Nokia Working with Competition on Memory Card Standard
If you own a phone, camera, and MP3 player, chances are you have several types of memory cards, and none are interchangeable. It all started with the relatively ubiquitous CompactFlash format (pictured above) back in 1994. But since then, dozens of companies have developed dozens of different types of cards like MMC, SmartMedia, SD, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card, and the list goes on.
Nokia is working on introducing yet another standard, a news byte that would be worthy of a groan if not for one crucial bit of information: the company is actually working with its competitors to ensure this new type of card is a proper standard.
The new card format will be called Universal Flash Storage, or UFS, and is being developed in partnership with other electronics companies like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and Texas Instruments. At this point details are scarce other than the standard promises higher speed than current cards along with greater reliability. While that sounds nice, we're just looking forward to ditching our collection of 8-in-1 card readers. Unfortunately, we won't be able to do that until 2009 or so, since that's when the various companies are expected to finalize this plan.
From BetaNews
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bruce Bennett @ Jan 8th 2008 9:18AM
Great, just what the world needs. ANOTHER memory card standard. Where were the visionaries from Nokia when all of the other memory card formats were being created? Things must be slow in the mobile phone market.