The MP3 Players

Beware iRiver fans, this is another bloody post! Another MP3 player was dissected. It’s the Craft III, iRiver T30. A Chinese retailer has cracked his sample unit of iRiver T30 and look into it.

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Most of the Korean prefer made in Korea in any kind of stuffs, even a small component insides MP3 players. Because of this strong sense of nationalism, they come out with a reputable brand, Telechips, in the digital audio player industry.

Generally, its position is between Sigmatel and Philips‘ decoders. It has better sound quality than Sigmatel and yet it can still maintain lower price than Philips. Due to the stragegic position, Telechips has the supports from many Korean manufacturers, such as DATUM, DEC, WEWA, and so on. Thus, it makes Telechips a reputable brand in the industry.

The most common model of Telechips’ solution is TCC73x series.

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Another Korean product introduced. It’s MPIO FY600. Well, this model is not equpped with Philips decoder solution as previous models did before. Is Philips losing market share in Korea?

Just like new iRiver’s model, MPIO FY600 is paired up with Samsung’s decoder. However, it is not the same one that iRiver used. Anyone can tell us which decoder is inside the FY600?!

This model supports playback of MP3, WMA, ASF and OGG (Q10). The price in Korean is 120,000 Won (approx US$155) for 256MB and 170,000 Won (approx US$165) for 512MB.

{ AVing via DAPreview }

Wonder what is inside the iRiver H10 Junior? There are some pictures posted at Chinese MP3 forum. These pictures showed that iRiver has made some changes on the decoder they use. It’s not Philips but Samsung’s chip inside the H10 Junior!

Wow, what a pretty babe! But we gonna take a look piece by piece.

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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 }