Coming soon? - The 2 terabyte, Wi Fi access point smartphone

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 13 January 2009 02:15

Business IT - Technology

Technology developments unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas herald the possibility of smartphones with up to two terabytes of SD memory and that are able to act as a WiFi access point.

The SD Association, the body representing manufacturers of SD memory cards, announced SDXC, its next-generation (eXtended Capacity) memory card specification, providing for up to 2 terabytes storage capacity and SD interface read/write speeds up to 104 megabytes per second this year, with a road map to 300 megabytes per second.

At its maximum 2TB capacity, an SDXC memory card will store an estimated 100 HD movies, 480 hours of HD recording or 136,000 fine-mode photos. Specifications for the open standard will be released in the first quarter of 2009 and the first SDXC cards manufactured are likely to provide 64GB storage, doubling the 32GB maximum in SDHC memory cards. The association says that SDHC, Embedded SD and SDIO specifications will also benefit from the new SD interface speeds.

The SDXC specification uses Microsoft's exFAT file system to support its large capacity and interoperability in a broad range of PCs, consumer electronics and mobile phones. According to the Association, the exFAT system was designed for increased compatibility with flash media, from portability of data to interoperability with multiple platforms and devices on removable media.

Also at CES, wireless chip developer Atheros demonstrated WLAN technology that will allow client devices such as PCs, handsets, cameras, MP3 players, wireless printers and set-top boxes to connect directly to other each other without the use of a WiFi access point.

It added: "This technology also provides smartphones with soft [WiFi access point] capability, which supports multiple clients...and will become an industry standard within the next year.

Atheros also demonstrated the forthcoming, high-speed Bluetooth technology, which will significantly expand personal networking applications supported by Bluetooth with its Wi-Fi-enabled speed, capacity, and range.