The competition between major manufacturers has continued to enrich the portable digital players market, writes JAYNE AUGOYEApples music player, the iPod, may not be the only portable digital music player in the world. Yet, since its October 2001 launch, the 5gig sleek white box has earned a cult following.The iPod was introduced in the late 1990s, a period when the digital musical boom had become big news, earning the device more fans. Portable MP3 players had been around since the mid 1990s, but Apple is reputed to have found that every one on the market offered a lackluster user experience.Today, 10 years after, various models and companies have churned out their own variants. As such, digital music players continue to evolve from a simple audio player to a complex multimedia device. Most come with colour displays, touch screens, while some others can show digital photos, play movies, directly record from a TV or download and share their content over the Internet.Although it is making a rather late entry into the music player market, android-based portable music players have become the new fad. In fact, a good number of android music players offer very similar functions to the iPod Touch, Apples latest product. These features include access to the Android mart to buy applications and purchasing music on the device via a number of services that include Amazon MP3. Some offer micro SD slots to expand storage capacity.Philips GoGear Connect 3 has a 3.2-inch 480 by 320 pixel display. It includes 16GB of built-in storage to which another 32GB can be added with a MicroSD card. GoGear Connect also includes Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and a 2-megapixel camera that can capture video at VGA resolution. This Android-powered device can play music and movies, take pictures and surf the web and comes preloaded with applications like Android Market, Google Talk and Google Maps.The battery can play up to 25 hours of audio or five hours of video, according to Philips. It has many features similar to Apples iPod Touch, but it differs in that the GoGear Connect employs a resistive touch-screen - unlike the iPod Touchs capacitive touch-screen. That means a bit more pressure has to be applied to activate the on-screen buttons.Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0 is also one of the largest Android media players available. It has a 1GHz processor, 8GB of storage, and a microSD slot to expand storage.Both models have front and rear GPRS, Bluetooth 3.0, and are wireless enabled. Samsung claims the 2500mAh battery in the Galaxy 5.0 should last up to 60 hours for music playback.The device also has eight hours video playback and can deliver 54 hours for music and five hours for video. The manufacturers also claim the 2500mAh battery in the Galaxy 5.0 should last up to 60 hours for music playback, which sounds a bit implausible. Eight hours video playback seems more realistic, though. The Galaxy 4.0 runs on a 1200mAh battery and should presumably deliver 54 hours for music and five hours for video.The Samsung Galaxy Player can access the Internet and applications anywhere there is an available hotspot. The sleek, lightweight 6.42 design fits in any pocket and the brilliant 5 LCD delivers incredible viewing quality.On the other hand, Sonys newest entry into the media player market, the NW-Z1000 Walkman, is expected to be available in December. Some of the impressive features it will boast impressive specs, thoughthe Z Series has a 4.3-inch (800 by 480 pixel) screen, 512MB of RAM, runs the Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and has a minimum of 16GB of storage.
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