According to Reuters (http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6691220) Nokia will start using hard disks in their devices next year. Reuters refers to Apple's iPod as the first portable music player to incorporate a hard disk. Which might be a logical comparison seeing as smartphones are used by many as a portable music/video player these days. And as smartphones are becoming more and more capable of handling multimedia content, the demand for storage will surely increase.

Although you can never have enough memory, my first concern regarding these news are the added risk of data loss with the use of hard disks. As well as how it might have a negative impact on battery life.

What do you think about this?

I think it's the future! Imagine a communicator with 40gb already inside!
On the other hand I believe it's bad news for the memory cards manufactors.
Regarding the memory life let's hope they evoluate to keep up with the future smartphones needs.

I would prefer a 40GB memory card. I wonder which development will be done first...

It's easy to confirm this Reuters news. Nokia executives told in the NMC press conference in Monaco (2nd October) that they will use hard drives in future models.

The webcast is still availabe on the NMC 2004 press site:

http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,6771,65825,00.html

Tero