At its heart, the Zen Touch 2 is a PMP, capable of playing both music and video, which should be reasonably easy on the eye thanks to its 3.2″ touchscreen.

But when you look more closely at the features of the Zen Touch 2, you start to wonder why it’s a PMP and not a mobile phone.

Let me explain…

Features of the Creative Zen Touch 2

The Creative Zen Touch 2 comes with the following features:

• 3.2″ touchscreen
• 2 megapixel camera
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi
• Web browser
• GPS
• Compass
• Accelerometer
• FM Radio
• composite video-out
• microSD slot
• 8GB – 16GB of internal storage
• Android 2.1 (soon to be upgraded to 2.2)

Does that sound like a PMP player to you or a mobile phone?!

The fact that the Zen Touch 2 uses Android is the reason why it’s so overloaded with features. Out of the box, Android comes with a Web browser and supports all the other hardware features of the Zen Touch 2, such as GPS, compass, etc/, so once Creative had decided to use Android, it took very little work to include all the other btis and bobs.

Great features, or overkill?

But as an overall user experience, I can’t help but feel that it’s overkill. I already have all of those features on my mobile phone. The camera, in particular, is unlikely to be of much use, as it’s only 2 megapixels. Equally, I’m not sure I’d ever GPS from my PMP player when I have it on my phone (and maybe Creative thought of this, too, as you can buy a cheaper version of the Zen Touch 2 without GPS).

Even more bizarre is the fact that you can’t use Google Maps (which the Android-based Zen Touch 2 comes with) without a data connection, but because it’s not a phone, that data connection will only come from Wi-Fi. So unless you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot such as coffee shop, the only time you can use GPS is when you’re home or at work!!

It’s not cheap, either. There’s an 8GB version without GPS for £149.99, an 8GB version with GPS for £159.99, and a 16GB version without GPS, also for £159.99.

Those prices are very similar to a low-end Android mobile phone, which provides all of the same features, but also throws in the ability to make phone calls. Indeed, you can buy the HTC Wildfire for just £6.67 a month, and that comes wirth a 5 megapixel camera and HTC’s glorious Sense user interface.

So, although at fglance the Zen Touch 2 seems like a super-featured PMP, in reality the features aren’t needed and all they do is increase the price to make it less competitive than a more feature-rich mobile phone. Sure, the sound quality will be better than the phone’s but if all you want is good sound quality, it’s proably better to buy a good quality MP3 player with limited features and leave all the whizzy stuff to your phone.

[Source: Pocket Lint]

In other words, it’s a DVD player, digitial photo frame, home cinema, radio and an MP3 player! Not like Samsung to be so modest with one of their new products!

None of this is what makes the IceTouch stand out, though. As you can see from the pics, the IceTouch’s screen is its unique feature – it’s transparent!

The reason for this is that it’s an AMOLED screen, which makes it super-sharp, crystal clear – and viewable from the front and the back, as you can see form the video below.

It’s also the world’s first touchscreen based on AMOLED technology (that’s more like it – this is Samsung, there had to be a “world’s first” there somewhere!). This makes accessing all your content extremely easy, particularly when the user interface is a variant of the same Touchwiz interface that Samsung uses in its mobile phones.

The IceTouch MP3 player supports tonnes of content formats, so you should be able to watch and listen to whatever yuo want. In particular, it supports the following formats:

Audio

• MP3
• WMA
• OGG
• FLAC
• AAC
• M4A
• WAV
• MP3 HD

Video

• MPEG4
• WMV
• H.264
• Xvid
• Divx

With 8GB and 16GB variants, the glorious looking Samsung IceTouch MP3 player will be out sometime in the first half of 2010.

[Source: Engadget]

In other words, it’s the first PMP from Sony that is a genuine contender to the iPod Touch.

My first reaction on hearing this news was “about bloody time!” I mean, the iPod Touch is a fantastic device, but it’s been around for a while, and the user interface that it uses, coming as it does from the iPhone, has been around for even longer. It’s not like Sony didn’t know what was coming, so I’ve not idea what took them so long in developing a genuine contender.

Fortunately, though, the contender is here now, and it’s a beauty. With a 3″ OLED screen that’s actually better than the iPod Touch’s while drawing less power, the Sony X-Series is the smaller device of the two, and arguably looks the more handsome.

