By Stephen Schenck | August 1, 2011 11:26 AM
When Seagate introduced its GoFlex Satellite WiFi-enabled battery-powered portable hard drive, it made perfect sense to see the company release an iPhone app to access your data directly from your smartphone. After all, with the limited, non-expandable storage of Apple devices, the Satellite’s extra 500GB of storage could go a long way to make the iPhone a next-level media hub. While it is possible to access the drive’s files over a web interface, other smartphones lacked a custom app solution, as Apple was privy to. Now Android users can join in the fun, as well, with the release of Seagate’s GoFlex Media app for Android.
The GoFlex Satellite costs about $200 and has a battery capable of 25 hours of standby life, and around 5 hours of continuous data streaming. To help save on battery life, the app has a setting to temporarily download files to your smartphone if you have the space; that way, you can enjoy a large file like a movie without the drive needing to be at full power the whole time.
Sure, it’s one more gadget to carry around, and you’re going to have to stay on top of keeping it charged, but the sheer storage space alone might be enough to win you over, especially if you want to stay fully-saturated with lots of media at your fingertips when traveling somewhere that has spotty data service.
