It's a (half) well known fact that SanDisk owns a lot of patents concerning flash memory and that this has been the grounds for a lot of lawsuits, arguments and whatnot over the years. Samsung alone has to pay $351 million USD a year to SanDisk in royalties, Samsung being the biggest NAND flash maker in the world. According to a korean news source and half confirmed by a Samsung spokesperson, Samsung is considering buying SanDisk. The plan is in very early stages at best and nothing has been even remotely decided yet, but considering SanDisk's poor results in the last months it might be someone to look out for.

The question is what this will mean for the Sansa players. If Samsung buys SanDisk, the Sansa line would most likely go with it and I don't see Samsung continuing the line if SanDisk gets fully incorporated into Samsung. Samsung doesn't make memory cards at the time being and so it's likely they will keep the SanDisk brand for this, however MP3 players is a different story. At such an early stage of course everything is beyond pure speculation, but if such a merging is happening it might very well mean the end of the Sansa line as it's unlikely that Samsung will compete with itself. It could of course also mean Samsung players with microSD slots, better sound quality and other Sansa features. Again, only hypothesis' but both a scary and an interesting thought at the same time. What do you think the result of such a merge will be?

[The register|MarketWatch] (thanks advcomp2019)

Congratulations to Kim. It looks like her search is over and she will be a proud new owner of a Silver Fuze and a high speed microSD card. Thank you all for joining the fun and making one killer comment thread. I actually read though them all and many were quite amusing. Stay tuned for more giveaways and more of the best mp3 player reviews on the net. Accept no substitutes! ;)

Win a SanDisk Sansa Fuze + 4GB Mobile Ultra microSD Card Sharing the same great sound quality as the Sansa Clip, the Sansa Fuze has one big advantage with an included microSD memory slot. This is a nice way to upgrade your to a higher capacity since the microSD card seamlessly integrates into the main memory.

MicroSD has become a standard in expandable memory for cell phones. Another nice use for the memory card would be to swap it between your player and you mobile phone. When I’m away from a computer one thing I do for instance is use my Nokia e71 to download podcasts and music, then swap the memory card to my Fuze. Sure I could use the phone to listen to but it needs a headphone adapter and sound terrible compared to the Fuze.

It’s also a cheap add on. Last I checked SanDisk’s microSD in 8GB was around $30 on Amzaon. Note that we are giving away the Mobile Ultra version which I tested to be about twice as fast as the regular version of SanDisk’s microSD. This works a bit better if you are going to use it in a phone.

Enough chit chat, how do I win this lovely pair?

Just comment once below (multiple entries will be disqualified) and we will pick a comment at random at the end of the day Wednesday. Good luck!

For those who remember, Music Gremlin was the first MP3 player to offer wi-fi connectivity. It was tied into a music service that allowed for the automatic download of content much like the Ibiza Rhapsody and SanDisk’s own Sansa Connect. While I don’t know about the acquisition terms and what their plans are for the integration of MG into SanDisk, but this is rather troubling to me and I question the good that will come out of this acquisition for a few reasons.

One of the great things about SanDisk’s line of Sansa MP3 players it the microSD card slot. All of them have this feature except for the Sansa Clip. This means you can double, sometimes triple the capacity of the player relatively cheap. The microSD slot is a great future proofing or rather life extending feature on an MP3 player.

While SanDisk Sansa players lead the industry in upgradable and removable storage there are a few others that contain that will be able to take advantage of this microSD card. These players include the Insignias, the Cowon D2, Creative Zen, and some of the newer irivers like the E100 and the Spinn.

Having used a Cowon D2 for over a year I must admit that I was losing hope in the manufacturers' ability to make useful firmware updates that actually fix stuff and add useful features instead of breaking what's already there and adding "scicntific" calculators. Luckily it's not just Samsung that knows how to do firmware and the latest update to the Sansa Clip shows that there is still hope if a player doesn't have everything you want at release. Read on to find out what's new in 1.01.29

About a month ago we started running a contest urging readers to send in pictures of themselves and their portable (and sometimes not so portable) setups. The contest was a lot of fun with around 100 participants showing off a few hundred photos. The winners of each category have been chosen and the winner of the random drawing is shown below.

Thank you all that participated, we had a lot of fun with this one and it really showed off the creativity of our forum members. There were so many great entries, so please be sure to check out all of them in the contest forum.

I got a brand new 4GB silver Sansa Clip just hanging out here at abi>>headquarters, so I thought it would be best to find it a happy home. It has been one of my favorite players for ultra portable on the go use since it pair so nice with my Shure SE530s- it’s crisp sound in a small package.

So here is your chance to add something shiny to your on-the-go audio ensemble, but first we would love to see what you are using now. There will be several judged categories including, so no matter what you are carrying around, even a stock setup, you have chance of winning. Head over to the contest forum to check out the categories, examples, and official rules. Here is a chance to show off you gear!

