CNET review gives it a poor 2/5

[coffee_prince]

I had to find this as cached as for some reason the review has been deleted but still searchable. I don't know what to buy anymore as I was banking on this player being decent

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=uk

No longer content with firing potshots at Apple's iPhone in the ongoing war of the smart phones, Samsung has chosen to open a new front, taking on the iPod touch media player. Like its rival, Samsung's Galaxy Player does more than just play music.

Running on Android 2.1, it offers all the features of a smart phone but without the call capability. You can buy apps from the Android Market and Samsung's store, use Google's mobile services, and, if you're near a wireless hotspot, browse the Web. As added incentives, the Galaxy Player has a detachable battery and a 2-megapixel camera.

The Galaxy Player is currently available for pre-order on Amazon and Play, with an expected release date of 7 January. The 8GB version costs £150, and the 16GB version costs £180.

Music player palaver
While the Galaxy Player offers a host of features, its primary function is to play music. Despite this, its music player is the least impressive part of the whole package. The device runs the bare-bones version of Android, and Samsung hasn't added any new code or features to improve the music player's interface or functionality. As a result, the music player just isn't very inspiring.

We stuffed as much music as we could onto our 8GB Galaxy Player, and found that there was actually only room for 6GB of music. That left no room for storing photos or videos.

While the sound quality was pretty good, the music player proved incredibly sluggish. We often found ourselves having to wait up to 10 seconds for it to respond to our commands. In fact, navigating the interface as a whole will really try your patience.

Additionally, the player inexplicably failed to recognise our headphones on occasion. The problem occurred when we exited the music player or tried to change artists after a period of inactivity. The player would cut the sound going to the earphones while acting like the song was still playing normally. The problem continued to occur even after we changed the earphones we were using.

This issue can be easily resolved by unplugging the headphones and plugging them in again. But you shouldn't have to put with this in a device of this price.

Flies in the ointment
If you want your MP3 player to do nothing but play music, then the Galaxy Player isn't for you. There are multiple dedicated music players on the market that do a better job and cost less. If, however, you want to enjoy all the benefits of a smart phone, minus calls and mobile-contract fees, the Galaxy player might still be of interest.

Despite the average performance of the music player, we found that the rest of the Galaxy Player's features worked quite well. The Android Market contained all the applications we could want, including the ludicrously addictive Angry Birds. Surfing the Internet proved speedy, and we could smoothly stream YouTube videos without having to wait for them to load. The Galaxy Player's screen isn't as crisp as the iPod touch's, but videos are still perfectly watchable.

The main problem we endured while using such features was the nagging voice in our head that kept reminding us we could get an 8GB iPod touch for £40 more than an 8GB Galaxy Player. Compared to the touch, the Galaxy Player feels unbearably sluggish. The touchscreen is also smaller (3.2 inches compared to 3.5 inches) and less responsive, and the interface isn't as intuitive.

The Galaxy Player just isn't as good as its Apple-flavoured rival. If it were significantly cheaper, that would be less of an issue. For £150, we expected a slicker device.

Another key problem is that, for roughly the same amount of money, you could get a pretty decent pay as you go Android phone with all the same features, as well as the ability to make calls. For example, the HTC Wildfire is currently available for £170 from Carphone Warehouse, and the Huawei Ideos is available for £150 SIM-free from Expansys, among other retailers. Check out our round-up of the best cheap Android phones for more ideas.

Conclusion
The Samsung Galaxy Player 50 aims to be the Android version of the iPod touch, injecting some much-needed competition into the media-player market. But it fails, due to a number of flaws that make it feel rushed and incomplete. It's not absolutely terrible but there are plenty of rival devices that do what it does better, or for less money. If you want an Android media player, we'd steer clear of the Galaxy Player 50 and see if Samsung's next model rectifies the problems.

[CrowdAds]

[spantastic]

gutted, planned on getting this as a replacement for my broken P3. Suppose firmwire updates might be able to sort out some of the niggles but seems that they've taken a step back from the p3 in usability and quality but shoved internet on it.

[deadohiosky]

hmmm, i didn't think to highly about that thing in the first place. but still it's rather mysterious... why did they pull the review?

[lebellium]

They probably published the review too early (the Galaxy Player 50 has not been released in the UK yet). And Samsung has probably not been happy with such a poor score

[DragonBottles]

Surely they should spend their time comparing it to other Android devices rather than the iPod Touch?

[coffee_prince]

Apart from this and Archos, I can't think of any other android pmps?

The sanfrancisco/zte blade does everything this does, for a lot less

I am considering buying a budget android phone and using that as an mp3 player... cheaper with more capabilities.

[a_tumiwa]

Originally Posted by coffee_prince

Apart from this and Archos, I can't think of any other android pmps?

The sanfrancisco/zte blade does everything this does, for a lot less

I am considering buying a budget android phone and using that as an mp3 player... cheaper with more capabilities.

creative zen touch2 and the upcoming Cowon D3

[TechyguyDR]

Philips GoGear Connect as well.

[TechyguyDR]

Well... here is another 2/5 review from Pocket-Lint:
http://www.pocket-lint.com/review/52...ayer-50-review

The Samsung Galaxy Player 50 is an Android-based portable media player, offering up a healthy dose of connected magic and Android goodness, along with Samsung’s trademark additions that have made the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S a popular media-savvy device.

