I am not entirely sure that my mobile phone needs “premium” memory cards. I can see the value of having more storage space for music, videos and images but there come s appoint when a bit more speed doesn’t really help. And in this case it seems premium just means an included USB adapter.

SanDisk announced a new line of mobile memory cards today that it calls the industry’s first premium memory cards. The line is complete and has flavors for many different brands of mobile phones. Available memory cards include Mobile Ultra microSD/SDHC and Ultra M2 cards.

SanDisk has announced from the CES floor it has begun to provide samples of a 12GB microSDHC memory card to phone manufacturers for testing and evaluation. This 12GB capacity marks what SanDisk says is the world’s largest for mobile phone storage.

A 12GB microSDHC card represents around a 50 percent boost in storage capacity over SanDisk’s current 8GB card. The card reportedly can hold, for example, a combination of 1,500 songs, 3,600 photos and 24.5 hours of video.

The beginning of a new year signals the event most consumer electronics geeks have been waiting for: the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re planning on putting a lot of coverage on this exciting event, including the creation of a category from which you can get the latest news on product announcements. We kick off this category with pre-show announcements - the first of which is a new USB flash drive from SanDisk which will offer automatic online backup of its data.

The SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus, priced at around $60, will offer an online backup service compatible with Windows and free for six months before having you incur a $30 a year charge. The 4GB USB flash drive will, after having new files copied to it, automatically back them up to an online account created by the user. An Internet connection is required of course and if one is not available the drive will wait until it detects a live connection through its host computer before backing up new files.

Today SanDisk has launched its 8GB microSDHC and M2 flash memory cards and is kicking off the release of the new high capacity cards with a “Sunset Strip Block Party”. The event is called “Wake up Your Phone” and will be held at Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California trying to raise the awareness to the many mobile phone owners do indeed have a slot in their mobile devices but may not be completely aware of it, or that SanDisk has something to fill it.

SanDisk is calling it a ’slot education’ program (wow) boasting that the new 8GB capacity cards can turn their boring old mobile phones into a fun-filled party gadget with the ability to store over 2,000 songs, 5,000 high-res pics or 5 hours of high quality MPEG-4 video that they can enjoy and share with others.

SanDisk on Thursday simultaneously filed 3 lawsuits against 25 different companies including LG for patent infringement on flash memory products. SanDisk is looking for unspecified damages and a permanent injunction and a permanent exclusion order that would keep these manufacturers from importing their products to the U.S.

The companies targeted in the lawsuit are mostly Asian and aside from LG Electronics also include popular names like Kingston Technology, Silicon Motion Technology, Apacer Technology, Imation Corp, Buffalo and PNY Technologies among others. The suit is for the technology that controls the communication between the memory and the device in which the memory is mounted on, such as flash memory cards, thumb drives and players based on flash memory.

Along with SanDisk’s launch of the TakeTV video player today the company also unveiled a beta version of their new online video distribution platform called Fanfare. Fanfare not only works in conjunction with TakeTV to bring digital video content to your TV, the TakeTV device is actually required in order to take advantage of the Fanfare online service.

This beta version is intended for the US audience only at this time and is currently offering around 85 different titles of content from CBS, Jaman.com Inc., Showtime Networks, Smithsonian Networks, The Weather Channel and TV Guide Broadband. Titles currently include CSI, Survivor China, Dexter and Sleeper Cell but are expected to increase as the weeks and months progress, according to SanDisk. The company hopes to soon have thousands of hours of programming available soon, and expects that many current-season TV episodes could even be offered for free, supported by advertisements.

Today SanDisk has launched the Sansa TakeTV video player, a bridge solution designed to easily bring your downloaded video content from your computer to your television. The product was formerly announced as USBTV back in January but today went on sale through the Sansa website as TakeTV. The product launch is also coinciding with the launch of a beta service called Fanfare which is an online distribution platform where SanDisk will provide video content that can be downloaded to your PC.

The TakeTV device is actually quite simple. It sticks with the technology that SanDisk knows well - flash memory. According to the company, using the TakeTV device is as easy as using a USB flash drive. Users can simply plug the USB port into their computer and download video content to it. Once downloaded the device can be placed in a cradle which is connected through standard A/V connections to a television and by pressing play on the integrated remote control owners can watch the stored video on their TV.

