Nokia drops RS-MMC(?)
 

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/..._5MP_Camer.php

This is yet another new Nokia phone that uses *microSD* instead of RS-MMC. So much for card swapping with the 770.

I think, if they are indeed serious about this whole Internet Tablet thing, Nokia needs to kick out a new Tablet with that microSD slot.

No, it would be quite stupid. They should include full-sized SD/MMCplus slot so you can insert any of SD/miniSD/microSD/MMC/MMCplus/RS-MMC/MMCmobile card. And possibly two slots when they are at it :-)

BTW MMCplus/MMCmobile have 8 data pins vs 4 pins for SD so the speed can be higher.

But seriously, I don't think memory slot type has something to do with being serious or is the reason to release new tablet. Looks like genuine 'Mike Cane' post ;-)

Mike does make a valid point that Nokia should be standardising on one card type - looks like they have chosen SD rather than RS-MMC which is a shame as this probably means RS-MMC capacities will increase even more slowly in future than at present, due to lack of demand.

The suggestion that Nokia are not serious about the "whole Internet Tablet thing" simply because they have chosen to now back a different memory card standard which may offer larger and cheaper capacities than RS-MCC is, as ever, bogus. It just means Nokia have acknowledged they may have made a mistake when specifying RS-MMC for the Nokia 770 over 18 months ago. Maybe next time they'll consult you first, Mike?

No, why? Maybe for phones, but even then I don't see a reason until all manufacturers of (phones/mp3players/digicams,...) will standardise on ONE card type. As for tablets - full slot (for all types I mentioned) is better when there is space for it. And tablet is bigger than phone.


No, why? Others will use it. And they all contain same flash chips and are compatible (except the physical size), it is just packaging. MMCmobile cards are now at 2GB and price is same as other cards with same size.

Well they just took the cheapest option. They did the same with CPU and RAM. N770 was just a test. Many people inside Nokia didn't believe it will fly. Low cost was very important for first version.

You're right - for a device the size of the 770, Nokia should have used full size SD or CF, but I guess Nokia determined there simply wasn't the space to fit a full size slot. Instead they went for a relatively niche format, RS-MMC, which is supported by hardly anyone other than Nokia. It's about as popular as Fuji xD-Picture Card! :( Now it appears even Nokia don't seem to be 100% behind RS-MMC and may be switching to micro-SD! If only they'd gone that route 18 months ago :)

Here we will have to disagree! :) Who else is using RS-MMC other than Nokia in a mass market product? While all flash devices may be the same under the plastic, what flash memory manufacturer is going to package their memory in the relatively unpopular RS-MMC format when they could put the same memory in SD or CF packaging and sell it by the boat load? Why squeeze 4GB of memory into an RS-MMC device that will sit on the shelf, rather than walk off it as would be the case if it were in SD format?

If Nokia continued pushing out great phones that used RS-MMC, perhaps flash memory suppliers would consider ramping up RS-MMC capacities. While there is dwindling support from device manufacturers using the format, memory manufacturer interest will eventually disappear. I doubt we will see a 4GB RS-MMC device - ever. :(

Can't disagree here - are their licencing costs associated with SD or CF? Who invented the RS-MMC format anyway - maybe it was Nokia and it saved a few more pennies!

It's a shame Nokia didn't use one of the better supported full size or even micro formats; I've got 4GB CF and 2GB SD cards sitting here, unused (well they're in an iPAQ hx4700, which is unused, as it's rubbish!) :)

/ignore snide smartass comments

When Nokia explained *to me* why the 770 had RS-MMC instead of SD, their justification was that RS-MMC was what their *phones* used, hence people could, for example, take a phonecam pic and xfer it to the 770. That can't happen now, can it, wiseguys?

And if anyone posting here is from Nokia, DECLARE it.

Plenty of Nokia phones still use MMC, but there is an obvious transition taking place to SD. Approriately so IMO because hi-capacity MMCs are hard to find and, much as you would like to think, Nokia cannot change the overwhleming trend in memory cards. The next generation Nokia 770 may have SD instead of MMC so any criticisms aren't valid until then.

who cares, Nokia should have used sd/mini sd. I hate the whole stupid mmc format. Sure, lets take an obscure format that stores seldom carry and make it so you have to pay a premium to buy them over the net. Silly. The store i bought my N770 from (CompUSA) doesn't even carry mmc cards. Fry's also carries N770, you can probably get a mmc card there but it will be the slow san disk, and it will be a returned item, if you are lucky enough to find one in stock. Other tores? ha! most retail clearks have never even heard of an mmc card... but every week, loads and loads of sales for SD cards at numerous stores... "but it's a popular format overseas..." who cares.. so was Minidisc.. see them in any store lately? Come one Nokia, get with the times.

