32GB microSD cards announced by Samsung

Right now, the largest microSD card you can buy is 16GB. That's quite a bit of storage space!

Well, Samsung has announced the development of 32GB microSD cards and you can expect to see them fairly soon. It's hard to know how much these will cost.

What's the limit on a microSD card? How "big" will these tiny memory cards get? Will we see these tiny flash cards holding over 100GB? How about 500GB?  1TB?

Read more at Engadget.

How much storage do you need on your smartphone?

Right now, some smartphones like the Apple iPhone 3GS are capable of 32GB of storage. It won't be long before we see iPhones that have 64GB of space. How much do we really need?

At one time, I remember experiencing tremendous frustration because my medical apps (which are typically quite large) would not fit on my smartphone. I'd run out of internal memory (RAM) and I didn't always have the option to install an app on a memory card. Now, today's smartphones are coming with much more internal memory, but some obviously have much more than others. Even if you choose to store an entire medical encyclopedia (like UpToDate) on your smartphone, you won't be using much more beyond 1 or 2 GB.

Now that we have smartphones that have 32GB of storage space, you can easily store MP3 files, videos, and many other forms of multimedia on your device. It's great, isn't it? When's the last time you got an "out of memory" alert on your smartphone?

It's a shame that Windows Mobile smartphones still don't have much internal memory. My current HTC Touch Pro2 has 512MB of Flash Memory and 288MB of RAM. I find that it really confuses many people when you describe memory using those terms. The HTC Imagio has similar specs. The Samsung Omnia II has 512 Flash/208 RAM (+ 8GB of internal user memory), so that's a little bit better.

What if we look at Android? The Motorola Droid has 512MB of ROM and 256MB of RAM. The HTC Droid Eris has ROM: 512MB, RAM: 288MB DDR. It comes with an 8GB microSD card and it supports up to 16GB.

What about BlackBerry? Well, the BlackBerry Storm2 9550 has 256MB Flash Memory, 256MB RAM, 2GB On–board memory. That's an improvement over the original Storm 9530, but it's still nowhere near Apple's iPhone.

So when will other smartphone manufacturers catch up with Apple when it comes to internal storage space?

To BlackBerry Storm 2 or not to Storm 2

There are too many to's (2's) in the title, right?
"To BlackBerry Storm 2 or not to Storm 2." That's the question.

I've been following the Storm 2 for several months and I'm quite excited about this device, but I'm also cautiously optimistic.

• Will the Storm 2 have enough internal RAM for medical apps? (2 GB of storage, but how much RAM for apps?) The original Storm only had 128 MB of RAM, even though it had 1 GB of storage.
  
• Will it be capable of MiFi (Wi-Fi router) capabilities?
• How will the new SurePress touch screen compare to the original SurePress?

In my mind, the original BlackBerry Storm is an excellent smartphone, but it's not very suitable for health care professionals who wish to run many medical apps because of its limited internal RAM. Will the Storm 2 be a great medical smartphone? Many physicians already use a BlackBerry. Will they switch to a touch-screen device and abandon the hardware QWERTY keyboard?

Smartphone capabilities in 5 years

I'm not a fortune teller, but I can tell you fairly confidently that smartphones will have some incredible capabilities in 5 years. Here are my predictions:

• Much larger internal storage capacity that exceeds current Flash memory cards. I think we'll see many smartphones that have over 100 GB of storage space. They will rival current laptops in terms of storage.
  
• Much faster processors that are fuel-efficient. (battery fuel). Current smartphones are still running in the MHz range. We'll see smartphones that rival current notebook processor speeds in the GHz range.
• WiMax instead of Wi-Fi. Forget coffeshop hotspots. The entire city will be a hotspot.
  
• Much faster data connections. 3G speed will be like 14.4 K modem speeds compared to modern broadband speeds.
  
• Large touch screens. All of them will have touch screens. Smartphones that lack a touch screens will be considered "antiques."
• Built-in GPS. They will all have internal GPS chips. This is becoming quite standard right now, but in 5 years, we'll see this as the norm.
• Superior voice command and voice recognition. Who needs a keyboard if you can "say it?"
  

In essence, future smartphones will have the capabilities of current laptops (not the fastest laptop, but an "average" laptop). They won't have spinning hard drives, but they will be much more capable of multimedia and high-speed data connections. Just follow the history of the Apple iPod to see changes in Flash storage space, processor speed, battery life, and more. I believe Apple will continue to set the trend that others will follow. Samsung, HTC, RIM, Sony, Motorola, Palm, Nokia, and all the others will follow Apple's lead.

Next iPhone

Details of the next Apple iPhone are starting to appear everywhere. Are you excited? Do you need an excuse to upgrade? Blame your dying battery. Since the iPhone doesn't have a battery that's easy to change, you can say that your battery is dying and that it's simply easier to upgrade than to send it to Apple for a new battery. So what exactly are these specs? Faster processor, more RAM, and a better camera. What more were you expecting? Maybe we'll see this version on the Verizon Wireless network.