Iriver didn’t have much show off at CES other than their new e-Book reader dubbed the iriver Story. The hardware is awesome but not much too unlike the Amazon Kindle. Here is a video I shot of the Story in action playing back some MP3 tunes.
Archive for iriver
iriver Announces New ‘Chococat’ Player
Hello Kitty fans rejoice, iriver recently announced a new MP3 player which is designed to look like the Hello Kitty “chococat”. The player—which iriver Japan says will be targeted more towards adults—features gold accents and an LED nose which will surely make even the most hesitant become fans of the Kitty.
The 4GB player, which weighs in at a paltry 16 grams, features a 10 hour battery life, 4-preset EQ, and a shuffle mode.
iriver says the player will be available December 18th for 7,980 yen ($90). Unfortunately it will only be available in Japan.
Yes, it’s a slow news day. That’s the excuse that will help us sleep tonight anyway.
Mariah Carey, iRiver to Release Limited Edition N20
As we were making our rounds across the Mariah Carey fan blogs, which we usually do on a Sunday night, we discovered the pop star is teaming up with iRiver Korea to release a limited edition N20 which will come preloaded with all 17 tracks from her latest album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel.
“We’re excited about the new N20 Special Edition, as it offers digital consumers and music fans an exclusive experience of the fantastic new album by the megapop icon Mariah Carey,“ said iRiver CEO, Kuno Kim.
That’s all well and good, Mr. Kim. But you still fail to tell us how the player is controlled. Some say it’s controlled by a touch interface, some say there are buttons at the back, some say you have to scream at it in Korean. We just don’t know.
We also still don’t know release dates, or whether or not the N20 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack somewhere. However, after putting our team of crackpot ABi researchers on it for several hours, we did discover this bombshell…
iRiver N20 Makes a Return
We first heard about the iriver N20 about 3 years ago, before it had an identity crisis and eventually became known as the iriver S10. Now the N20 is back, and the only thing it has in common with the S10 is the name— and the whole MP3 playing thing.
The 26 × 55.5 × 13mm necklace player—which bears a striking resemblance to a 9V battery—features a 4 line monochromatic PMOLED display, support for most audio codecs, and a 15 hour battery life. And judging from the lack of tactile buttons, it’s likely controlled by some type of touch interface. There’s also an FM tuner in there, somewhere.
The N20 will be available in 2 and 4GB flavors which will set you back 649 yuan (about $95 USD) and 749 yuan (about $110 USD), respectively. No word on release dates, or whether or not the N20 will make a very unlikely appearance in the States.
[imp3.net | via PlayerBites]
iriver SPINN FW 2.0 Released
The iriver SPINN has been out for a while now and the firmware updates are starting to show up. The device just hit FW 2.0 with a number of minor improvements.
The new features include bigger album art, more supported picture formats, radio recording, video options and a memo pad. There’s also mention of some downloadable games, though that might be Korea only.
[Download Link via DAPreview]
Iriver P7 Video Overview [HD]
The P7 was my favorite device shown off at the iriver booth, but unfortunately the US won’t see this device. The closest thing you will get is the Cowon O2, but well we found quite a few problems. The P7 is a beautiful monolithic block design common to the high style of iriver. But this modern design also shows up in the UI with a truly unique home screen almost like a layout of a brochure or magazine.
Unfortunately, the UI is rather sluggish as you can tell from the video and basing the opinion solely on experience from previous devices, it’s likely not up to par. Perhaps what needs to happen here is iriver needs to give up on making the electronics and concentrate on the design- leave internals up to Cowon. A fantastic sounding Cowon iriver P7 anyone?
iriver Booth & Wave Home
I was definitely excited to see iriver’s booth this year at CES since was by far my favorite last year- bright, modern, and fun. I would love to put the iriver booth in my home somewhere; it would be my happy place. This booth was the same as last year with a slightly different layout but it a much better location, not stuck in the corner with the car audio. I did the best I could to share this with you in the form of an HD video below. Please enjoy this along with a general recap of whats new with iriver.
iriver E50 Coming in January
Some of iriver’s products this year have been questionable, with the very plastic E100 being a prime example. iriver is now preparing the release the iriver E50, which on paper will correct a lot of what the E100 did wrong.
The T50 has a brushed metal casing, FM radio, a 1.8″ 176×220 pixel screen and voice recorder. The battery life will be a whopping 52 hours and it supports Vorbis and FLAC beside the usual MP3 and WMA support. It will be available in 2, 4 and 8GB capacities sometime in January.
iriver Leaks T5 and T6
iriver is at it again with more players that wouldn’t make a motion sensor react. This time it’s two bargain players with tech specs so uninteresting I fell asleep three times while writing this post.
The T5 has a built in USB plug, is stick shaped and plays back MP3, WMA and Vorbis for 13 hours before needing a recharge. It will be available in 2 and 4GB and hopefully not be as big a catastrophe as its predecessor. The T6 is basically just a physically bigger player with the same format support as the T5, an FM radio and 28 hours of battery life. The T6 will also only be available in a 4GB version
[iriverfans via DAPreview]
News Roundup Week 48
Every week there is a number of news articles concerning DAPs that don’t make it to our front page simply because they are too insignificant for their own article. It can be a delay in release dates, small firmware update etc. To try and get this out to the people as well, here’s a news summary of week 48 2008.
GenerationMP3 is reporting that the long awaited S9 will be delayed until early 2009 do to production issues in Korea. Our forums have been buzzing with people wondering when the S9 will finally be out and it seems they have to wait a bit longer still.
The Samsung P3 has showed up at the FCC according to Engadget. This is just a further update on the P3 story as GenerationMP3 already has one and did a first look not too long ago.
iriver is doing their usual weird strategic choices in the DAP industry and have released a new version of the E100. This isn’t the E150/E200 that Grahm wrote about in April as according to Akihabara News the only new thing about this model (named E100 Season 2) is new colors. If you recall our E100 review it isn’t exactly the best player on the market and i fail to see how a few new colors will change that.
Thanksgiving is on for our American readers and in the wake of that comes black Friday. This also means a lot of deals on MP3 players and related accessories, so join our forums and share the deals to help make sure the players will find a new home.
