It is out of most people’s expectation that iRiver do not use the familiar Philips’ or Telechip’s decoders. Quite surprisingly, the T10 is powered by Samsung’s decoder, SA58450X01 (ARM9 200MHz). This decoder was the joint efforts of Samsung, iRiver and another company. However, iRiver is the first company which bring it into mass production. It seems that the decoder is comparable to Philips’ decoder from the aspects of T10’s specification. It has extra long battery life (53 hours with AA battery) and supports image-viewing while music playback.

Samsung SA58450X01, ARM9 200MHz

Definitely, it is no doubt on the sound quality of iRiver’s products. However, the iRiver’s move seems tend to reduce production cost rather than improve product quality.

{ via iMP3.net }