Multimedia mobile phones of the future will get a welcome storage boost, thanks to Samsung, who have built an ultra-compact Flash memory chip with a capacity of 4 Gigabit (512 Megabyte).
The 90 nm device is about the size of an average finger nail (11 x 13 X 1.4 mm) and can store more than 250 3-megapixel images taken with future camera phones or about 120 music tracks. Samsung also said it was able to cut the Flash chip's power consumption nearly in half by operating it at 1.8 volts, instead of the common 3.3 volts.
Built as NAND Flash, the new product offers high data read and write speeds, and is scheduled to enter mass production in July of this year.