SanDisk Made an iPhone Case With Built-In Storage (theverge.com) 48
An anonymous reader writes: SanDisk has made its iXpand Memory Case to alleviate the problem that Apple creates when they release an iPhone in 2016 with only 16GB of on-board storage. The iXpand Memory Case is an iPhone case with flash storage built directly into the case itself that connects/charges via the Lightning port. You won't need a new phone and you won't need to carry around an extra charging dongle, which is the case for many other third-party cases and accessories. Since Apple doesn't make expanding your storage with third-party devices easy, you will need to download/install the companion SanDisk iXpand Memory Case app on your iPhone, which will automatically back-up your camera roll and password-protect your photos and files. If you need some extra juice, you can spend an extra $40 to receive a 1900mAh battery pack that attaches to the case. The iXpand Memory Case is only available with the iPhone 6 and 6s and is available with 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB of extra flash storage for $59, $99, and $129, respectively. Oh, and of course there are varying color options: Red, Grey, Sky and Mint. Maybe your phone battery is running low (God-forbid it is dead) and you just so happen to be nearby a KFC in Delhi or Mumbai, KFC has you covered. They have introduced a meal box that doubles as a smartphone charger.
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until you go to an area with poor coverage then all your cloud storage goes to shit. Also the govt can just grab your info off the cloud apparently
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No, a server is any machine and/or software that serves data. I could run many servers off of a single PC or load balance them across many PCs. They are still servers regardless of the distribution across the underlying hardware.
The term "cloud" is marketing bullshit.
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Quit confusing people with facts. It's a cloud, damn it!
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Ooh. Fifty gigabytes. That will almost hold the contents of my phone. Once. Or the contents of one of my DSLR's flash cards.
Only hipsters think the cloud is a viable means of moving large quantities of content between devices.
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What % of iPhone users would you call 'hipsters'? What % of 'hipsters' are on Android?
Speaking as a Windows Phone user (yes, the elite .7%) I can report that there are no hipsters here, just the foolish who haven't jumped ship yet.
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But nobody moves large quantities of content between devices.
They look up a contact, listen to a song, or show a coworker a picture of their dog.
We don't use our phones to edit the next Pixar film. 99% of my time on a mobile device is spent on apps that require connectivity anyway.
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I do. I do it every time I import photos from my DSLR. I move tens of gigabytes at a time from the camera to a computer. In some cases, I then painfully upload tens of gigabytes to a server in another state so that other folks can enjoy the pics as well. That last part takes weeks, thanks to (IIRC) 768 kbps DSL upload speeds. I don't move them to my phone because my phone can't hold any meaningful percentage of my photos anyway. I also don't
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Most of us are too busy with important things to be using Facebook or Twitter or WhatsApp or whatever all day.
Usage statistics [pewinternet.org] show this to be factually incorrect. Most of us are not too busy to communicate with friends and family using social networks. I'm in the small minority who doesn't use social networks.
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You carry a lot of porn around huh?
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Yeah!
Damn hipsters with their SD-cards.
Get a shave, and smaller on-board storage, damn hipsters!
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I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Mophie Space case yet... battery and storage for iPhones in one.
Unfortunately, the Mophie app (which is required for file management, same as the SanDisk) is a broken piece of absolute shit. My mophie has 64GB of storage, but will only manage 10k photos. (I have over 13k on my phone.) But it runs poorly even in the best of conditions.
I am horribly disappointed that SanDisk is only making this for the 6 series phones. It could have been a contender...
Win for consumer (Score:2, Insightful)
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Apple sets its price points based on flash storage amount. If people can easily add more storage, that will be a win for the consumer. Yay, competition!
The win is purely empirical because you still need to use SanDisk's App to move files between your iPhone and the SanDisk unit. It does not completely integrate with the iOS platform. It would be a real win if you could actively use the SanDisk unit for storage. Really, the iPhone is a very consumer unfriendly device. I drink the Apple Kool Aid as far as my MacBook Pro is concerned. For my choice of smartphone, I am Android all of the way. I don't believe in spending more than 150.00 for a smartphone. At th
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Nope. Or at least, I don't think that's correct.
It sounds like it's only accessible from an app that specifically accesses the storage, and you can use it to back up data that you store on your phone, freeing up space on your main phone flash ram for other things.
It's basically like adding an external hard drive to your desktop computer. It gives you something to back up your data to, but in the general case, it won't typically increase the storage you have for regular use when all of your applicatio
Great (Score:1)
Another ad.
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Worse, it's not even an advert for a new and exciting product. I mean, it might be a new SanDisk case, but there have been similar implementations available for /years/ (right to offering options with an without extra battery). Some of them use the lightning port (IIRC, some of these devices even pre-dated Lightning and used the 30-pin port) and others used WiFi, but the idea is not new.
At least if you are going to spam us with slashvertisements, make it for interesting new products. This is the equivalent
Not an iPhone (Score:3)
iPhone case with flash storage built directly into the case...
Or I can buy a phone with an SD card slot built directly into the phone
You won't need a new phone and you won't need to carry around an extra charging dongle...
No I won't will I?
Since Apple doesn't make expanding your storage with third-party devices easy...
Other phone manufacturers do however, so I'll just buy one of their products.
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This is why I don't have an iPhone. I wanted one until I found out you could not expand it or change the battery. I know lots of people don't care and I'm fine with that. I like to be free.
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I never understood why Apple never added SD slots to their iDevices. :(
If you're going to be in the Apple phone Ghetto (Score:2)
may as well drive the car with felt padding on all the seats and panels and chrome rims.
Sandisk is smart, like Apple (Score:3)
Selling 128GB flash drives for $20 more than 32GB flash drives isn't nearly as profitable as selling 128GB flash drive cases for $70 more than 32GB flash drive cases.
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I bought two 128GB evo cards off amazon for 23 and some change per each. One went into my old Samsung S5 and one into my wife's LG. Instant happiness for little money.
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Instead I just loaded a bunch of movies and music on it. I don't know if it's 128gb for sure but I do know it's 103.48gb at least.
In lieu of actual innovation... (Score:2)
...maybe Apple could implement some user-friendly pseudoinnovation, like using the lightning port for attaching mass storage devices and some kind of filesystem to go along with it.
And while I'm thinking about it, have any iOS apps ever tried to use the camera roll as a generic filesystem? I'd imagine that the APIs make sure you're storing data that has the right filetype magic that matches supported image files, but do they resample it or otherwise manipulate the data so that you couldn't store random dat
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Overpriced (Score:2)
It's probably the best attempt I've seen at increasing the iPhone's available storage (yeah, yeah, we know that Apple should allow microSD - you don't need to say it), but it seems rather overpriced.
Considering that cards from Sandisk are around $12 (32GB), $20 (64GB) and $40 (128GB) and considering $40-$45 for a case, then you should be looking at $55, $65 or $85.
Better yet, it should just have been sold as an empty shell of a case with a microSD slot for you to fill - although I appreciate that the profit