Massive memory: The must have feature of 2009?

Gone are the days when 6MB of on board memory and a 32MB memory card would suffice (reminiscing about my trusty oldNokia 6230). Now it seems that for any phone to be taken seriously it needs to pack a punch in the memory department, be it on board or expandable. Samsung tend to lead the pack with the i8510 and Omnia both packing 8GB internal memory and the option to expand it further. But the Koreans don’t have it all their own way; Nokia have the N96 with 16GB plus expansion, theApple iPhone 3G comes in 8GB and 16GB flavours and the HTC Touch HD, not to be outdone, comes bundled with an 8GB memory card. And this looks set to become the norm for future releases; the phone that everyone has their eyes on, the Nokia N97, is set to up the ante even further with 32GB of internal memory and a MicroSD memory card slot.

It seems that memory is the new feature that manufacturers want to flaunt in the face of their competitors. But what has brought on the demand for all this storage capacity? Do we really need it? Well firstly, phones have changed quite a lot since the days of old when the 6230 was king. Increasing the Megapixel count incamera phones increases the file size of captured images and they need to be saved somewhere. Giving a phone lightening quick HSDPA mobile Broadband is pointless if you don’t have the space for all those high speed downloads. And a phone with an MP3 player is never going to trouble a stand alone music player unless it’s packing Gigs of memory. When phones are announced with ridiculously high amounts of internal memory it is easy to dismiss it as the manufacturers engaging in a bit of oneupmanship. But when you consider what mobile phones are capable of, you’ll see why. Personally i run a Nokia N82 (bundled with a 2GB card) and have a separate MP3 player for music on the go. Come my next upgrade though, the MP3 player may find itself banished to a dusty shelf in favour of one of the new mass memory mobile phones that are on the horizon!