Toshiba Announces 32 & 16 GB SD Cards

Back in May we reported on Samsung’s intentions to release an 8gb microSDHC card at some point in the future. Now Toshiba has stepped up to the plate with an announcement of not only their own version of an 8GB microSDHC card but fullsize SDHC cards in both 16GB and 32GB capacities. Toshiba even goes as far as proving actual estimated prices and availability for release in the Japanese market.

Toshiba are estimating the 16GB SDHC cards to arrive in October for ¥40,000 or the US Dollar equivalent of $350. The capacious 32GB SDHC cards will reportedly be available in January for twice that amount. No word as yet on backward device compatibility or if the Palm OS Garnet file system will even be able to recognize such high-capacity cards. The 8GB SDHC cards currently on the market are recognized as two separate 4GB volumes by the Palm OS.

32 GB SD CardAt this time, Palm officially supports fullsize SDHC expansion cards up to 4GB in the Sprint and Verizon versions of the Treo 700p with ROM version 1.10. Unofficially, SDHC cards work on all versions of the Treo 680 and some adventurous types have even hacked their Treo 650s to read SDHC cards. It is also rumored that Palm’s upcoming Foleo sub-notebook also has a fullsize SD slot that is SDHC compatible.

The Treo 755p and 750 both use miniSD cards and are confirmed to work with cards up to 4GB in capacity. The recently-announced Palm Centro smartphone is expected to be Palm’s first Palm OS-based device to utilize the tiny thumbnail-sized microSD (aka TransFlash) format. Previously, the only Palm OS device utilizing the format was last year’s seldom-seen Garmin iQue 3000. The microSD format is electrically compatible with miniSD and fullsize SD slots via adapter cards.

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$350 for 16gb card?

philpalm @ 8/22/2007 7:21:56 PM # Q
Considering that a 4gb card runs around $100 then maybe it might be worth it. Basically when you set up a SD card overuse of one area will destroy the memory so a larger memory card may "last" longer.

Basically it looks like Palm will prefer to update its Treo line but not its handheld. Maybe when OSII comes out we might see handheld PDAs from Palm able to use these Higher capacity memory cards.

RE: $350 for 16gb card?
hkklife @ 8/22/2007 7:30:06 PM # Q
Well, a 4GB no-name SDHC card is about $40ish nowadays online, with Class 6 8GB cards running $70-$80ish at places like Newegg or Mwave.

I'd pay $160-$170 for a fast 16GB card but not more than that, especially with the uncertainty surrounding future Palm devices with SDHC slots and a total lack of things other than cameras with fullsize SDHC support.

I'm really dismayed to see the industry retreating towards mini & microSD as a whole.

SD is PLENTY small for all but the tiniest of dumbphones. A few years we saw the consumer-level devices dump CF in favor of SD & Memory Stick and now the cycle is repeating itself. Why can't manufacturers stick with a single format size and maximize capacity, $/mb & performance?

Sigh...

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

RE: $350 for 16gb card?
twrock @ 8/23/2007 1:22:18 AM # Q
Why can't manufacturers stick with a single format size and maximize capacity, $/mb & performance?

$
(I know you already knew the answer to that!)


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RE: $350 for 16gb card?
joad @ 8/24/2007 2:32:25 AM # Q
Yes, but what's in it for PALM to screw us over by scattering their long-time flash standard to the winds by spec'ing MiniSD and MicroSD? The paltry space savings complicates things to no end, and very few people are stupid enough to pay Palm for their overpriced flash cards with the silly Palm logo on them. Maybe the matured SD slots are much more expensive than the MiniSD slots (because noone else is using them?).

SONY's the poster child for ridiculous flash formats (and they control the proprietary format they use!). Palm was originally smart enough to use SD, they and others built up accessory inventory around this standard, and the format became cheaper and easily available over time because of all the competition. I see no way for Palm to benefit by going with MiniSD and MicroSD because it just confuses things and creates bad will with their customers because hardware bugfixes require tossing out hundreds of dollars in previous interchangeable SD purchases. I can no longer easily upload a shot from my SD-compatible camera via my Treo.

What possible financial benefit can Palm derive from deliberately making their devices LESS usable?



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holy crap!!

zuhmir @ 8/23/2007 9:01:52 AM # Q
32GB is more than i have on my laptop!

RE: holy crap!!
Poopie @ 8/23/2007 2:40:11 PM # Q
Now imagine a teeny tiny raid-5 array of 32gb sd cards for 120gb of fast, fault tolerant, no moving parts storage.

*that* is the kind of hard drive I'd like to have in my laptop

USR Palm Pilot 1000 --> Palm Pilot Professional --> TRG SuperPilot --> Palm IIIc --> Palm V --> Palm M505 --> Palm M515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Treo 600 --> LifeDrive --> iPhone

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SD Card

joad @ 8/24/2007 2:21:50 AM # Q
Dear Palm,

It clearly appears that SD card sizes are the future. When will you be dumping this silly miniSD and MicroSD foray and going with a stable and mature flash format in your devices across the board? Certainly you wouldn't want your customers to repurchase new chargers, cradles, flash cards and cases with every minor hardware change.

