CES: Day 4 Wrap-Up

I dropped by the SandDisk booth to talk about the implications of 2 TB cards being on the SD Association’s roadmap with their new XS designation, but they were pretty tight-lipped about it. We talked broadly about how well SlotMusic was doing (not bad apparently) and their new 16 GB card. I actually used a complimentary one to record the interview on my BlackBerry, partly out of novelty, partly because I couldn’t find my usual dang recorder. Frankly, I have no clue what I do with 2 terabytes. That kind of memory capacity, though still a ways off, opens up all kinds of new application possibilities. I mean, you can only cram so much music and pictures onto these things. Sandisk talked a bit about how storing mobile maps is becoming more popular, which was a very new possibility. HD video is also just around the corner with microSD XS, but it will take awhile before manufacturers catch on. I have a feeling Palm knew about it, and actually held back on including a microSD slot on the Pre because they would be supporting a standard that was on the tail end of its life cycle – it would be best to hold out for their second WebOS-based handset to include microSD XS compatibility.

After that, I tried hitting up the exception Palm Pre lounge again to post for a bit, but my laptop totally crashed and burned, hence my meager posting for the tail end of the show. After some fruitless percussive maintenance, I went out to see the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) booth. It took quite a bit to tear me away from Killzone 2, but eventually I got in front of their announcements for the show: the the C510 (Kate) and the W508 (somehow missed the W715). They had a lot of cool twists to old functions, like Smile Shutter, which only takes a picture after it detects that the target is grinning, and gesture-based music control, but the hardware never really tweaked my fancy much. They also had some excessively slim stereo Bluetooth earbuds that were just great-looking.

And that’s it! The biggest mobile news of CES?

Palm Pre

LG Watch Phone

3 Sony Ericsson Phones

SDXC Designation Announced

We’ve got lots of interviews ready for this week’s episode of The Signal, so stick around.

Picture gallery on the last page!