The contest is now closed, and new entries will not be accepted

The Sansa e200 is one of the best selling budget players ever and that shows on the number of loyal users it has. The original firmware is buggy and somewhat limited, so when Rockbox was released on the player many people praised it. Now a new player has joined the game, SansaLinux.

SansaLinux is a port of iPodLinux, and only works with the V1 e200 players. It's still being developed, and so far LCD, audio and keys are working, while other features are planned or in development. It's always nice to see custom firmware for players, so hopefully this project will make it all the way through.

[SansaLinux]

Here is a teardown of SanDisk’s latest. The disassembly was straight forward being that the housing was held together by plastic clips on each side. Once inside, the removal of the LCD is just a matter of releasing it from a set of clips.

This may not be something you want to do for fun since it may not go back together as tight as it once was. So I would urge you to only use this guide as a repair reference if you are going to take the Fuze apart. Otherwise please enjoy this journey into the depths of the Sansa Fuze’s internals.

There was a gap that needed to be filled in the Sansa product line in between the Clip and the View. This gap was filled by the Fuze with a bigger screen, more capacity, and a memory slot compared to the Clip; but it wasn’t quite the flagship as the View with a lower resolution screen, smaller size, smaller capacities, and weaker video playback abilities.

Falling nicely in between the two the Fuze is a welcome member to the family with many improvements all around- even outperforming the View in some respects. If you would like the full scoop, read on, and I will break it all down for you.

SanDisk’s latest player the Sansa Fuze fits nicely in the family between the Clip and the View. How does the Fuze stack up? After just a few hours with the Fuze I can easily say that this is the best Sansa to date. The Sansa View was rushed to market and it shows in the details, but on the other hand you can tell that the Fuze got a lot more TLC.

The biggest improvement I have noticed is the snappier interface as you can see from the video below. The screen is also improved over the View and previous Sansas; it is more crisp and doesn’t suffer from that odd “shimmer” that e200 and the View had. Many of you have been curious to know if the sound quality is on par with great sounding Clip. So far I have been hard pressed to tell the difference on my Sennheiser HD650s (the Fuze does drive them to a comfortable listening level). However, I have only spend a few hours with it, so don’t hold me to it till the full review.

In the mean time, check some photos and video below.

We saw a few leaks and hints of the Sansa Fuze over the last week, but today SanDisk has officially announced this tiny flash player. The Fuze is a bit bigger than the Sansa Clip but packs in a 1.9” screen. As previously noted the player will feature 25 hour audio playback in the standard MP3, WMA, WAV, and Audible for Audio. It will also playback JPEG and 5 hours of MPEG-4 for video.

The player will hit store shelves early next month and come in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB capacities selling for $80, $100, and $130 respectively. Additionally you can add more memory with the microSD memory slot.

Personally, I am pretty excited to see If the Fuze sounds anything like the Clip- if so it would be a pretty killer player. Now if they would only change that home screen and tweak some minor nuances of the UI.

Update: Gear Log has a video up showing off the Fuze. If you notice the Fuze has a slick looking glossy finish like the Clip and also carries the carries the same SOC. This does not necessarily mean it will carries the same sound quality as the Clip since its the sum of the parts that defines it, but it does give us hope.

[Product Page]

A few days ago we showed you the first glimpse of the Sansa Fuze after a forum member had been snooping around the Internet. The Sansa Fuze has now been spotted available for pre-order on Amazon, while there still has been no official word from SanDisk

As we speculated, the Fuze will have both radio and video, and it will also have a microSDHC slot for expansion and a 1.9" screen to view it all. Battery life is rated at 24 hours for audio and 5 hours for video. The Fuze is listed in both black, pink and red, and from the leaked accessory kit we know a blue version is also coming. The only model listed is the 4GB priced at $99, but we expect more capacities to be available once it's official.

[ Product Page via DAPreview ]

An observant forum member snooped around the new Sansa updater a few weeks ago, and realized a device named "Fuze" was mentioned in the about section.Today he googled around and came across a Sansa Fuze accessory bundle which makes the possibility of a Fuze in the works so much more believable.

From the looks of it, the Fuze might fill the gap in SanDisk's new product line between the Sansa Clip and the Sansa View. Size wise the Fuze looks to be something along the lines of the 3rd gen iPod Nano, and the design resemblance is also very noticeable. If this is a Nano competitor, I'm guessing we can expect up to 8-16GB memory, video playback and SanDisk's usual included radio.
No official word yet from SanDisk

The Sansa Clip recently proved that it's a better player than the iPod Shuffle in a faceoff here on abi>>. We won't let it rest however, as it's time for it to take on a stronger opponent, feature wise - the Creative Zen Stone Plus.

With both players being available up to 4GB (once the silver clip is released), and both of them featuring pretty much the same features from a technical point of view, this is set to be a much closer competition. Read on to see the face-off.