The S.MP3 by French designer Nicolas Cinguion is an ultra-mobile portable media player, allowing its earbud’s cable to be wrapped inside of its own circular design. It looks sort of like a yo-yo, but sadly, doesn’t offer yo-yo functionality.
When will they learn??! What men really want is an MP3/yo-yo hybrid, not some impostor disguised as one.
A newly revealed patent suggests that Apple has been pondering the concept of a unibody iPod. The unibody designs which Apple have already displayed through their use in last year’s MacBooks, MacBook Pros and the MacBook Air proves that the stark design allows for thinner devices made with a stronger architecture and sturdier material.
The patent reveals a unibody iPod Classic, appearing to be made out of one uniform piece, rather than a separate front and rear unit. This could only mean one thing. Thinner, stronger devices for all. Pretty groovy in our book.
Useless features are what sell products, right? Probably not, but no one ever told the folks at MPNavi about that little fact. Their new Tomato U7 it quite small, and looks nothing like a tomato (thank god), but let’s have a rundown of features. It has a voice recorder, FM tuner, e-book reader, equalizer, photo album, games, and supports MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA, ASF, OGG, WMV, AMV, and JPEG. All of that fits inside of something that’s 38×64×14mm and weighs only 25 grams. Really, who is going to read books on a 1.6-inch CSTN screen? If you ever happen to catch anyone attempting to, please hit them upside the head and explain the wrongs of their ways. The Tomato U7 comes in 512MB/1GB/2GB sizes and is Korean, so you probably can’t buy it. –Nik Gomez
Meet The Diminutive Tomato U7, From MPNavi. Yeah, Tomato [via OhGizmo!]
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Nokia has released a video of one of the most amazing concept phones to date. It can be likened to a Nintendo DS with these differences. Both top and bottom screens are touch, they span the entire device, and it is much slimmer. The user interface shown in this video is impressive as well. While all of this is still just a video, it does give hope that companies other than Apple are trying to make quality, simple devices. The concept here is called the Nokia Achieve, and it is a dual touchscreen phone. While the phone part isn’t really shown here, every other possibility is. It ranges from what could be video conferencing, contact magagement, media player, email reader, and… blueprint proofing? Whatever else Nokia has stored up its sleeve, we hope that this won’t just be a concept for long. — Nik Gomez
Nokia Achieve – The Dual-Touchscreen Concept Phone [via TechFresh]
Wow, a new iPod… Oh wait, no, it’s just a new IOPS media player that is just trying to mimic the iPod. Sorry everyone. So we know about the illegitimate knockoffs, now how about the legitimate ones. This X11 media player basically has the same controls as the iPod, just without the scroll wheel. One nice thing is that it has an aluminum case, not the scratchable plastic that so many devices come in today. Also, the X11 will support AVI, DivX, MPEG-4, WMV, and XviD file formats at 30 fps. It has a little 1.3″ screen to play your movies on. Don’t you love watching movies with a magnifying glass? Oh, you don’t? Well, then you probably won’t want to use this as your video player. As for music file formats, the X11 will be able to play MP3, OGG, and WMA files. No AAC support, but if you don’t have a Mac, you won’t really have to worry about that problem. So for extra features (which seem to be moving toward standard), it allows for JPEG viewing, and it has a built in FM tuner. No AM talk shows for you. As for flash drive size, it looks as if it will be released in 1/2/4GB editions. No launch dates yet, and the same with pricing. — Nik Gomez
IOPS demos ultra-thin, iPod-influenced media player [Electronista]
Are you tired of the RAZR design? Hope not, because Motorola is far from done rolling out these new phones that emphasize the RAZR aesthetic. In this case, it’s the motorizr z3 slider handset being updated to the z6. No real design makeovers, but motorola is pushing the media capabilities more than before. Even thought the z6 only has 64MB built in storage, it is upgradable to 2GB of removable storage via an MicroSD card slot. Back to the media aspects, the internet button has been redirected to the media player which can play MP3, AAC, AAC+, EAAC+, AMR NB, and XMF file formats. Probably most revolutionary of all is that the new Linux-based user interface makes its debut here. Anything that ditched the old Motorola UI is a welcome change. The specs on the z6 haven’t changed from the z3, it still has a 2.0 megapixel camera, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP, and 262k color TFT LCD screen. The MOTORIZR z6 is expected to be released in the first half of 2007. — Nik Gomez
Tweaked MOTORIZR Z6 launched at CES [Gadgets on the Go]
So maybe this new Sony Ericsson W200 will only carry 27MB of built-in storage, but its battery life of an estimated 18 hour playback battery life puts your iPod to shame. Don’t worry about the 27MB internal, you can put a Memory Stick Micro card into it and expand to however large a card you want. As far as file formats go, it supports MP3 and AAC, just like the Zune. Because Sony is focusing this product on the media market, there is a dedicated button that goes straight to the media player named Walkman Music Player 1.0. It will be available in Q2 of 2007 and will come in two colors: Rhythm Black and Pulse White. The screen featured here is 128 x 160 and weighs in at 65K-colors. As for the camera on it, it does come with a 4x digital zoom (which you should already know mean nothing, absolutely nothing). No pricing as of yet. — Nik Gomez
Press Release [via AnythingButiPod]
So this product by Samsung is being released alongside of every 99999 other products being released at CES. At first glance it looks like the next iteration of the new digital cameras aimed at kids that are sleek and look cool. Not so. Just take a look here:
• 7.2 Megapixel resolution
• 3x optical zoom lens
• 3.0-inch LCD display
• 9-button user interface
• MP3 and Video
• MPEG-4 720×480 pixels at 15fps
• Auto focus
• Intelligent face recognition
So a 3.0 inch LCD sounds pretty nice, huh? Well, so does that MP3 play back feature that they seem to be downplaying. This nice little gadget records videos, takes 7.2 megapixel pictures, and plays your new songs that you downloaded last night. Also included here is the piece of technology called Intelligent Face Recognition. It takes a look at the picture you are about to take, finds faces, and auto-adjusts focus and other aspects to make the faces look as good as possible. While no tests have been done by third parties on image quality, the i70 sounds pretty nice. — Nik Gomez
Samsung i70 Identity Crisis: PMP or Digital Camera? [via AnythingButiPod]
