Very soon many cell phones might store as many as 2,000 songs - or enough map data for a built-in GPS to guide you in any place on the planet.

These mobile dreams took another step closer to reality Sunday, as Samsung Electronics announced it had started shipping samples of its highest-density flash memory available on the open market - 8 GB. The previous highest density of Samsung's moviNAND chips was 4 GB.

This high-density version of the company's moviNAND line consists of four 50-nanometer, 16-gigabit flash modues, a high-speed MultiMediaCard (MMC) controller, and related firmware.

While the new memory is designed to be used in electronics devices, it also can be used in removable media cards for memory expansion, and it can transfer data at a rate of 52 MB/sec, twice the rate of the 4-GB chip.

Smaller, Cheaper, More Memory. Samsung explained there are several advantages to the new high-density solution: it is 20% smaller than other flash-based memory and it can reduce the need for an external memory card slot, making for smaller mobile devices.

In addition, by integrating the NAND flash with a standard MMC controller, mobile devices will be able to be more quickly and at less cost developed than other solutions.

"You can never be too rich, too thin...or have too much memory," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis. "GPS is certainly a growing category, as is video on the phone, and they both require storage. But the major news is for music phones."

He specified that there were already phones with 4 GB of storage, although not that many and generally not in the U.S. - except for the so far unlaunched iPhone, with 4 and 8 GB of capacity.

Battery Power. The vast majority of music phones cannot play music right out of the box," he said, alluding to the fact that most music-player phones are not shipped with a great deal of internal storage, although there are some exceptions like the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic. "The ability to put 4 or 8 GB and enough songs on your phone so it can become your primary music device, with multiple playlists - that's been lacking in the market."

He added that a key question is whether those who want a music phone are also willing to pay much more for this privilege. And, as memory for mobile devices continues to increase, another issue becomes battery power.

"If you drain your battery on your music player listening to music all day, then you simply don't have music," he said. "But if you do so on your music phone, you also don't have a phone."

Samsung said it plans to begin mass production of the 8-GB moviNAND chips by the end of this year.