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A Flash Based 4GB iPod mini?

Monday August 22, 2005 8:26 pm PDT by Arnold Kim
eeTimes reports that Apple Computer plans to buy as much as 40% of the NAND Flash Memory supply from Samsung Electronics in the second half of this year.

According to one analyst's sources:

Samsung has offered Apple "extremely low prices on its [Flash] parts" in order to convince Apple to switch from HDD storage to [Flash] memory for the 4-GByte-density iPod.

The report said iSuppli believes that Samsung has offered to match prices from the HDD suppliers, even though current microdrive prices are about half the cost of the equivalent flash density.


The reason for the price cut would be to lock up Apple as a customer to supply Flash memory for a Flash-based iPod mini which currently falls at the 4GB price point. Tom's Hardware provides more thoughts from iSuppli's analyst.
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dekator
85 months ago
According to this article, Apple have bought 40% of Samsung's NAND memory output at a very competitive price. Looks like the iPod mini might be Flash memory based in the future.
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clayj
85 months ago
For the record, I'll buy a 2GB - 4GB flash-based iPod. The current 1GB is just too small for the amount of music I'd like to be able to carry around (I have a 60GB iPod Photo with ALL of my music on it).

EDIT: And yes, it needs an OLED screen and some method of controlling playback. Shuffle != OK with that much music.
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Macmaniac
85 months ago
Getting 4gb minis has been very hard, I have talked to a few people and a lot of stores are running out of them and the distributors are not getting any more from Apple. Could be a good sign of minis at Apple Expo Paris:)
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KittenKrusher
85 months ago
Wouldn't this most likely be a 4GB Shuffle than a 4GB Mini Flash. Just keep all Mini's 6GB and throw in a 4GB Shuffle.
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~loserman~
85 months ago

Wouldn't this most likely be a 4GB Shuffle than a 4GB Mini Flash. Just keep all Mini's 6GB and throw in a 4GB Shuffle.


Why use a hard drive in a mini when you can use flash instead. 2 to 3 times the battery life anyone?
Plus no moving parts to break?
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cleanup
85 months ago

Getting 4gb minis has been very hard, I have talked to a few people and a lot of stores are running out of them and the distributors are not getting any more from Apple. Could be a good sign of minis at Apple Expo Paris:)


A four-gigabyte player with no screen?

The shuffle has no screen because it can't really hold enough music to truly warrant one. You can only hold at most a few hundred songs. Would you really want to be shuffling a thousand songs with no easy way to choose that new song you just got?

I would love a flash-based iPod mini. It'd mean enormous battery life and a thinner profile, and a much lower weight, but keep the screen and the Click Wheel. That would be bliss.
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dansgil
85 months ago
Also, they could just offer a 4 gb Flash iPod mini, and a 6 gb Flash mini that contains multiple flash clips totaling 6 gb.
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ham_man
85 months ago
This would be a 4 gig flash Mini. A Shuffle with that much space to navigate? No way in hell...
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Bibulous
85 months ago
t.
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BornAgainMac
85 months ago
A 4GB iPod mini with flash will have a screen. The shuffle with no screen at 512 Mb was fine. I bet this new iPod will be super thin even at the expense of 2 to 3 times longer battery.
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