won't be trapped into a huge contract and you can still listen to your favourite music without the iTunes software taking over your entire computer ;)
Now we'll move onto the tiny microSD card readers. These come in packs of four...
As you can see they'll clip onto your keyring. The cord which attaches to the devices actually has three different uses - it attaches to your keyring, slides the USB port / card reader section out and also locks it back in again. Have a look at the shot below - you can see how the USB plugs are actually recessed to make the readers even smaller - simply pull the cord to slide them out and you can plonk it into your machine..
Here it is without the wrapping..
When you pull the cord forward the main reader unit slides out of the casing. This leaves you with a slot at the top to put your microSD card into.
Below you should be able to see the reader with the spanky new microSD card in. This is the easy bit because I found that getting the card out again was a little tricky - I eneded up using my teeth :)
It's then simply a matter of inserting the reader into your laptop, PC, digital photo frame or MP3 player for instant access to your files. Here you can see just how small the thing is - it's 2.5cm long without the cover and 3.2cm with the cover. Plus you'll never lose the cover because it's attached to the cord too..
If you're interested in either of these products (don't forget that you get the microSD to SD converter AND the SD card adaptor when you buy the 6Gb SDHC microSD card), click on for more...
Links -
Sandisk 6Gb SDHC MicroSD (Currently £36.49)
Tiny MicroSD USB 2.0 Readers (Currently £4.99)
mobymemory.com
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