It looks like the SD Card Association association is starting to spread its wings beyond the comforts of removable storage, with it now aiming for a piece of the embedded storage market with its new, appropriately-named Embedded SD standard. Set to actually make its debut in devices this November, the new standard apparently makes use of many tried-and-true SD standards, which the association says should ease platform design in cellphones and consumer electronics devices and speed up widespread adoption. Among other things, the standard includes support both 3.3V and 1.8V power supplies, a flexible partition mechanism to allow for multiple partitions to accommodate various types of data, various data-protection and power-saving measures and, of course, an option to boot from the embedded SD. There's still no word on any specific devices that'll employ the standard, but you can expect them to max out with 32GB of on-board memory and 32GB of removable storage.

Wow, it seems like we were just marveling over the introduction of the world's first 8GB SD card a few moons back. Ah, that's right, we were. Alas, Samsung took it to heart that SD doesn't cut it for your average cellphone (they run a bumpin' mobile business, after all), announcing that it has managed to pack a full eight gigabytes into the microSD form factor for mid-2008 production. That's particularly timely considering that 4GB examples haven't even gotten into widespread circulation yet -- "8GB" just has a nicer ring to it -- not to mention that the new card handily surpasses SDHC guidelines with 16MB/s reads and 6MB/s writes. For the record, a microSD card rocks a little over 20 percent of the surface area of its SD counterpart, so does this mean we can expect 40GB SD cards, like, now? Not quite.

Speaking at this week's Software 2007 gathering in California, Motorola CEO Ed Zander took a break from his company's woes and struggles to share the news that Moto's got a rather exciting new phone waiting in the wings. Details were slim -- the phone was apparently just mentioned in passing as part of the speech -- but the as-yet-unnamed handset is said to be video-centric, capable of a solid 30 frames per second for enjoying movies via SD card. Like other hot Motorolas in recent memory, Zander indicated that it'd be slated for a European release when it's officially announced next week. Any guess as to what the four-letter MOTONAME for this one might be?

4GB in an miniSDHC card? We scoff at the audacious bulk of such a memory device! See, only microSD can cut it anymore around the Engadget HQ, now that Kingmax has squeezed 4GB of flash memory into a microSDHC card -- champions of lesser memory formats will be shot on sight. Plus it's not just the capacity getting boost, performance has hit new highs as well, with 22.5MBps dual channel read speeds (150x) and normal read speeds of 19.1MBps (127x). That means the card can pull off SD 2.0 speeds in your digicam, while still making for a real kicker of a memory expansion for your phone or media player. Don't bother with looking for a price or availability date, we just pre-ordered the entire first run.

[Via TrustedReviews]

Hmm, looks like we've got a bit of a conflict here, as we've now got two companies claiming that its microSD reader is indeed the world's smallest. Of course, Pretec doesn't bother giving us the dimensions, so its crown will have to remain in pending for the time being, but the i-Disk Micro Reader is ridiculously small nonetheless, Capable of holding microSD cards from 32MB all the way up to 2GB in capacity, this bantam device comes in a transparent case to give users easy access to the size of the microSD card within, sports a curvaceous design to purportedly prevent scratches when carried around with your mobile, includes a nifty keychain attachment, and connects via USB 2.0. There's no mention of pricing nor availability, but just in case this whole "world's smallest" claim doesn't pan out for ole Pretec, at least they're also releasing a SDHC-friendly 20-in-1 flash card reader which it can boast about while eating its words.

[Via MobileWhack]

If that handy SD slot in your Treo (or similar smartphone) has gone lonely long enough, you've probably been waiting for "that killer device" to slam down in there and boast about. Thankfully, that time has seemingly come, as Spectec's latest SDIO GPS receiver packs a whole lot of functionality into a minuscule (and sleek) package. Unlike alternative GPS attachments for your handset, the SDG-810 provides a SiRF Star III 20-channel tracking adornment, is WASS-enabled, and sports a microSD slot to carry up to 2GB of excess data (like maps, for instance) since your original flash memory slot just got occupied. While pricing information wasn't readily available, this nifty smartphone must-have should be available in your neck of the woods (read: everywhere) real soon.

[Via GearDiary]

Just in case you haven't already told us what shiny new toys you unwrapped this morning, a few clever hackers are giving you one more gift to top things off. While those of you toting the recently-unveiled Palm (sorry, WinMo users) Treo 680 can boast about your "exclusive" SDHC support, we folks using the 700p simply don't have that luxury. If you've been clamoring about getting SDHC support on the 700p, and were let down that the "big patch" didn't include even a whisper about such support coming your way, take heart. Apparently, copying the slot driver from the 680 onto the 700p allows it to use SDHC cards, and while it hasn't been confirmed quite yet, it looks the ole 650 may get a bit of that high capacity lovin' as well. So if Santa wasn't quite as good to you as you thought he'd be, be sure to hit the read link to make even better use of that (presumably costly) SDHC card you (hopefully) just received.

[Via Phone News]

On paper, the Mio A701 smartphone sounds like almost the perfect convergence device, sporting a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered 520MHz Xscale processor, SiRF III GPS receiver, tri-band GSM radio, Bluetooth, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. Sadly, at least according to Reg Hardware, the A701 has so many little faults that the device is often barely usable, and sounds like a skip except for those folks who absolutely must have GPS and aren't into the square-screened iPaq hw6xxx series from HP. Some of the Reg's gripes with this model include its crappy camera (one of the worst they've ever seen, apparently), GPRS-only data connection, flimsy telescoping stylus, lack of dedicated buttons for WM5 softkey control, and buggy navigation software (luckily it's optional). Besides the full suite of accessories that come included in the box, there doesn't seem to be much good to say about the $660 to $790 A701, which is no doubt a big disappointment to those who may have been looking to import what appeared to be such a hot phone.