My Galaxy Phone

“As we have said previously, these cases have never been about setting a court precedent; they are about law enforcement’s ability and need to access evidence on devices pursuant to lawful court orders and search warrants,” Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said in a statement.

The Justice Department had sought to compel the Cupertino, California-based Apple to cooperate in the drug case, even though it had recently dropped a fight to compel Apple to help break into an iPhone used by a gunman in a December attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people. In that case, a still-unidentified third-party came forward with a technique that managed to open the phone. That entity has not been named, and the Justice Department has not revealed the method used.

Representatives for Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday night.

The tech giant had been fighting the Justice Department’s attempts and said in court papers last week the government’s request was extraordinary because there is likely minimal evidentiary value of any data on the phone and that Congress never authorized it to pursue such requests through the 1789 All Writs Act. It also said there is no proof Apple’s assistance was necessary and that the same technique the FBI was using to get information from the phone in California might work with the drug case phone.

But prosecutors had argued that the government needed Apple’s assistance to access the data, which they contended was “authorized to search by warrant.”

On Thursday, several law enforcement groups filed arguments in Brooklyn federal court saying they feared the public will stop aiding police if Apple is allowed to refuse to give up information from the phone in the drug case. The groups said they supported the government’s efforts to try to reverse a magistrate judge’s ruling earlier this year for Apple.

It’s the nightmare of every photo-happy vacationer. You’re in a spectacular locale, phone in hand, ready to snap that once-in-a-lifetime shot the beautiful vista/ocean/ice cap/festival before you, but there’s a problem — you’ve run out of memory. You bought a 16GB iPhone way back when to save a chunk of change, and now you’re stuck with it and its tiny storage until it’s time to upgrade.

But maybe not. Storage company SanDisk has taken the wraps off the iXpand Flash Drive, a flash drive that promises to put your mobile storage fears to bed.

The new iXpand’s pretty self-explanatory, really. It’s a sleek, compact dongle that expands (get it?) the storage capacity of your iPhone by plugging into it via a flexible, fold-out Lightning swivel that accommodates “most” hard and soft cases. When used in conjunction with SanDisk’s iXpand Drive app — an app that’s been “completely redesigned” in response to feedback, SanDisk says — future pics and videos you capture on the attached device save automatically to the iXpand instead of your phone’s internal storage. Nifty.

Related: The iKlips Duo gives your iPhone extra storage and sports a USB plug for faster transfers

The iXpand’s got transfer features too, for the times wireless isn’t reliable. A USB 3.0 connector provides access to your camera roll, contacts, videos, and music from a PC, plus lets you perform all file operations you’d expect with a flash drive — e.g., copying, cutting, pasting, and deleting. You can play back media files from your iPhone/iXpand and use SanDisk’s built-in encryption software to password-protect them, in addition, and upload any mementos you’d like shared directly to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

The iXpand comes in 16GB ($49.99), 32GB ($69.99), and 64GB ($89.99), and 128GB ($129.99) flavors, and is compatible with pretty much every iOS device that packs a lightning port: every generation of iPad mini, the iPad Air and Air 2, the iPad Pro, the iPhone 5 and later, and the 5th-gen iPod. It’s available at BestBuy.com, Amazon, and SanDisk.com now.