Filed under: Portable Audio
He who giveth can also taketh away -- our parents used to use that line when threatening our young lives, but in the case of manufacturing giant National Semiconductor, it also holds true for iPods. You'll recall that in a Filed under: Portable Audio
Usually when MobiBlu breaks us off with a new DAP, it’s got at least one feature to set it apart from the pack — see the super-small Cube and Cube 2 or seemingly perpetual motion-powered B153 as examples. But if you were looking for the company’s new DAH-2200 to hit the scene as the “world’s biggest/smallest/best something or other,” then you’re in for a disappointment, as this flash-based player’s got nothing that we haven’t seen before. Specifically, its 1GB capacity, 27.5 gram weight, and 13-hour battery life make it neither the smallest, longest-running, nor most capacious model out there, and the tiny 2-color OLED screen isn’t all that impressive either. No word on pricing here, but since it’s likely that the 2200 will never be sold outside of Korea — and it’s not really hot enough to import — you’re probably not all that concerned with such details anyway.
[Via DAPreview]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
DAP manufacturer Transcend has been know to offer some rather unconventional designs over the years — see the T.sonic 310 and 620 for reference — but we’d sure like to know what went on in the focus group that convinced the company to craft their newest player like a sparsely-decorated mint tin. Besides its unusual appearance, though, the T.sonic 530 is almost exactly the same model as the much more traditional-looking 520 we saw earlier this year, sporting 512MB or 1GB of flash memory
[Via MobileWhack]
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Wireless
Since Apple's still showing no sign of caving into consumer demand and releasing a Bluetooth-equipped iPod (even a proprietary solution would be a good start -- anything to get rid of that annoying white cord), more and more manufacturers are looking to fill the void with their own workarounds, and now headset giant Jabra has announced plans to throw its own hat into the ring as well. Jabra's "hat" will come in the form of a dock connector-compatible adapter called the A125s, which will work with both the video and nano versions of the iPod, and promises 10 hours of playback or 250 hours of standby time before recharging becomes an issue. Unfortunately for exercise enthusiasts, these won't work at the same time as your Nike+iPod kit, so runners won't be able to cut the cord unless Nike releases its own pair of headphones. You can expect this adapter -- which will join the likes of the D.Muse, icombi, and naviPlay -- to retail for around $75 once it hits stores sometime this August.Read | Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | CommentsFiled under: Portable Audio
had already investigated and found no problems with the Chinese factory that has come to be known as "iPod City," BusinessWeek is reporting that the probe is still in fact underway, with an Apple representative reiterating that the company takes "allegations of noncompliance very seriously." According to spokesperson Steve Dowling, Apple is in the midst of a "thorough audit" of the Hon Hai-owned plant, which had recently admitted to breaking labor laws concerning overtime, but which continues to deny other allegations contained in the original Daily Mail exposé. Specifically, Dowling says that the auditors are looking into "employee working and living conditions," conducting interviews with workers and their managers (separately, we hope), and generally making sure that the factory lives up to a supplier code of conduct that supposedly "sets the bar higher than accepted industry standards." This is all very good news indeed, but now Apple faces yet another hurdle in the form of a jaded public highly skeptical of corporate-speak, meaning that whether the investigation turns up violations or not, the company may still have a hard time convincing folks to accept the auditors' final verdict.Filed under: Portable Audio
While XM is already offering its customers live feeds on-the-go through the well-received Pioneer Inno and Samsung Helix, rival Sirius has been rather slow to the starting gate in this department, as its flagship S50 portable only plays back content that was recorded while it was docked. Now, however, it looks like Sirius is finally on the verge of releasing its first DAP with built-in satellite receiver, and Tech Effect even managed to snap a picture of the device when CEO Mel Karmazin briefly flashed it during his keynote at this week’s Convergence 2.0 conference. Unfortunately Mel only broke out the chunky-looking player to illustrate a point he was making about the iPod
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Transportation
Japanese manufacturer Logitec — who, as we found out the hard way, is in no way related to the American Swiss firm Logitech — has just announced a colorful set of in-car DAPs that plug directly into your vehicle’s lighter socket. What’s more, the MP3
[Via Digital World Tokyo]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
Exercise nuts looking to pick up one of the Nike+iPod Sport kits to enhance their workouts can finally place their orders on the Apple site, and can expect delivery of their purchase in four to five weeks. At $29, the kit is quite the bargain too, except that it won't do you much good without the hundreds of dollars of electronics and specialized footwear necessary to record and analyze every aspect of your morning jog. Luckily, Nike has been busy releasing several pairs of sneakers with that dugout under the sole for the wireless sensor, so even if the nano continues to remain a relatively pricey luxury, you should eventually be able to buy a pair of compatible kicks that won't break the bank. Apple and Nike: two great tastes that taste great together.Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
