Samsung to Show World's First 1.3-inch Hard Drive at CES

In an email announcing its CES meeting plans, Samsung Semiconductor said that the company will at least talk about the world's first 1.3-inch hard drive at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The drive is being targeted at "mobile consumer devices".

This might not be Samsung's flagship product for CES, but the product is an interesting choice, given that Samsung is also among the world leaders in NAND flash memory -- the preferred storage medium in devices like the iPod nano. Samsung also says that its 32 Gbit NAND devices will enter mass production soon. On the solid-state-disk front, Samsung says improvements in the technology will make it twice as fast as previous models, and that the company will migrate to a combination single-layer-cell/multi-layer-cell technology in 2008 (by placing more layers in cells, the amount of storage in a given area can be increased -- simply put, that means more storage for an MP3 in the same form factor).

More of what Samsung will be showcasing:
- 1 Tbyte RAID Edition hard drives
- new 320 Gbyte mobile hard drives for notebooks
- TruDirect optical disk-drive tech that eliminates the need for a hard drive when burning disks
- touchscreen LCDs

HDTV innovations, such as Motion Picture Frame Interpolation and Local Dimming LED technology (which Samsung says will offer contrast ratios 20X to 50X that of high-end CCFL panels lit by bulbs)
We'll continue to keep an eye on the show as it draws closer, and we'll have a bunch of reporters on site at CES itself.

source