Amen to everything you said, Gigabytes. I had a very hard time tracking down a store that even had MMC cards, much less RS-MMC ones and I live only a few miles from Redmond. I ended up having to go to Frys, where all they had were returned 1 GB cards. Beyond that, the RS-MMC when combined with the slow USB transfer of the 770 ends up taking forever to transfer any significant megabyteage. I would greatly prefer a full size SD (hopefully supporting SDHC) or even a CF slot (even though such a device would have to be slightly larger) as well as a fullsize USB port with host mode support on any future Nokia tablet device. The speed, much smaller available capacity and lack of availability of RS-MMC all make it a non starter for me. The argument they went with RS-MMC so that you could transfer photos from your phone is lame, imo. In the US at least, it is almost impossible to find a decent camera phone. If you are talking about transfering files from a real digicam and not a sub megapixel CMOS POS, then you are talking SD or CF support.

I am getting oh soo tired of companies that go with smaller ports and oddball memory card formats in the name of shaving off a fraction of a millimeter, requiring me to carry around a host of cables and adapters. I want a device that is complete in its own right. I will be looking at any future Nokia tablet with great scrutiny before making a purchase decision.

fanoush said it in his first post here: they should have included a full size SD/MMC slot, so all would be happy: users who already have a rs-mmc card - other Nokia customers - and people who use any of the sd/mmc derivatives.

I have a bunch of sd cards: 1GB for my camera, 1GB micro-sd for my phone, etc.

Why not a SD/MMC slot?? Can't be because of licensing or hardware cost, I see pen-shaped sd/mmc - usb2.0 card readers for 5 euros...!!


BTW Re: mmc being more available 'overseas' - being overseas, there's still a big difference between sd availability and rs-mmc! I'd say, it's easier to find xD-picture cards in regular shops here than rs-mmc.


Edit:
forgot: it's much much easier to find fast SD cards - MMC should work in my camera as well, but the fastest rs-mmc I found is 88x - unfortunately after I purchased my dog slow Kingston 1GB 1.5MB/s..., my 1GB SD is 133x (~18 - 20MB/s) and that makes a big difference on a usb2.0 card reader. Moreso compared to 1.5MB/s.

Yes, that's true now. (RS-)MMC uses 7 pins and only 1 for data transfer. This is really old and outdated standard. SD uses 9 pins and 4 for data transfer. Newer MMCmobile, backward compatible with rs-mmc uses 13 pins and 8 for data transfer. Problem is that current USB readers on market can handle only MMC and SD protocol. MMCmobile in current reader uses maybe 4 but most probably only 1 pin. I have two USB readers (both cheap in ~5$ range) and one does 1.5MB/s for all mmc and my newer 2GB kingston mmcmobile, second one does 1.5MB for mmc but 3.8MB/s for mmcmobile both for reading and writing. I have ordered
(supposedly) next generation reader (also cheap) with all 13 mmcplus pins
http://www.sharkoon.com/enghtml/usb.htm#xcplus that could read even newer mmcmobile cards faster.


As for others, your ignorance does not mean the format is not used ;-) At least here in Europe MMC cards are not rare at all.

MMC derived formats are a bit older than SD and are specified by MMC association http://www.mmca.org/home (nothing realated to Nokia) Current MMC 4.1 format is better than SD and the standard is open. There is no reason this format will die in any near future.

SD cards are specified by http://www.sdcard.org/ and standard is not available unless you sign NDA and pay. That's why some linux devices didn't suport SD because the protocol was not known and there were no open source drivers for SD. Now I think something was reverse-engineered and some bits were found in various specs by manufacturers so most parts of the protocol is known. Also I think recently SD association released some stripped down specs (excluding SDMI content protection).

Yes I heard similar thing. They took already existing parts already sitting on their shelves which they used for phones at that time.
Well that's probably afterthought and not the main reason. You can use bluetooth for that and browse pictures directly from N770 without removing card from phone.
As for normal cameras If you use SD card then obviously not. If you use MMC/MMCplus/RS-MMC/MMCmobile in camera then yes. Also in IT2006 big MMC cards are readable without closing the door.

As for the RS-MMC slot, this was one thing I hate too. I was thinking quite hard before geting N770 due to this slot. But replacing it with microSD as you suggest is not much better.

BTW I have just read the Specification 4.x Application Notes PDF and it seem even for 1 bit transfer there could be speedup when chaging 20Mhz bus speed to 52Mhz which should give 260%. 1.5MB/s*2.6=3.9MB/s which is what I noticed in one of my USB readers. And this is over 1 wire so if OMAP 1710 chip inside 770 can switch MMC bus speed from 20 to 52Mhz for high speed cards, we could have this speed even with plain old rs-mmc connector in N770. Needs nontrivial kernel modification of course :-)

Nokia is touting their new N95 superphone as "It's what computers have become."

http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1077775

Ah, so what is the 770?

