Memory Cards Compatibility with your handset

  Cellphones are increasingly taking up the functions of a computer for checking e-mails and office documents, browsing internet and playing games. Also they are being used for listening to music, watching video clips, taking pictures etc. So one thing that is becoming very important is the size of its memory. Internal memory available on a mobile phone varies from 5MB to 128MB. But this is not sufficient for handling multimedia files like music, pictures and video. That is why seperate Memory Cards are needed. Most of the advanced cellphones these days come with a Memory Slot where you can insert the extra Memory Card. This memory slot is sometimes hidden under the battery, so you have to switch off the cellphone, remove the battery and then insert the memory card. Some manufacturers have eased out this problem by providing the memory slot on the side of the handset with a small cover. So inserting and removing memory cards has become as easy as you change floppy in a computer.
 
Things to be kept in mind while purchasing an extra memory card: 1. Compatibility with your handset. The popular memory cards used in cellphones are SD (Secure Digital), MMC (Multi Media Card) and Memory Stick Pro. Nokia uses MMC or RS DV MMC  (Reduced Size Dual Voltage MultiMediaCard) while SonyEricsson uses its proprietary memory stick. Most of the other brands like Motorola, Panasonic, Sagem, O2, I-mate etc use SD cards.
2. The storage capacity. It depends upon what capacity your handset can handle. Some phones do not support higher capacity cards. Memory cards come in capacities like 128MB, 256MB or 512MB etc. More capacity means higher price.
3. Always buy these cards from direct company showrooms or authorised dealers only as there are lots of spurious memory cards in the market which can be cheaper but you may get cheated as the failure rate of these cards is very high and there is no guarantee of its actual capacity.
You can use many memory cards if your requirement for capacity is more.