Seagate intros DAVE: wireless storage for cellphones

Seagate today officially revealed a new storage technology known as Digital Audio Video Experience, or DAVE. The platform is meant to add storage to cellphones and other handhelds that normally have no room for enough built-in or removable storage of their own. A combination of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connects the credit card-sized DAVE wirelessly to a host device and makes its own space available. A base 10GB model will hold at least 2,500 songs or 21 hours of continuous video, the storage maker says, opening the possibility of extended mobile photo- and video-blogging as well as keeping and entire music library close at hand for a music phone. A 20GB version will also be available for yet more storage.

Appropriately, the DAVE is battery-powered and will last for 10 hours of active music or video streaming; it will also last for as many as 14 days in its standby mode. Seagate plans to ship DAVE drives to cellphone designers and carriers by Spring of this year but has yet to announce pricing.