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Sony takes on iPod Shuffle

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the battle-royale-for-your-ears dept.

Ben writes "It seems that Sony has decided to take on Apple with a low cost flash based player that will go up against the Shuffle. Pocket-lint has the low down on some of the stats, as does the BBC and Engadget." The major improvement in my eyes is that some models have an FM tuner.

2 of 501 comments (clear)

  1. Sony may actually have something here by Ironsides · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A 70 hour battery life on a AAA? A 3 minute quick charge that lasts 3 hours and at max charge 50? These are things that some people look for and can use. Those are insane battery life spans for something like this will be a real selling point. The IPod Shuffle only offers up to 12 hours at most currently. I can't remember how many times I've tried to turn on my MP3 player only to find it was dead, having forgoten to put it on the charger or replace the battery. With lifespans like these, one would only need to recharge once a week in most cases, vs. once every day or two for the shuffle.

    Now all we need to do is find out if the audio quality is just as good.

    --
    Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
  2. Re:Kudo to Apple... by mmeister · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, Kudos should go to Apple for truly thinking outside the box.

    Until the shuffle came along, most flash-based player manufacturers thought "People need to see what song they are listening to" and thus tried to cram a poor interface with display on a tiny gadget. But Apple said "let the interface be clean and simple, and let there be new no display -- and there was no display". "Let the users listen to songs that they like, and they listened to songs that they liked, whether it was in a playlist order or a random order -- they still liked the songs."

    I didn't think I'd like the iPod shuffle without a screen, but I wanted a flash-based player (& iTunes support).

    Having had a shuffle since Macworld, I can say it is the only player I use (I also have a 20GB iPod). Screen? Don't really need the screen.

    And here's a tip -- ONLY ADD THE SONGS YOU WANT TO HEAR!! Then it doesn't matter if it is in playlist mode or shuffle mode, you'll always be listening to songs that you like.