It has better sound quality as well, thanks to Sony’s legendary audio electronics, with completely digital internals and Sony’s advanced Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (which does exactly what it says on the tin). There’s even an extremely effective noise cancellation system, which removes any extraneous noise from the background, ensuring you get crystal clear music wherever you are.

It’s not about the music though…

Unfortunately, MP3 players are not about the music these days.

Sure they have to sound good, but it’s how they look and the range of features that they have that also helps them sell.

In this, the iPod Touch killed the competition.

With Wi-Fi and Web browsing taken straight from the iPhone, and with the iPhone’s amazing user interface, no other PMP player even came close.

Well they do now.

Sony has seen the light and has also included Wi-Fi and Web browsing into its Walkman X-Series.

Not only can you download tunes from the Internet, but you can also watch YouTube videos wherever there’s a Wi-Fi connection.

Sony takes on Apple’s interface

Best of all, though, must be the Walkman X-Series’s user interface. Fully touch sensitive, it does exactly what the iPod Touch’s interface does, and then some.

There’s a CoverFlow equivalent, which lets you thumb your way through album art to select your tune; and there’s also a nifty feature for fast forwarding through videos – when the video’s playing, simply slide your finger forwards or backwards over it to jump forwards or backwards in time.

Check out the video below to see for yourself just how well this works.

Summary

In short, Sony has done what they should have done years ago – developed a Walkman that can truly take on the iPod Touch at its own game. Apple set the bar amazingly high when it released the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it’s only now that we’re seeing genuine competitors finally emerge. Let battle commence!

The Sony Walkman X-Series release date is set for summer 2009, priced $299 for the 16GB model and $399 for the 32GB model.

[Source: Akihabara News,Stuff.tv]

The iPod Touch made existing MP3 players look as outdated as mobile phones when the iPhone came out, but this may not be the case much longer. The Samsung P3 is just one of a new generation of MP3 and MP4 players that offer a brand new touch-based user interface that brings them far closer to the iPod Touch than ever before.

Samsung P3 MP4 player in detail

So what does the Samsung P3 offer? Well, obviously an MP3 player, and a nice set of features for organizing your music. You can access your favourite tunes instantly, for example, through the use of a Music Hot Touch Key, while the touchscreen user interface lets you choose tunes by pushing virtual keys and swiping your finger across the screen. As its a haptic interface, the device vibrates whenever you push a virtual key, giving you instant feedback of your actions.

The screen itself is a 3″ widescreen 16:9 format, which is useful for watching videos on, which you can watch in MPEG4, WMV and SVI formats.

The P3 also sports integrated speakers with Samsung’s amusingly-named DNSe 3.0 sound enhancement technology, and comes with storage of up to 32GB.

As you can see form the pictures of the P3, it also offers a variety of other features, including FM radio, several games, address book, alarm, calculator – in fact, the types of thing you’d find in a mobile phone.

Indeed, the P3′s user interface is called the EmoTure touch interface, which by the looks of it, seems very similar to the Samsung Tocco touchscreen mobile phone. Looking at the P3, then, I can’t help but feel it’s a top-end Samsung phone that’s had its mobile phone internals ripped out – but then, that’s no bad thing!

The user interface certainly looks good, and the brushed aluminium of the device’s body makes it exude a cool and stylish look.

No pricing or release date has yet been announced, which is annoying, as the price will surely dictate how successful the Samsung P3 will be compared to the iPod Touch.

[Source: Electronista]

A pico projector, if you’ve not heard the term before, is a tiny video projector that can project an image from a device onto a wall or other flat surface. In the case of the MBP200, the 2.2″ image you see on the screen can be projected onto a wall with a viewing area of 50″

This is the perfect combination of technologies – the device itself is small enough to fit in your pocket, while the image it projects is large enough to actually see!

Pico projector technology has been around in prototype form for the past two years or so, but this year at CES we’re finally starting to see some real products being released. Several stand-alone pico projectors were on show, but Samsung scooped them all by including a PMP within theirs.

It was assumed that pico projectors would find their natural home within mobile phones, but I guess the electronics and power requirements of a mobile phone + projector are too great for one device at the moment. A PMP, in contrast, doesn’t need the energy-sapping demands of a wireless radio, so it makes perfect sense to use it as the first device to include a pico projector.

Once the technology is proven, it can then be refined and integrated into a mobile phone, probably in 2010.

