expandable storage
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Motorola's bezel-free One Hyper has a 32-megapixel pop-up selfie camera
Lenovo-owned Motorola has unveiled the One Hyper, an ambitious mid-range phone with a near bezel-free display and some pretty nice camera features. It packs a 32-megapixel, pop-up front camera that delivers as much resolution as you'd ever need for selfie shots and retracts automatically if you drop the phone. It also features a rear 64-megapixel camera that delivers either high resolution or low-light sensitivity when you enable the Night Vision mode and Quad Pixel tech.
Engadget giveaway: win an iPad Air 2 and iXpand drive courtesy of SanDisk!
Let's face it, devices offer more storage space than ever, but our expectations (and file sizes) are growing too. If you'd like to free up some room and quickly transfer files between iDevices running iOS 7.1 or greater, SanDisk's new iXpand could be a welcome addition to your arsenal. This flash drive has USB and Lightning connectors for high-speed data transfers, and with its companion app, you can even watch AVI and WMV clips on your iPhone or iPad without conversion. The company has provided us with a 32GB iXpand for one lucky Engadget reader this week, and they'll also get a new iPad Air 2 to round out the deal. All you need to do is head down to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning this spacious tablet and flash drive combo. Winner: congratulations to Thomas N. (New Port Richey, FL).
A better way to store media on Microsoft Surface RT: SD cards, junction points and the command prompt
Expandable storage is a wonderful thing, but its implementation can sometimes leave something to be desired. Take Windows 8, for instance -- its photo, movie and music apps leverage Windows libraries to access users' media collections, but won't allow users to include removable storage in the app-accessed party of indexed folders. Sure, you can keep all your media on one device, but half it will need to be accessed in a slightly roundabout way. This simply wasn't good enough for Toni Fowlie, who wanted all of her media -- from both her Surface's local storage and its microSD card -- to appear in the same library. She used an old NTFS feature to trick Windows into thinking her microSD was part of her device's local storage, and her efforts are worth sharing.
Ask Engadget: What's the best way to store my media collection?
We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget inquiry is from Michael, who is suffering from a storage crunch. If you're looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com. "I'm a bargain-basement kinda guy, and I've picked up lots of DVDs cheaply during the sale season(s). I was planning to rip my collection with Handbrake so I could watch them on my iPad, but my 1TB HDD is already close to being maxed out! Is there a better solution out there than just buying a 2TB HDD now, waiting a year and buying a 3TB HDD when the prices come down? Is there a cheap RAID-style system that plays nicely with my iTunes? Please help!" You can pick up a standalone 3TB external HDD for between $150 and $200, Or you could take the leap and set up an iTunes home server, perhaps using the cheapest Synology DiskStation, which is $200 plus the cost of the drives. That way you can get a 4TB iTunes server for just under $400. You could also snag a Drobo that'll give you the same storage options with significantly increased expandability, up to 16TB in the future. That said, perhaps our friendly readers know a way to tame this man's ever growing media collection, so if you've already set up your own system, why not share your knowledge in the comments below?
