Seagate and Cornice both launched new compact hard drives on Monday that offer contrasting approaches to storage on mobile phones of the future.
Seagate offered the device with the highest capacity, while Cornice has opted for a trade-off between capacity and compactness. Both companies launched their products at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona.
The new member of Seagate's CE family, the ST1.3 Series, boasts a 12GB capacity in a one-inch format that is smaller than previous CE drives. According to the company, it has a 23 percent smaller footprint and consumes 30 percent less power than previous models in the range.
It also offers a new optional drop sensor for increased robustness, the company said in a statement, and is the first one-inch drive to use Seagate's perpendicular storage technology.
"Portable, on-demand video is driving the next wave of revenue opportunity for the mobile phone and entertainment communities. As consumer adoption drives the demand for the availability of video content anytime and anywhere, the need for tiny, high-capacity hard drives becomes more apparent," said Brodie Keast, Seagate's general manager of consumer electronics.
Although, it is lagging behind Seagate in capacity, Cornice is claiming the laurels in compactness with 8GB and 10GB versions of its Dragon Series drives, which are smaller than the Seagate CE drives.
Samsung is a major partner of Cornice and has used a 3GB Dragon Series drive in its i300 Mobile Smartphone, which will be on view at 3GSM.
Cornice's storage is "a natural fit for the mobile phone market", said Samsung, as it offers "both the thinnest available storage solution, which is important for compact-sized mobile phones, and the extreme durability of Crash Guard technology, crucial to the consumer."