4GB SDs have been seen on the street as low as $30AR lately. Palm's attitude seems to aim for the lowest common denominator user, hence doing all they can to make the devices less useful for "power users" and anyone that wants to stretch the boundaries of the Treo beyond "phone with keyboard."

Maybe very few would use the larger SD cards. But unless Palm's getting direct kickbacks from the MiniSD and MicroSD there was no decent reason to divert from many years of using the standard SD format. Palm decided on that over CF, and it has stood the test of time. Now the backward step to MiniSDHC has made the Treo even less useful.

RE: SD Card
Poopie @ 8/24/2007 12:36:46 PM # Q
The problem is that PalmOS can't support a 32gb SD card, so instead of fixing the OS, they'll move to the mini/micro SD card formats where they can "hide" from technological progress, and claim a win with miniaturization instead of having to dig into the core of FrankenGarnet to add support for larger volumes.

I'd be surprised if Palm could even enhance PalmOS these days without creating all sorts of new regression bugs or needing to fix longstanding bugs that would break all sorts of 3rd party software that has been written to work around known bugs.

That's the main reason I want to see Palm move to Linux... so they can remove their PalmOS hardware support shackles and be able to design devices that compete with RIM, Nokia, and Apple

By the way... if someone happened to have a Foleo... Has anyone built a "linux from scratch" for arm5tel? I'd be interested to see Opie or GPE on a Foleo.


USR Palm Pilot 1000 --> Palm Pilot Professional --> TRG SuperPilot --> Palm IIIc --> Palm V --> Palm M505 --> Palm M515 --> Tungsten T|2 --> Treo 600 --> LifeDrive --> iPhone

RE: SD Card
hkklife @ 8/24/2007 3:54:05 PM # Q
Joad;

You of all folks should know EXACTLY why Palm adamantly refuses to embrace higher-capacity storage cards:

#1 Not wanting to spend the $/time to "fix" FrankenGarnet

#2 Palm is in cahoots with the flash memory manufacturers to force silly new formats onto consumers so everyone gets to suck more $ out of consumers

#3 When you have such a static, unchanging stable of products as Palm's Treo line, ANY change is worthy of some marketing hoopla, even if it's the backwards steps in going from SD to miniSD to microSD.

#4 Having 8GB/16GB/32GB in cheap expansion cards would make more customers give video and serious mp3 playing a shot on their Treos, thus increasing the demand for a large-screened Treo with a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. That would require Palm spending more $ on R&D and we know they don't want to do that.

Remember when the 755p launched? Palm said "New! MiniSD expansion card slot!" like it was some huge improvement when it was only the card's positioning on the side of the device under a protective door that was an improvement. The 680 has a fullsize SDHC slot side-mounted so why doesn't the 755p? And I won't believe a rubbish excuse that the marginally bigger battery of the 755p or the CDMA innards took up too much space. Look what Handera did years ago with the HE330 using a small engineering team with a small development budget---large screen, choice of battery power, and CF *AND* SD slots (SD slot supporting up to 4GB I might add!!!)

Palm never officially embraced the unofficial 4gb SD 1.1 cards (only the FAT32-enabled devices work on them). Palm's OS4 devices didn't support SD cards larger than 512MB. Many OS5 devices, including the still-produced E2 don't even support 2GB SD cards!

FrankenGarnet has a volume size limitation of 4GB. The new 8GB SDHC cards, while technically usable on the 700p and 680, are seen by Garnet as two separate 4gb volumes. So you need to either have LESS than 4GB on your card in use or MORE than 4GB.

So the easiest thing for Palm to do is whole-heartedly jump backwards to miniSD and microSD where most cards are 2GB or less and only a handful of 4GB miniSDHC cards are on the market at the moment. This buys Palm another 6-12 months of riding out the last of their Garnet-based devices while waiting for the smaller SD card variants to improve in their storage capacity. I'm still stunned that Palm decided to add the SDHC driver as standard in the 680 and 1.10 ROM 700p. But why haven't they been so kind to WinMob owners? Heck, with the more modern OS and now with official A2DP support, the 700w/wx need high-capacity SDHC more than the 700p does!

Without going OT, I feel that SDHC is the finest flash card format on the market so far. It's fast, a good size (not too big, not too small), and affordable. With sizes up to 32GB already sure thing, I feel it's the best compromise for the next several years out of all of the various flash card formats.

Yet most new printers and PCs heading to market STILL cannot handle SDHC cards. This is totally unacceptable! It's like the industry has absolutely become frozen in stone with only digital camera manufacturers enthusiastically embracing SDHC.

An iPhone with an integrated SDHC slot or a video iPod w/ SDHC would be a killer device (imagine offloading your digicam pics onto your iPod!) but I have a feeling Apple would never do such a sensible maneuver. Heck, even sticking a microSDHC slot on the Nano would make sense. But that would extend the lifespan of the product too long and we all know Apple doesn't want to see that happen...

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

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