Windows Phone Thoughts: Hard Disks for Handhelds

"The first hard drive in 1956 was the IBM 305 RAMAC, and cost $10,000 per MB – it had a capacity of 5MB. But now the cost, Fox said, is something under 10 cents per MB and that he said, is a retail figure, including tax. Average home will have 15 hard drives, although most households don’t know it. There are some hard drives in cars and they’re starting to appear in mobile phones. Hard drive vendors are getting overexcited about the potential of hard drives in the mobile market. Although 260 million units shipped last year, the figures for mobile phones far exceed that number."

We've already got a Samsung mobile phone with a hard drives, so when will we see Pocket PCs sporting them? The Inquirer article mentions that Hitachi’s CE ATA interface is specifically designed for handhelds, as mobile users don't need the same speed or throughput that desktop users require. It does of course help that this reduced specification makes the units substantially cheaper. :wink:

So, how do you feel about the prospect of PPCs with hard drives? On one side you have the possibility of large amounts of cheap, fast storage, while on the other you have the problem of increased fragility and power consumption. Would you like a PPC with an embedded (non-removable) hard drive? What are your thoughts about the pros and cons?