Samsung MBP200 specifications

Back to the Samsung MBP200 pico projector PMP though. Here are it specs:

• Features: File viewer, picture viewer, music player, video player
• Projection Panel: HVGA (480*320)
• LCD: 2.2
  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2009/01/08/samsung-mbp200-the-worlds-first-pico-projector-pmp/feed/ 0 http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/25/lyra-slider-the-first-pmp-to-use-sliding-technology/ http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/25/lyra-slider-the-first-pmp-to-use-sliding-technology/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:57:14 +0000 admin http://mediamentalism.com/?p=619
  Mobile phones have been using the concept of sliding for a long time but it has never caught on in the portable media player arena before. Well this is about to change with the new Lyra Slider, a basic PMP which has used the concept of a sliding front to shrink in size without having to sacrifice controls.
  RCA
  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/25/lyra-slider-the-first-pmp-to-use-sliding-technology/feed/ 0 http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/23/spotlight-archos-multimedia-machines/ http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/23/spotlight-archos-multimedia-machines/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:02:10 +0000 Mike Evans http://mediamentalism.com/?p=611
  Archos Multimedia – two words that are almost synonymous with each other, as when you think multimedia player, you instantly think of Archos (and if you don’t, you really should!).

  We’ve put together a brief overview of the latest Archos players and recommend which Archos Multimedia player you should buy.
  

  Archos Multimedia Players

  Archos are probably best known for their Portable Media Players (PMP). There’s still lots of demand for their old 04 range of PMPs, but right now it’s their 05 range that’s making waves.

  Archos 105

  
  The baby of the bunch, the Archos 105 clearly competes with the iPod with Nano. With a tiny 1.8″ OLED screen and just 2GB of storage,the Archos 105 is best thought of as an MP3 player with a bit of video.

  Fortunately, this is reflected in its price, as you can buy the Archos 105 for just

  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/23/spotlight-archos-multimedia-machines/feed/ 0 http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/19/new-pmp-with-touchscreen-that-pushes-back/ http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/19/new-pmp-with-touchscreen-that-pushes-back/#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:10:38 +0000 admin http://mediamentalism.com/?p=589 http://mediamentalism.com/?p=583

  3M have beaten all their competition to the post and announced the launch of their MPro110 pocket projector. It will go on sale this month, to be more precise the 30th September 2008. This little projector was reviewed by PopSci and the results were pretty good. Through the use of LCoS display technology the MPro110 is able to display VGA (640 x 480) resolution. So no high definition, but considering the size it is not that surprising; no HD yet but it will not be long before there is a HD pocket projector, technology is moving very fast and the future of mobile technology is looking great.

  Many companies have been promising pocket projectors with exotic technologies such as lasers and microscopic mirrors or Light Blue optics with holograms, but 3M have won the day by keeping it simple. 3M have just used LEDs to light their projector which are energy efficient and don’t need a fan so the MPro110 runs nice and quietly.

  The LED is bright enough to be seen in a brightly lit room but few movie scenes were deemed “indecipherable.”, having said that in a dark room it could project an image up to 50-inches and so offers the ultimate cheap-o home cinema. Weighing just 0.3 lbs and measures less than an inch high, 3M’s MPro110 is perfect for travelling presenters.

  The 3M MPro110 will retail for about $359, it doesn’t have internal speakers but then who wants to listen to the tiny sound coming from micro speakers anyway, it is far better to use an external set.

  [Source: PopSci]

  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/16/is-that-a-projector-in-your-pocket/feed/ 1 http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/15/kenwood-compete-with-apple-ipod/ http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/15/kenwood-compete-with-apple-ipod/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:14:23 +0000 admin http://mediamentalism.com/?p=572

  Kenwood are on the attack with 2 new digital audio players (DAP); these little critters pack 2GB or 4GB internal memory depending on the model you go for. Both versions have something the iPod nano doesn’t, a Micro SD slot. This small addition adds up to a big difference, with a Micro SD card you are able to expand the memory of these DAPs and more than double their capacity.

  Kenwood have worked hard on these new DAPs and their hard work has paid off, their improved DAC really enhances the sound quality and means listening to your music, whether it is in MP3, WMA or ACC, is a real pleasure.

  The use of a 1.5-inch OLED rather than a LCD means these DAPs are able to squeeze a massive 54 hours of continuous play out of a single charge . Not sure if there is enough to give Apple a real challenge but Kenwood is definitely giving it a go.

  [Source: Akibahara News]

  ]]> http://mediamentalism.com/2008/09/15/kenwood-compete-with-apple-ipod/feed/ 0