SanDisk knows those who own high performance digital cameras demand memory cards offering better transfer speeds and storage capacities. The company thinks it can meet that need with its new SanDisk Extreme III 8GB, priced at around $180.

The SanDisk Extreme III 8GB memory card is in the SDHC format and comes bundled with a SanDisk MicroMate SDHC Reader. A typical Extreme III 8GB card can store more than 4,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 16 hours of MPEG 4 video. Transfer speeds are rated at 20MB per second.

SanDisk is getting into ExpressCard technology with the unveiling today of a new related product line up. The first offering of the SanDisk Express line is the SanDisk Express Card, available in November.

The SanDisk Express Card is targeted towards professional videographers and photographers who record with gear which uses ExpressCards rather than magnetic tape, hard discs or optical discs. The card will be available in 8GB and 16GB sizes, priced at around $500 and $900 respectively. One will, says SanDisk, be able to get recording time for high-definition video capture, at 35 megabits per second, to be approximately 30 minutes on the 8GB card and 60 minutes on the 16GB card.

SanDisk is teaming with the Alzheimer’s Association to unveil special purple colored flash memory accessories which you can purchase to help fund Alzheimer’s research. The two products available through August of next year are a 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card and 2GB Cruzer Micro drive, priced at around $45 and $40 respectively.

The 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card and 2GB Cruzer Micro drive products are typical of their categories in SanDisk’s line up. The Cruzer Micro in particular sports a retractable USB connector, comes loaded with U3 applications, is enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost and will work on the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

SanDisk announced the release of the final version of the Sansa View today, apparently dumping the original View design the company had unveiled earlier this year. This new design however may make a serious challenger for the latest iPod Nano from Apple with a larger 2.4″ display, up to 16GB of storage and more.

The View supports playback of MP3, protected and unprotected WMA, WAV, audio along with MPEG4, WMV, H.264 and DivX video playback at a nice 30 frames per second. It will also show JPEG photos and play Audible files. In addition to just playing your stored media, this player also packs in an FM tuner with the ability to remember up to 20 preset stations, and also houses a voice recorder with a built-in microphone. And, the storage can even expanded from that already impressive 16GB of storage with a microSD/SDHC slot. The 2.4-inch TFT color display has a 320×240 resolution and the rechargeable battery promises 35 hours of continuous audio playback, or 7 hours of video.

SanDisk today announced it would begin making available an 8GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory card for use in mobile phones. The cards should be available for use by the end of the year, though no specific price points have been set.

The 8GB SanDisk Memory Stick Micro cards are effectively the largest capacity M2 cards in the world at the moment, according to SanDisk. The cards will allow consumers to listen to more than 2,000 digital songs, store more than 5,000 high-resolution pictures, and view up to 5 hours of MPEG-4 videos.

SanDisk today unveiled a multi-card ExpressCard adapter for use with notebook computers which sport ExpressCard slots. This new device is priced at around $30 and should be available in September.

The SanDisk Multi Card ExpressCard Adapter slides into the ExpressCard slot of a laptop computer without need for software or drivers to install. The adapter supports six card formats: SD, SDHC, MultiMediaCard, MMCplus, Memory Stick Duo, Memory Stick PRO Duo and Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo.

SanDisk has announced a doubling of the drive capacity of their SanDisk Cruzer Micro flash drive, brining the total capacity to 8 Gigabytes from the previous maximum of 4GB.

This capacity equates to around 1,600 high res photos or 2,000 songs on this single, 2-inch long, half an ounce USB Flash drive. The drive, like the previous Cruzer’s, features the retractable USB connector so there is no cap needed and more importantly no cap to loose. The connector retracts into the drive when not in use. When …

How tiny is the Sansa Clip, SanDisk’s latest MP3 player? That photo above doesn’t lie: the Clip is double the height of a quarter or almost the same size as your average golf ball. The Sansa Clip plays just MP3 and WMA formats but it does have a nice selection of features including a built-in FM radio, voice recorder, OLED screen and a 15-hour battery life.

It will come in four colors (black, pink, red and blue) and arrive in stores next month in either 1 GB ($40) or 2 GB …