Western Digital today announced its latest SanDisk product, the SanDisk iXpand Base. The iXpand Base is designed to make it simple to back up an iPhone's photos, videos, and contacts, offering storage and an intuitive nightly backup setup.
The iXpand Base is designed to look like a small iPhone dock, with a flat rubber-coated base where the iPhone rests. At one side, there's a Lightning cable that plugs into the iPhone, and at the other, there's a power cord that plugs into the wall.
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The idea is to connect the iPhone to the iXpand Base at night to charge your phone. While it's plugged in and charging (15W charging is supported), the iXpand Base makes a backup of all of your critical files with the iXpand Base app, essentially providing an automatic, hassle-free way to make a nightly backup. Many people likely upload their photos to iCloud for safekeeping, but it's always a good idea to have multiple backups.
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"iPhone users care deeply about their content and understand the importance of protecting it. Our top priority is to offer convenient solutions like the iXpand Base that fit with people's everyday habits so they don't have to change their routine, and never have to worry about losing memories," said Jim Welsh, senior vice president, Client Solutions, Western Digital.
The iXpand Base offers up to 256GB of local storage, so it can also be used to offload photos and other files to save space on an iPhone. With the data backup feature enabled, if you need to transfer content to a new phone, it's just a matter of plugging the new device into the base and downloading the app.
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SanDisk's new iXpand Base is available starting today from retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. Pricing starts at $49.99 for 32GB of storage. 64GB of storage is available for $99.99, 128GB of storage is available for $129.99, and 256GB of storage is available for $199.99.
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Top Rated Comments
Glassed Silver:ios
I wish something like this existed that could back up the entire iPhone (or iPad) with all the app data included. And I wish that backup could be automatically backed up to my time machine drive (or synced to my Mac which backs up to my time machine drive).
For offsite backup, I just switch between two time machine hard drives, one of which I keep at work. With this system I have no need for iCloud.
Enough time passes and iCloud becomes more expensive than these one time purchase backup solutions. I admit this one is not ideal because you have to always charge on this specific charger in order to back up. It would be ideal if you could back up wirelessly on your home network when connected to any charger. iCloud offers the advantage of backing up constantly when out of the house, but for me that's excessive and unnecessary. Once a day automatic backup at home is plenty. So I'd rather do that and save money in the long run. Plus I want to keep as little of my data floating around the internet as possible.
I think you mean 200 GB for iCloud, not 250. But you're right, $199 for 256 GB does seem a bit spendy. It would take a long time to recover costs.
They also blocked voice calls over FaceTime, WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger.
Internet is not always reliable.
Backing-up your contents while you're charging nightly. The only way I think it could have been even better is with a vertical dock-like form factor. No lightning cord clutter and a smaller night-table-friendly footprint.
Either way, providing this works as advertised, personally I give it a thumbs up.