[TooNice]

Last year, I bought the Sony Ericsson W800i. Most phones could do pictures and MP3s, and though I don't doubt the W800i did those well, it was the inclusion of the 512MB Memory Stick Duo Pro that gave the final nudge.

Now my contract is coming to an end, I am looking to get a new phone. Not for myself, I am content keeping my W800i for another year, but for my bro who had the same old phone for ages. The K800 looks like a solid contender.

Enters the Memory Stick M2. I know for his use, it'll be perfectly adequate. I don't see him use the MP3/Camera that much, so the 64MB internal memory is probably adequate. But it is making me think about about upgrading my 512MB stick, and I am wondering if the format makes sense. I don't have much information on the format so I took a look at the Wiki, and it doesn't look like it's offering much more than it's predecessor when weighting for pros and cons.

At least from a consumer perspective. The good is that the memory is much smaller than it's already small predecessor. And it's supposed to be able to hit much higher capacity later on. But at this point, it is also considerably more costly, and doesn't come near the 1GB. I am not sure if it is supposed to read/write faster, or consume less power, I didn't come up with much Googling on the format. But considering that existing consumers would have to throw away the current format (assuming the M2 is meant as a direct replacement to the Duo Pro - and it seems to be the case at least for mobile phones), it doesn't seem to provide enough incentive. What if I had already purchased a 2GB Memory Stick Duo Pro with my W800i and wanted to upgrade to a K800? Not only would I have to sell off my Duo Pro, but I would also have to sacrifice almost half the storage given that the most M2 currently provide is 1GB.

Basically would it not have made more sense to release the M2 after it could match the capacity of the predecessor? As it is, it seems to trade physical size for capacity.

Note: Perhaps this is standard practice with other formats too (Micro SD?). And I would question all the same.

Note2: I note that the W850i still use the Memory Stick Duo Pro. I am not sure if that phone came before or after the K800. If it was released after, then I suppose that Sony would like to further differentiate the W-series and the K-series in this manner.