I would suggest the creation of a cell phone that has a retractable USB male connector that would attach to a PC and download/upload, for example, .pdf and, doc. files -- types of files beside the standard phone books and pictures that are now transferred from phone to PC and back. To reduce weight related stress on the USB connector, the cell phone could connect to the PC with female to male USB port cable, or the phones retracting USB connector could be hinged so that the weight of the cell phone would lay on, and the weight of the phone would be transferred to, the object the PC or laptop is sitting on, rather than put stress on the retractable USB connector. This is assuming the device does not already exist.-- Sunstone, Jun 14 2007 I'm pretty sure when you plug your phone into your computer via USB the memory card is generally accessible through Finder/Explorer as a Removeable Disk. You can then put whatever you want on it, regardless of it being able to be displayed on your phone, and copy it on to somewhere else. I certainly can do this with mine (though a small amount of software might have been installed, I can't remember).-- theleopard, Jun 14 2007 If you look on the Sony Ericsson website, many of their phones feature "USB Mass Storage" which is, I'd guess, what this is.-- hippo, Jun 14 2007 My phone has a micro-SD chip in it, which it uses for photos and MP3s. I bought an adaptor shaped like a flash drive, which takes the chip and lets me use it in a USB port and store any file I want on the chip. I have to carry the adaptor with me, so I don't bother to do that.
My previous phone did much as this idea suggests, but this one doesn't work with a cable--the phone company wants me to pay to upload stuff.
In my experience, it's good to have computer connection to my phone, but only for phone-usable files, such as photos and music (now that sounds odd).
As for using the phone as a storage device, I'd say it's only worth it if you have an adaptor/cable at home and at the office, or if you make a retractable cable that is really compact.
A flash drive is smaller than a USB cable, and looks a lot less geeky.
From the Sony-Ericsson site: "Extend a device’s memory with the smallest memory card on the market, Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) (up to 1GB). Adaptors are available if you want to use with Memory Stick PRO-compatible products." And they sell USB cables for file transfers.-- baconbrain, Jun 16 2007 I would only want this if the phone was really tiny or extremely light weight.-- BJS, Jun 16 2007 How is this not widely known to exist?. As theleopard pointed out, I have a windows mobile CE smartphone with a 1Gb card. It plugs to PC via USB and ActiveSync will allow folder access for any file transfer.I have a PDF viewer, MS Word and Excel mobile and Windows Media on the phone (I can sync directly from media on my PC and d/l to storage.-- gnomethang, Jun 16 2007 random, halfbakery