Bigger, faster, more

It won't be long before we have PDAs/smartphones with flash drives of 100GB capacity, and download speeds of 1GBps. A couple of interesting news items: Larger storage in smaller form factors Samsung announces 16GB flash drives, expanding to 100GB in a couple of years, while keeping a 2.5in form factor. This would be an ideal drop-in replacement for most notebook hard drives. Flash is nonvolatile, and has no moving parts. This means that portable devices such as PDAs and notebooks can have longer battery life and be made more rugged. Faster wireless NTT DoCoMo successfully tested 1Gbps in outdoor environment, in 4G trials. The 4G service is not expected to be deployed until 2010, but an interim "Super 3G" service will have 100Mbps downlink/50Mbps uplink within 3 years. If you compare that to today, most 3G systems don't even reach 384kbps, and coverage is spotty at best. [via Infoworld]