Dear Nokia: From now on any phone you release with expandable memory should be SDHC certified

I remember finishing High School a semester earlier then the rest of my class. It was quite strange being a college freshman in January, but it was exciting none the less.

I began as a computer science major. One of our class requirements was to purchase a USB key which we wouldn’t mind giving the professor every once in a while to grade our assignments.

Right after school I stopped by my local Circuit City (general electronics store in America) and went browsing. I purchased a 128 MB Kingston USB 1.0 stick for around $75. At that time it was an absolute bargain.

Today newegg.com, one of my favorite online computer parts store, doesn’t sell anything smaller than a 512 MB USB 2.0 key. The cheapest, a Kingston, is only $13.48 shipped, total.

Where am I going with this?

Memory prices are dropping every quarter. The cheapest 2 GB Micro SD card can be had for a total of $45. I purchased a used 2 GB Micro SD card for my Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N93 for $30 at a computer swap meet.

Nokia has yet to release a phone that is SD HC compatible.

What is SDHC and why do I want it? Wikipedia says:

A new SD format, SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity), allows capacities in excess of 2GB (4GB to 32GB). SDHC uses the same form factor as SD, but the SD 2.0 standard in SDHC uses a different memory addressing method (sector addressing vs byte addressing).

4GB – 32GB. Can you imagine the possibilities? This format is so new that newegg doesn’t even sell SDHC compatible Micro SD cards.

They do exist however. Kingmax was the first to market with a 4 GB Micro SD HC card. Sandisk just announced their piece of kit yesterday.

The little USB memory key story … those price differences took place over the course of 3 years. Hypothetically speaking, if the Nokia N76 supported Micro SD HC, in 3 years I should be able to throw a 32 GB card in there for less than $100. That sure is some piece of mind I would like to have.

Nokia usually waits until a certain type of technology (mini USB) or design style (RAZR) gets popular before adopting it to fill customers needs. I like that "we’ll do things our way" attitude. This is not one of those scenarios.

If the number one phone manufacture of 2006 starts a commitment to make sure that all their future devices with expandable memory are SD HC compatible then the others will take notice. Demand will rise, it will cause production to ramp, and prices will fall.

Everyone will profit.

Now I say future Nokia models. Ricky is hoping that Nokia will update phones already out on the market to include SDHC support. In a Utopian world they just might. I’m a realist however and don’t see Nokia doing this … at all.

The future however, I see no reason why this can’t be done. Standard SD cards will work just fine in SDHC readers.

What do you say Nokia? Give me gigabytes or give me death?