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Jens Of Sweden MP3 Player With OLED, Ogg
rune-bare-rune writes "Gadget manufacturer Jens of Sweden launches a nice-looking MP3 player with an unusual OLED display that doubles as a mirror. Supports MP3, WMA and OGG Vorbis. And as a few other really small players it handles the USB connection nicely."
Jens of Sweden normally has excellent product design, so it's somewhat unfortunate that the button size appears to be as small as possible. The 4-way rocker doesn't look like it'll be fun to manipulate.
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Now if only it could run FLAC, i would be in love with it. Granted, FLAC is a niche market, but it's one of the things that attracts me to the Rio What-ya-may-call-it. Instead of Portable Audio players hard-coding support for file formats into there player, wouldnt it be nice for them to release an API for plug-ins to allow for a wide range of user customization? Hell, then we can get tux racer and nethack on them ;)
This looks like a great product, as I'm sure anyone who's looking for a solid state Ogg Player will agree, but the website is a joke, and is bound to alienate the customers they are trying to market to. Just hitting the front page, I get an unrecognised "Flash animation" in the middle of the screen and get booted into a plugin download page. Surely most people will want to see pictures of the product, not some silly Flash animation (Has anyone seen the content of this -- is it at all useful?)
Something also strikes me as strange with their software requirements list: Windows 98-SE/ME/2000/XP
Mac OS 8.6 or newer (Linux as well) -- What's the deal with that? If it supports Linux, they can add it to the list. Do they really thing that putting one of their best features it in brackets like an afterthought is going to help endear their product to Linux users?
Did anyone actually spot anything on their site that mentions that the display is OLED? Looks to me more like the OEL (Organic EL) display that some newer car stereos have (new Pioneers, etc). Last I heard blue OLED had some MTBF troubles...
Yes yes, -1 Redundant. But no one's posted about it yet. Does it work with Linux? A friend of mine has an earlier model, and it doesn't seem to get detected as a USB mass storage device under 2.4.2x. He's a captive windows user and this is one of the main reasons he can't drop it completely.
I'd try it on 2.6.5, but he doesn't want to upgrade (?!) and he uses it too much to lend it to me to hack with. So do any of you fellow linux-only users have one of Jens' recent units working?
I've been to the vorbis site and listened to the ogg samples (Scroll down to the bottom and listen to the 45k/sec samples) of low bit rate compression. It sounds really good at really low bit rates. Scroll up a little and listen to the mp3s at 64 and 128, and then listen to the OGG at 64. That's the quality of mp3 at 1/2 the space.
Couldn't these companies take better advantage of the ability to play OGG files and include the compressor to actually fit more music in less space? They could advertise a player that holds "more music" in a less expensive package. Instead of advertising the storage space, advertise the number of hours of music, and compare to competitors that cost 2x as much.
Try to pose your hands like that in a mirror. You'd have to have some pretty funky elbows or a reality distortion field or something.
I guess the RSD(TM) is already patented
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Although most of us will see the mirror display as, at best, a novel cosmetic touch, I've shown these pictures to a girl I happened to have about the place and her response was instant enthusiasm.
She pointed out that it's always good to have a mirror handy, especially in situations where you aren't carrying your usual bag-of-tricks, such as when you're jogging - with one of these and a tube of lippy in her pocket, a girl would be ready for anything.
Her one criticism was that that small mic hole, right in the middle of that otherwise unobstructed stretch, would be an irritating distraction for anyone giving their make-up a quick check. I figure that such an infrequently used feature could have been placed elsewhere without affecting its utility. Also, I think they should have extended the right up to or even around the corners, increasing the mirror's ease of use (I presuming that the mirror is just a protective fascia placed over the actual OLED display).
At the right price point (and I think it is), this could seriously challenge Apple's mostly female targetted Mini ipod.
I wonder how much of a kickback OSDN gets for every
sale of these MP3 players. Or was the above
designed to hurt sales, or perhaps OSDN is now
in the hardware review business to compete with
Ziff-Davis. Nah. Someone's knob is getting greased.
- The Fucker
No, it's more like a rebranded i-Bead
I've the 256 Mo version since april 2003. It's a good player with a long battery life and you don't need special driver to use it. Just plug it and it's reconized as a removable drive on any OS that support USB.
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Organic Light Emitting Diode is the original name for the technology.
Other companies came out with different names like Organic Electro-Luminescent.
I, for one, am glad that these displays are getting into more gear, it will only drive the technology onwards.
I bought their MP300 a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely love it.
One thing that isn't mentioned on the MP300 page (since usage is illegal in Scandinavia), is that the player includes an FM transmitter that can be enabled by running a small program.
Does the MP130 have this functionality as well?
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>how can Apple sell the things with only 6 useful hours in a charge???
They don't. They sell it with 8, at least according to the spec sheet. Funny thing: I have one and I take it with me pretty much everywhere. When I'm near power, I'm usually also near a computer with speakers, so I plug it in and play songs off of it while it recharges via the same cable. No big deal. Having run out of battery only once or twice in over six months, I can't really remember how long it took. It's a non-issue for me, though I don't go for ten hour hikes, or whatever it is that you are planning to do with an MP3 player for which a unit with an 8 (or 6?) hour battery life would be "Useless".
I think that I had forgotten to plug it in for 2 or 3 days when it ran out of battery. That was a tragedy and I cried and cried and shouted to the heavens, "How can they sell something that needs to be recharged? So useless!" Then I hung myself. Oh the humanity. The neighbors shook their heads... "another iPod buyer who couldn't live with only 8 hours of continuous music, and decided to end it all."
Please.
My old Rio 500 had a 13 hour battery life off a single AA battery. That was horrible too. The battery life was longer, but I had to lug around this huge second AA battery, and actually take the old one out to recharge it.
P.S. the Jen MP3 player looks like a remote control from 1962, but who cares what the damn thing looks like since you'll most likely keep it in a pocket all the time. What matters most is how well it works.
Actually, they often develop the specs themself and let the koreans develop the tech.
Jens of sweden is a company that brings cool korean gadgets to europe. But not any cool gadget, only those up to their specs. If nothing fits the koreans adapt their products. Capitalism in a nutshell.
I have a link but its in swedish so its of no use anyway.
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