Cowon teases three new touch-screen PVPs

The Cowon S9 touch-screen portable media player has not yet been officially announced for the U.S. Bummer.

(Credit: Cowon)

Cowon is teasing three new portable video players for the upcoming 2008 IFA showcase in Berlin. Along with the Cowon P5 unveiled last month, the newly announced S9, O2, and L3 make up a formidable new product lineup of touch-screen beauties--none of which have been officially announced for the U.S.

The prettiest of the bunch, the Cowon S9, includes a 3.3-inch OLED touch screen (480x272 resolution), music and video playback, photos, Bluetooth, composite video output, FM radio, voice recorder, and a built-in accelerometer that will rotate the screen depending on how it's held.

The backbone of the S9 is a 500MHz dual-core processor and a rechargeable battery capable of 40 hours of continuous audio playback. No word yet on price or memory capacity.

The Cowon O2 looks like an A3 without the infuriating joystick.

(Credit: Cowon)

Next up is the Cowon O2, a portable video player with a gargantuan amount of video and audio format support. The O2 is being offered in white, pink, and black, with either 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB capacities, which can be expanded using SD memory cards. The O2's 4.3-inch touch screen can be used for video, photo, and music playback, and extras such as a built-in speaker and TV output are also included. Cowon also lists a "recording" feature on the O2, which could mean video, line-in, or voice recording (or all three).

Given that Cowon saw fit to load the O2 with so much video codec support (Divx, Xvid, MPEG-4, WMV, H.264, MPEG11, MJPEG), and the O2's side panel looks remarkably like the video input panel on the Cowon A3, I'm betting we'll see similar AV recording capabilities included on the O2.

Finally, the biggest beast of the bunch, the Cowon L3 is a 7-inch touch-screen PVP (800x480 resolution) that continues Cowon's encroachment into the realm of GPS.

The Cowon L3 includes a built-in mounting bracket on its back.

(Credit: Cowon)

A SIRF III GPS antenna seems to be built in to the tablet-size Cowon L3, along with an internal speaker, FM transmitter, SD card slot, an IR sensor for the included remote control, and a metal latch plate presumably for mounting the device in your car.

The L3 relies on Flash memory, although there's no official word on how much memory Cowon has crammed in there, how much the device will cost, or if it will even make it to the states.

[shehzad]

Cowon S9 willbe easily the most pop PVP n hope it's comes with rich sound quality as we all looking for in upcoming DAPs. It's looks like more n more peoples becoming audiophiles each year and actually i think Apple should notice too.

[xZero2007x]

shehzad: I'll believe that comment when I see people start changing their earphones for something other than the Apple stock replacement earbuds. I haven't seen a Cowon player at a major retailer yet either. Apple's got its sights set on the mass market, and right now, they're doing a good job at controlling and restricting that market.

[Mp3mizer]

Cowon first needs to improve the quality of its products and customer service!!

[warrenrichards10]

If Apple hit the market with a touch screen device around the 7 inch mark would the the market take it up? , from the looks its likly to be running Windows CE 5 operating system so it could possibly double as a E Reader, (I'm still wary of the Amazon Kindle), this device shows promise though.