Seagate Introduces Wireless Storage for iOS Devices

Though the iPhone has certainly evolved into a top-notch smartphone, it’s not completely perfect. In fact, one of its major downfalls (as Android-toting skeptics are quick to point out) is the lack of expandable memory.

The iPhone comes in 2 flavors, 16GB and 32GB. Chose wisely, because whatever you decide, you’ll pretty much be stuck with. With no SD card slot, many users are forced into unreliable cloud solutions for extra space. Now for the alternative…

Seagate, the hard drive experts, unveiled their new mobile external hard drive this morning called GoFlex Satellite. What’s so unique about this external storage unit?

“Seagate today announced GoFlex Satellite mobile wireless storage, the first battery-powered hard drive to wirelessly extend the storage capacity of any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device.”

The lithium polymer battery will deliver up to 5 hours of continuously streaming video, with a 25 hour stand-by time. The hard drive has a progressive download feature that temporarily loads the video on your iOS device, so the GoFlex can go into stand-by mode.

The Satellite comes with USB 3.0 and the accompanying sync software is configured to only load media on the storage device that is compatible with iOS. The unit has a capacity of 500GB and is now available for pre-order for $199.

Seagate’s press release also notes that their GoFlex product will serve media to up to 3 devices wirelessly. It claims you don’t need cables or the Internet to share media, so I’m assuming it creates its own Wi-Fi network, ad-hoc style.

Although I typically keep my 16GB iPhone full, I haven’t ever needed external storage space. And I certainly don’t need another battery to worry about charging with a product like this. Some users might find this to be a better solution than cloud storage though, especially those trying to stream video over poor wireless connections.

What do you think? Is the GoFlex Satellite a worthy cloud competitor?