You may (or may not) know National Semiconductor, but they’re an enormous industry player and chip-maker in the Valley, and apparently they just had their best ever year of business in their 47-year history. So good, in fact, they apparently bought each of their 8,500 employees an iPod
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Filed under: Portable Audio
It might have been a little more appropriate if their T2 came fashioned in Liquidmetal (sorry, had to), but Cowon‘s latest iAudio player comes in 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB sizes, and features MP3
[Via iAudiophile]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
While the idea of plugging our headphones
[Via Sagags]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
Just a few weeks after the launch of their Microsoft-supported music service Urge, MTV has tapped European company Mini Media to produce two MP3
[Via I4U]
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Yep, just your usual, run of the mill 2GB audio player
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
If you like to buy products described by seasoned reviewers as "very good," "great," and "excellent," then you'll certainly want to check out iRiver's 2GB Clix DAP if you're in the market for a player that screams "iDon't." Everyone who's gotten his/her hands on iRiver's included in the box. Out of all the reviews that we've seen, the only major knocks on this $200 player are for its use of MTP (as opposed to UMS) file transfers and its supposedly short battery life (at least compared to the U10), although PCMag managed to squeeze a respectable 27 hours out of their Clix in testing.Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Peripherals, Portable Audio
With so many people carrying around expensive iPods in their pockets or storing them in their desks, it’s little wonder that an industry has sprung up around protecting those valuable little players from theft: even clothing designers like Thomas Pink are trying to get in on the action. And now yet another solution has been announced — this one from accessories manufacturer Targus — that promises to keep your precious ‘Pod locked down to any stationary object by gripping the dock connector with a combination lock, and not releasing it until you enter the code or someone saws through the galvanized steel cable. “Coming soon” for $30 according to Targus’ website, the “Desktop Security Lock for iPod,” (no idea why they didn’t shorten it to “the iLock”) is probably a decent solution for travelers or those whose co-workers have sticky fingers; for round-the-clock peace-of-mind, however, you still can’t beat the go-anywhere PodLocker, which always keeps your DAP on your person and forces muggers to rip through your clothes if they want to make off with it.
[Via The Gadget Blog]
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
We know that many of you (and by you, we mean us) have been looking forward to Toshiba’s Gigabeat S PMPs ever since [Via DAPreview]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
In a viral marketing move that’s sure to draw the fire of Applefanboys enthusiasts (probably right here in the comments, if history is any indication), SanDisk has posted a website called “iDon’t” that encourages people to flee the closed iPod
[Via iLounge forums]
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Filed under: Portable Audio
boombox to choose from? Memorex thinks so, as evidenced by their recent introduction of a 12-watt 'box -- called, unsurprisingly, the iMove -- which accepts fourth and fifth generation 'Pods along with nanos, the iPod photo, and even the good old Mini, plus anything else you can plug into its auxiliary port. Also sporting a remote, AM/FM tuner, and SRS WOW sound enhancement, the iMove can be powered from your car or boar's cigarette lighter, eight D batteries, or a regular wall outlet -- and by using the latter option, you can simultaneously charge whatever iPod you have docked as well. No word yet on a release date, but as long as its cheaper than the Hi-Fi (it is, at around $100) and more polished than models like the Toolbox Player or iBoom (which it seems to be), it should probably be able to eke out some decent sales when it finally hits Wal-mart shelves.Filed under: Portable Audio
, a monochrome LCD, and busts out the MP3, WAV, WMA and WMA-DRM tunes. It's a fairly small unit, at 0.6-inches thick, and manages a respectable 12 hours of battery life. Rounding out the trio are the MMP8550 and MMP3774 players. The simple-as-it-gets disc shaped 8550 has a mere 256MB of storage and not much else. The gum stick shaped 3774 has a bit of a "me too" form factor, but spices up things a bit with a SD card slot to augment the 512MB of included storage. It also has an FM tuner. There's no word on prices or availability for these things, but they're supposed to show up at Target.Filed under: Portable Audio, Wearables
Diminutive DAP manufacturer MobiBlu has just released the specs for their latest miniature wonder, the 24 x 24 x 24-millimeter Cube 2, which improves upon its predecessor by letting you view photos on a thumbnail-sized, 64 x 48 pixel OLED display. Unfortunately for our love of machine translation, the Korean Cube 2 website lumped all the specs into an un-translatable image, but the sprinkling of English words indicate that there’s not much more to this model than we already knew. Coming in 512MB and 1GB flavors, the 18-gram player features MP3, WMA, and OGG music file support, direct recording from the FM tuner, crossfading between tracks, USB mass storage capabilities, and the obligatory digital equalizer settings, plus the ability to hang it from your ear. Pricing is set at $154 and $192 for the half- and full-gig versions, respectively, but there’s no word yet on when we’ll be seeing this new model ’round these parts.
