Samsung's preemptive iPod-killers

The Samsung YP-P2 is a touch-screen video player that gets friendly with your cell phone over Bluetooth.

(Credit: Samsung)

Samsung has just announced the release of their two most eagerly-awaited MP3 players of 2008, the YP-T10 and the YP-P2. While leaked photos of both players have been circulating this past week, few details have been announced until now. Both players are due out in September (no pricing details yet), and with the deafening buzz surrounding a possible new iPod announcement, the preemptive timing of these feature-packed players couldn't be better.

YP-P2

The Samsung YP-P2 is really the star of the show and looks like a well-executed answer to the shrieking demands for a phone-less iPhone. The 3-inch touch screen responds to gestures such as finger swipes and supports wide-screen 480x272 video resolution at a DVD-quality 30 frames per second using WMV9 or MPEG4 video formats. The P2 will be available in black, burgundy, and white, with either 4GB or 8GB capacities, and will support MP3, WMA, and subscription music playback. Unfortunately, it does not include a Flash memory expansion card slot. Samsung also throws in an FM tuner/recorder, a clock, a surprisingly usable text reader (see video), a voice recorder, and an image viewer. Battery life is expected to last a whopping 35 hours for music playback and 5 hours for video.

The crowning feature for both players, however, is Samsung's unprecedented Bluetooth 2.0 integration.

Bluetooth phone coupling

Both the YP-P2 and the Nano-esque YP-T10 share the ability to stream music to multiple receivers simultaneously over a wireless stereo Bluetooth 2.0 connection. While that feature alone puts these players ahead of the pack, Samsung takes the Bluetooth integration one step further by allowing users to couple the devices with most Bluetooth 2.0-enabled mobile phones. In this scenario, incoming phone calls will prompt an alert on the screen of the P2 or T10, pausing your music and offering the option of taking the call. When you accept the incoming call through the player, you can then hear the caller through your earbuds and also speak to the caller using the player's built-in microphone. A stereo Bluetooth headset can also be worked into the equation for both listening to music and taking calls wirelessly.

This integration opens up a lot of convenient possibilities for people juggling both their mobile phone and their MP3 player while exercising or driving. It remains to be seen whether call quality and reliability of the Bluetooth connection holds up, but with Samsung holding a solid share of the mobile phone market, our expectations are pretty high.

YP-T10

The Samsung YP-T10 lets users personalize their menu interface with Flash animation skins.

(Credit: Samsung)

Samsung's evolution of the highly rated YP-T9 looks to be a very fun Nano-like player that hopefully carries on the T9's reputation for excellent sound quality. The player will only be available with a 4GB capacity (again, no expansion port) in either black, white, or purple. The 2-inch QVGA screen supports 320x240 WMV9 or MPEG4 video playback and impressively includes most of the features found on the P2: FM radio/recorder; image viewer; voice recorder; clock; text reader; and support for MP3, WMA, and subscription music playback. Unlike the P2, the T10 uses an illuminated direction pad controller instead of touch-screen interface. To its credit, however, the T10's menu interface can be radically customized using downloadable Flash animation skins. Battery life for both the T10 is rated at 30 hours for music playback and 4 hours for video.

The video below walks through the touch-screen graphic user interface for the Samsung P2. Note the ability to use swiping gestures to skip between videos and movies, as well as the multiple eye-candy music visualizers. This really looks like one of the first post-iPhone MP3 players to step up to the challenge of creating a smart and richly designed, touch-screen user interface.

[dabest4me]

What about the new Zen from Creative?

This Samsung looks sweet, but has anybody seen the new Zen from Creative? Amazon has it listed for pre-order for $199. Its widescreen, has 8 gig of flash memory, and is "credit card" sized. No touch screen (I think) but that's ok if the controls handle well.

[retrojet]

whoop de do

This bluetooth integration seems pretty cool, in theory, but I have yet to use a
bluetooth device that sounds as good as a wired connection. The sound quality
stinks. In my opinion, bluetooth is a crappy voice technology. And integrating
an mp3 player with a phone seems to be pretty cool, being able to use the
player as a proxy for the phone itself (if I understand this correctly). But in
practice having two devices is still an inconvenience. I guess we'll see how good
it is, but I'm not excited.

[kyler]

Why didn't apple

do the whole phone over bluetooth thing? It would've eliminated contracts, the
AT&T middleman, and a lot more freedom - but I suppose it'd obscure the
entire meaning of the iphone/all-in-one machine. Hopefully the new
iPod/iPhone nano will be like that.

