Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 & 5.0, Available October 16
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 26, 2011 6:38 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy Player
Alongside availability of the Galaxy Tab 8.9, Samsung also announced the availability of the Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0: Samsung's iPod Touch competitors. Both will be for sale starting October 16 for $229 and $269. Both players use 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird SoCs running Android 2.3.5. The two modem-less players primarily differ in displays and dimensions, otherwise they seem pretty similar at a high level. More info later tonight!
| Samsung 2011 Galaxy Player Lineup | ||||||
| Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 | Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0 | |||||
| Network | 802.11 b/g/n | 802.11 b/g/n | ||||
| OS | Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) | Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) | ||||
| Display | 4-inch S-LCD WVGA (800 x 480) | 5-inch LCD WVGA (800 x 480) | ||||
| Connectivity | Bluetooth 3.0, Mini USB | Bluetooth 3.0, Mini USB | ||||
| NAND | 8GB, microSD slot (up to 32GB) | 8GB, microSD slot (up to 32GB) | ||||
| Battery | 1200 mAh | 2500 mAh | ||||
| Dimensions | 2.53 x 4.87 x 0.39" | 3.07 x 5.56 x 0.46" | ||||
| Weight | 4.27 | 6.42 oz | ||||
| Price | $229 | $269 | ||||
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oldhickorytony - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link
The upcoming Sony Walkman Z series will run Android... no word on the release, though...cosmotic - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Looks like the battery on the bigger unit is over twice the capacity. Definitely a major selling point.applefan - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
the battery on the 5.0 is much better. but the screen is a lot bigger too, so that will use up lots of battery lifejdonnelly81 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Why are they using mini usb? Hasn't everyone standardized on micro?MadMan007 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
It's micro USB, the specs here are wrong.MadMan007 - Monday, September 26, 2011 - link
Soooo, I got one of the 5.0 from woot.com, they were kind of grey market North American Spanish language packaging or something. (Btw that is why they have started showing up on eBay very recently from individuals...woot profiteers reselling.)Anyway, I haven't owned an Android device before, used a few people's phones though, and this mini-tab or PMP or whatever you want to call it is nice. The 5.0 is rather large compared to phones so I just tell people I'm compensating for not having a smartphone :p (and a high-priced monthly contract.)
SQ - very good straight out of the headphone jack, although I only tried lower impedance phones (some IEMs and some Grados) they all sounded great. Full sound, balanced sounding with no EQ or effects. Music playback is going to be my primary use and so far I'm very pleased in this regard.
Browsing - fast enough on my DGL4500 draft-N WiFi network. Still rather less than ideal given a 5" screen but what are you going to do.
Screen - touch works great. Picture quality is likewise good, but it's no IPS. When being a bit critical I could notice some color/contrast shifting when viewing at different angles much like a PVA screen so I imagine it's some *VA type...definitely not TN though. Pixel pitch is fine imo but I'm a bit old :)
GPS - need to find a good offline GPS app. I don't mind dedicating a fair amount of space to maps since there's a microSDHC slot. This was really a major selling point to me since I don't have a smartphone nor a regular GPS...I could get a better pure PMP if I had one, but not for the total price of this (paid much less than MSRP though) even with some SD cards. I tried this a bit by downloading a map through the stock map app (Google Maps) and then going offline. The GPS definitely kept my position, I just didn't get turn-by-turn nor was the map updatable if I moved off the initial map or zoomable. But this just tells me the right software is needed.
I think this is just straight-up Android, maybe some minor tweaks? Seems clean enough. Didn't get in to hacking too much but it is the same hardware as the original 7" Tab and also the Galaxy S i9000 phone so softwre hacks shouldn't be too hard to come by. A USB host OTG hack is what I'm really hoping for, but this unit can't provide power over USB so it would be a bit of awkward even with USB OTG...too bad about that, hooking a 2.5" drive up to this would let me carry my whole collection in FLAC :p
Battery life does seem awesome so far, even with some of the radios on.
Any other questions?
HilbertSpace - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
How's the back camera? Specifically for taking close to 'macro' shots of text say? I use my iPod touch (4g) at work for taking pictures of random notes, etc. but the picture quality is terrible/unusable half the time.MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
[IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n256/Jem_1/perm...[/IMG]That is a picture of a portion of the back of the box, taken from ~2" away. There are a few camera modes, I didn't play with it too much but I did use 'text' mode which is supposed to sharpen text. That priting is very small, the print below Audio/Video codec is less than 1mm tall.
MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Er, I used macro mode as well.HilbertSpace - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - link
Thanks!, Definitely way better than an iPod Touch. Now it's a waiting game to see if Apple steps it up a notch for their iPod next week, otherwise this seems like a great option.