[Via DAPreview]
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video, Storage
It's certainly nothing we've never seen in the past manufactured a variety of other ways by other companies, but Vosonic's got a new one due, the VP8360. It uses a 2.5-inch laptop drive, which means more storage (up to 120GB as of right now), but it also means more space and juice consumed by the device, which supports MP3, WMA, AAC, MOV, MPEG-4. Still, there isn't really an abundance of media reading photo banks out, and this one will take most anything you can throw at it (CF, SD, Memory Stick) and play some Tetris while you're waiting for your files to transfer.Filed under: Home Entertainment, Peripherals, Portable Audio
Not that we’re experiencing any certain drought out there for PSP and iPod
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Filed under: Portable Audio
We won’t deny
that we’re a little jealous CNET Asia got their chance to fool around with
little while now. Sounds like interfacing with the clicky buttons wasn’t always expeditious in navigating the UI, so
iRiver added some programmable shortcut keys; the 32 hour battery life and Flash Lite video support are also niceties.
Unmentioned was codec support, PlaysForSure compatibility,
etc., but what they weren’t too fond of was the proprietary connector (so what else is new?), the non-user-programmable
182 TV brand IR remote function (which if you ask us kind of seems like a haphazard feature thrown in from the concept
device heap), as well as the fact that while it does also support MPEG-4 video, that’s about all it supports. Yeah, no
device is perfect, but we’re not about to give up on this thing yet, no sir.
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Filed under: Portable Audio
Given MobiBlu’s efforts to convince consumers
that the company’s tiny 1500i audio player
that someone has taken them literally, and produced a customized version of the player encrusted with shiny crystals.
The DAH 1500i Crystal is a 2GB version of the player, and is available in the UK for £169 ($307). Of course, if
you care more about music than about showing off your zirconium collection, you’d probably prefer to skip this one and
wait for MobiBlu’s
which DAPreview reports will boast a 0.67-inch, 64×48 JPEG-capable OLED display (though we tend to think actually
checking out pics on such a small screen probably isn’t the best idea), SRS WOW HD, FM tuner
station. Still no word on pricing, availability and whether MobiBlu will try to convince 1500i owners to pick up a Cube
2 so they’ll have a set to use as earrings.
Read –
Read –
%22cube 2%22 -engadget -2-GB -gizmodo&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&lr=lang_ko">Cube 2,
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Cowon’s gotten
some rather mixed reviews in the past for their line of iAudio
DAPs, but the outlook seems mostly positive for the upcoming hard drive-based
finding very few flaws in the diminutive player’s design, features, or performance. Especially impressive is the
1.3-inch OLED screen, which gets high marks for both color depth and clarity — ABi calls it “simply
brilliant” — and makes watching XviD-encoded movies almost bearable on such a small display. The iAudio6, which
we first spotted at CES, can handle
up to 4GB of MP3
the few knocks on this model, which is a noticeable lag time between operations. Other nice features include USB
capability for device-to-device file transfer with other UMS-enabled hardware, software that automatically tags certain
tunes with the corresponding lyrics, line-in and voice recording, and surprisingly powerful output that can drive even
large headphones
watching your flicks, then the iAudio6 sounds like it’ll make for a solid purchase whenever it becomes available
Stateside.
[Thanks, James]
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