e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

[Tenderloin]

The i-Bead 1000 MP3 player
Jul 9, 2004, 11:05 AM ET by Ryan Block
http://www.engadget.com/entry/3611628961773696/

Yesterday brought the first of what is surely to be many, many 1-inch drive DAP announcements, and today South Korean i-Bead prepared the launch of their i-Bead 1000, some pretty stiff competition to the Kinzo. Though it’s only got a 1.5 GB drive (compared to Kinzo’s 2.2GB), it does play MP3/WMA/ASF/WAV/Ogg, displays BMP/JPEG images on its 128 x 128 pixel 65,000 color screen, has USB 2.0, an FM tuner, digital voice recorder, line-in encoder, 10-hour Li-polymer battery, playlists, text viewer, and is a bit smaller (3.6 x 1.6 x 0.7 inches), phew. Which is all really nice, because it’s going to need some amazing features to outshine that awful, awful name it’s got

South-Korean i-Bead has aquired a very decent reputation with their pendrive range (i-Bead1xx/2xx/3xx) and now they're moving on towards our territory: the i-Bead 1000 will be a micro-HDD based player with 1.5GB on-board. More interesting would be the 65k colour screen, pretty unique for such a small device.

Capacity: micro-HDD 1.5GB
USB 2.0
Supports MP3 (VBR), WMA, ASF, WAV,Ogg
BMP, JPEG
Dimensions: 93 x 42 x 17.9mm
Weight: 100 grammes
LCD: 128 x 128 px 65k color screen
FM tuner + recorder
Line-in encoder
Battery: Built-in rechargeable Li-polymer battery
Battery life per charge : 10 hrs
Lyric support
SRS WoW
Supports playlists
Text viewer


Alltogether, an interesting player because of the fact that it will very likely make it to Europe and the USA. i-Bead's products have always been of considerable quality, when compared to less-wellknown Asian companies, so it's a good thing they've decided to ship this unit worldwide. No release dates have been set, though.