[U. Tripps]

Apple should be paying attention

I'm leery of the Bluetooth pass-through. But everything else sounds like the features that iPod should be trying to incorporate. I'd like to know how scratch resistant these designs are, though.

[DarkHawke]

How you gonna compete without a hard drive?

This is one of many nifty new players out or soon to be out, but not a one of them has what any serious DAP needs, especially in competition with whatever Apple's likely gonna roll out on the 5th: a frakkin' hard drive! What the frock is up with that? Is the margin just SO much better with flash memory players, or are companies like Creative, Samsung and SanDisk just scared? Hell, even if Apple joins the no-hard-drive camp, you KNOW that the next iPod will have at least twice the flash memory of these new Samsung units! Kudos to Samsung for joining the innovative interface party, but now they need to get some realistic storage capacities to match their slick, ready-for-video widescreen players!

[enomic]

New Competition?

Now I have to say this is the first mp3 player that has caught my eye that doesn't belong to Apple. For a brief moment, I was actually thinking of buying it till I read the storage size. Although it looks good it falls short in the storage department which can hurt them in the long run especially if Apple confirms our suspensions of a new iPhone with out the phone iPod at the Septembers conference. I hope though that Jobs takes notice cause iPods getting some competition. And competition is always good (for the consumer that is)

[make_or_break]

iPod killer...yeah, right

There's NO SUCH PROOF than an iPod killer ever existed, or even is on the verge of coming into being. Why do tech sites insist on rolling out that tired old cliché of a catchphrase? Until someone comes up with a COMPLETE answer that's actually better than the iPod-iTunes-iTMS triumvirate, and THEN spends way, WAY too much on trendy, flashy viral advertising to get the word out, the very concept of "iPod Killer" will continue to be a pipe dream lie.

That said, the Samsung players [i]are[/i] kinda cool, even though the lack of AAC playback is a deal-breaker for me (the new Zen is considerably more enticing because it CAN handle non-DRM AAC files). What's the managing software like? Just WMP? Or something else half-baked? And what's up with continuing to use stupid model name identifiers like "YP-yada yada"...that's the sort of geeky nerd-talk crap that gets no one in the general audience the least bit interested. Try mounting a sexy marketing campaign with those monikers.

Those are the reasons why Apple ain't sweatin' it, even if they ARE buying up all of your memory chips, Samsung. Conceptualize and execute in totality, then maybe you'll have something for Apple to cringe in fear at.

[TCrimson05]

Samsung Does It Yet Again.

Bout Time....I was actually considering the Itouch for a minute....But nevermind... They're both good players...my gurl wants the Itouch..i can do without the safari web brower....I'd actually make good use of the bluetooth... besides the web is the only thing it doesn't have....and the Touch doesn't have bluetooth if I'm not mistaken....hopefully it won't cost as much as the Touch....as much as that thing costs, I might as well get the IPhone......lol well excluding the $4000 phone bill...now...can i please get an exact release date and pricing?

[chltmdwp2]

Haha wow what a funny guy~

The guy who said ipod killer yeah right, dude, are you nuts? ipod killers are everywhere homes. And samsung is one of them man. ur just jealous cause you don't have that kind of thing. The Nano for instance. my friend have nano and they saw my t9 and they said to me like ohhh what is that?? and later they said i beter trade my ipod to t9!!
ANd you dosen't get much functions as you pay the damn money on apple's product. ANd bluetooth is really handy. you can use those Yp players to answer the call. Think differently and think smart. WHy do you think most rich people make a good decision? Because they're well educated.World is changing.

[mtizle]

For those who dont completely worship Apple

I have to admit I do like some things Apple puts out, but I am also realistic. For me it comes down to the cost and ethics of having a large music collection. Players like this have the ability to be compatible with a subscription based service that will allow someone to have a large collection without breaking the law or spending their entire paycheck on music. Yes, hard drives are nice, but Ive had 2 ipods die on me, why? The hard drive. Lack of moving parts increases the life of a player significantly. For me the bluetooth capability is a huge plus. I have a nice pair of Motorola headphones that output pretty high quality sound, no they are not Bose sound cancelling headphones but they do the job and output quality satisfactory to the bitrate of the standard audio file. Give other manufacturers some credit, there are others out there than Jobs' empire.

[olivaresdaniella]

i have the 3 of them... i love them when i dont have music in 1 i put it in the other 1..