Samsung Unveils New Digital Music Player
Submitted by: Dave Conabree on March 1st, 2002
Source: Martyn Williams (IDG.NET) Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. unveiled at
the CeBIT trade show this week an upgraded version of its Photo Yepp
digital music player that sports built-in memory and a better display than
the original. Like the original, the new player can also display still
images while music or other audio is played.
The Photo Yepp II comes with 64M bytes of built-in memory and a Smart Media
memory card slot, meaning up to 192M bytes of memory is available when the
current maximum capacity Smart Media card is used. This is enough for
around three hours of digital music when encoded using MP3.
The screen has been changed from a 2.0 inch color reflective LCD (liquid
crystal display) to a 1.8 inch color TFT (thin film transistor) LCD. The
latter makes use of a backlight which means a much brighter display at the
expense of some battery life. Like the original, the Yepp II has a
rechargeable Lithium Ion battery which, according to Samsung, provides 7
hours of life with the LCD turned on and 11 hours with the LCD turned off.
Support for digital music formats has also been expanded with Samsung
adding Windows Media (WMA) support to the Yepp which originally supported
the MP3 format only.
In addition to a redesign, the other significant change is the removal of
the docking station. The device connects directly to a personal computer
via USB (Universal Serial Bus).
Samsung plans to begin shipping the Photo Yepp II to North America shortly
and expects it to hit shelves sometime in May priced at around US$449.
Sales in Europe and South Korea will also start at around the same time. It
is targeting first year sales in North America at 10,000 units.
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