Essentially, the Galaxy Player 50 is a phone without the telecommunications, just as the iPod touch is. Where the iPod touch offers practically the same spec as the iPhone 4, the Galaxy Player 50 is more of an entry-level smartphone spec. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: although it won’t be as capable as the iPod touch, it retails at £149.99, some £30 cheaper than the lowest capacity iPod touch.

It was always inevitable that we’d see the rise of this type of device to challenge the iPod touch. When the iPod touch first launched it was obvious that it had gone beyond just music and video playback. Whilst there have been various attempts at this, using the Android platform means that there is already an existing user and developer base, so it stands a better chance of offering more than a straight PMP.

Recently we’ve seen Archos moving into this space and we’ve seen a number of devices from them, including the recently-reviewed Archos 32. Generally the Archos devices offer good video support (which is what the company is known for) but fail to offer the full Android experience. The Samsung Galaxy Player 50 doesn’t suffer in the same way, potentially offering a better Android experience out the box. (You’ll see why we see potentially in a minute.)

Measuring 105 x 54 x 11mm the Galaxy Player 50 is light in the hand and easily pocketable. It features a 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen display on the front, underneath which sits a central “home” button, flanked by menu and back touch controls. Around the sides of the device you’ll find a power button and volume controls. A 3.5mm headphone jack resides on the top, and around the back is the opening for the on-board speaker and the lens for the 2-megapixel camera.

Power the Galaxy Player 50 on and you are presented with Android 2.1, skinned with Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 interface. If you’ve seen or used a Samsung Android device before (those from the Galaxy range) then you’ll know what it is all about. You get customisable homepages that swipe from side-to-side, so you can drop widgets, shortcuts, bookmarks and so on. A fixed bar along the bottom offers music, video, browser and application access.

Open the menu up and you’ll see everything on offer. The Galaxy Player 50 comes preinstalled with a number of applications, including those from the full Google Android suite, so you get Android Market, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Talk, Google Mail, Voice Search and email, calendar and contacts syncing from the word go. All you have to do is sign into your Google account and you’ll find your device fill with your friends, emails and schedule (assuming you use Google’s services, that is).

Dive into the Android Market and you’ll have a huge range of applications that you can download and install on your device. The range isn’t quite as extensive as offered by Apple’s App Store, and the limited hardware means you can’t get to everything, but it means you can have your Facebook and Twitter apps happily running, or download a barcode scanner to lap up all those QR codes using the camera.

Android 2.1 isn’t the latest version of Android, but some of the advantages of updated version of the mobile platform would be lost on this device because of its limited hardware specs. You wouldn’t be able to use Adobe Flash Player even if you did have Android 2.2 on the device.

We said that the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 “potentially” offers a great Android experience, however our sample struggled with those core Android functions. We had regular failures and restarts, often wiping out our account details and resetting the device. We also found it would often refuse to install applications, citing that there was no space, as well as experiencing failures in the Market application almost every time we tried to use it. We assume this is an early software problem, but it is well worth scouting around the Internet for other reviews to see if this is a wider problem. As it is, the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 simply doesn’t work in the wider functions it aims to offer, but we found the core music and video players to be stable enough.

Under the skin you’ll find a music player that is capable, also offering up audio customisation controls, letting you move around a grid to switch the emphasis of how the music sounds. It also features an FM radio so you’ll be able to tune in on your commute. The bundled headphones are reasonable, with a choice of buds to get the best fit for your ears. The result are a little muted, but swapping for good quality third-party headphones will give you a much better sounding device.

Internally you get 6GB of memory, but a microSD card slot provides the opportunity for quick and easy expansion, as well as offering a direct method of adding content. Be aware that using a syncing application will often convert your file formats for you we used DoubleTwist on the Mac, rather than use the poor Samsung Kies software that the company uses with its mobile devices. Updates would be applied through Samsung Kies however, something to be mindful of.

The 3.2-inch display offers up a resolution of 240 x 400, so it falls short of many Android devices, and a long way short of the iPod touch. However, given the smaller screen size, video looks passable, and we had it happily playing back common file types, including DivX videos. We also had some success using the bundled All Share app to stream music from our home server to the device.

The camera also doesn't really impress, offering low res photos and video that fall behind the current expectations.

Verdict

As it is, it’s difficult to see past the overly-expensive £149 price tag, as you’ll get a much greater return, both in terms of quality and entertainment, by stumping up a little more cash and getting the iPod touch. Even giving the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the software failures, the plastic build just isn’t up to the mark for this type of device, representing an entry-level mobile device, rather than a desirable PMP.

It's difficult to judge the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 as a devices because the software failures were invasive, so we've given it a low score. If this is a limited problem, then we'd say that the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 is probably worth considering if you can find it at a more realistic price - under £100 certainly

Not much to be encouraged about.

[coffee_prince]

ouch

1.5 stars

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/gad...-919701/review

[deadohiosky]

hahaha.


stupid samsung throwing a buggy ipod clone at its customers for a real "bargain".

seems that most of the stuff could be addressed by software updates.

maybe they should do another review once or if samsung gets their act together with that alpha stadium device.


i'm foreseeing a busy and probably rather frustrating future for lebellium. keep it up, chap.