Five new Nokia phones introed in 7 days. All using miniSD.

Is this a hint we can look forward to a 770 2.0? This or next year?

As for RS-MMC, J&R carried (in-store; I don't look on their site) 256MB, 512MB, and 1GB. Now all they have is 128MB! Yeesh.

Small correction: not miniSD but microSD.

Oops! No pun intended there, either, eh?

Yes, microSD. The teeny one that can be accidentally inhaled! (It's also used in the Sandisk Sansa e2xx players.)

Jaysus. Nokia has been pregnant and is now birthing a ton of phones! Three new music phones today. All *not* using RS-MMC...

Is the Internet Tablet division near labor?

Interesting. How do you like it? It seems not even prudent to get card reader built-in to computer any more since it likely to have slower transfer spped than this device.

I'm still waiting for it. It was out of stock and I didn't find alternative. I hope it will arrive tomorrow.

As for N770 speed - sad thing is that N770 USB connection seems to use only USB 1.1 speed and it looks like hardware limitation i.e. the USB chip is in fact 1.1. Looks like they corrected it in technical specifications http://europe.nokia.com/A4145105 since I asked. The '(with speeds up to 12Mbps)' part wasn't there last week. So you can't use N770 as fast usb card reader.

The limitations of 770 in transferring file through MMC or USB interface is unfortunate. Remarkable that wireless is the fastest way to transfer a file.

I am having trouble finding other MMC 4.1 readers. An internal (to PC) reader would be OK for wiFi transfer to 770, but typically only the USB dongle type readers give out their specs.

Maybe it's a bit of offtopic, but what maximum speed did you observe with wireless interface? In my tests (using scp to copy files from/to device) it was never higher than 350-400kB/s, so it can't compete even with USB 1.1. Maybe that's because of some cryptography overhead, don't know. Ordinary USB wifi dongle used with desktop PC provides 2MB/s easily, so I thought that my wireless router is ok and it's Nokia 770 limiting files transfer performance. If it is not the case and wifi works much faster for you, I will have to investigate what's the problem. I also use WPA encryption here, what kind of encryption is used on your device?

I have not measured my transfer rate on the 770 from my Linksys but I have not noticed that is any slower than my laptop, which got about 2Mbps last time I checked. Maybe something is wrong with your router or wireless setup? Check with other devices.

It is slow for me too. I thought it could be fast but never actually tried to measure it until yesterday. I remembered this post http://maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-dev...er/002189.html but forgot numbers so I was under impression that unencrypted speed is higher but looks like WPA performance improved since then so uencrypted setting doesn't help. I get 300-400Kb over ssh (wpa,aes+tkip setting on router). By changing ssh cipher from default 3des to blowfish, speed goes up by ~100kb.

I didn't try wget or ftp on device from local network or ftp server on n770 yet. But it looks like it is definitely slow. It is strange, the chip itself seem to allow real 48Mbit so who knows what part is slow, maybe again some clock setting? Or maybe the embedded arm9 cpu and the firmware.

The chip info is here
http://www.conexant.com/products/entry.jsp?id=375
but it probably uses other radio chip, according to this
https://garage.maemo.org/plugins/scm...=1&view=markup
my chip is in fact this one
http://www.st.com/stonline/products/...2/stlc4370.htm

both datasheets say
- Support for 54, 48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9, and 6Mbps OFDM
- SPI serial host interface (up to 48Mbps)

Also in garage source there is mentioned also newer variant (3826.arm firmware) probably used in newer N770 devices. This chip is smaller but from datasheet parameters looks very similar. There is additional 4 bit sdio interface (so it can be used in SD wlan cards) but this interface it is probably not used in N770 anyway.

http://www.st.com/stonline/products/...3/stlc4550.htm

I guess it is slow and no one cares since you cannot detect it when downloading from interenet. Maybe the faster g speeds are there just to save power (radio is not transmitting/receiving so long).

The poster tested download speed to MMC. Like you, I would guess any speed limitation is not due to radio chip, but from some interface somewhere in 770.

The card reader http://www.sharkoon.com/enghtml/usb.htm#xcplus arrived. I am quite happy. With my older 80x Transcend 1GB sd card it does 8MB/s on read while my other older card reader did only 3MB/s with same card.

With the 2GB Kingston MMCmobile it reads at very nice 14MB/s (dd test). File write to card in windows explorer was approx. 5MB/s (220MB in 2 files in 44 seconds)

Due to 2nd rows of pins and the doors the card insertion is slightly more complex but it is not an issue.

Final price with VAT was aprox. $11 (236CZK)

I just received this i-rocks Portable USB Card Reader from Newegg for $12.99 US.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820308005

Informal testing shows it writes 2X faster and reads 5X faster than my old USB card reader. More formal testing to follow. My 2GB mmc-mobile card arrives tomorrow.