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Cowon A3/Q5 update
comment: 28 | Thursday, January 04 (2007) 11:15PM | Posted by Robert Sinke
Some small snippets of news are dripping through the woodworks on Cowon's upcoming/to-be-displayed stuffz0rz:

COWON Q5 is the first new model presented by COWON; it's a 5-inch LCD'ed PMP that supports Navigation, DMB and an external HSDPA module. It’s WinCE 5.0-based and a touch panel has been installed as well.

COWON A3 is an upgraded version of the A2, which is in the market from last year. It comes with a high-performance chip set called "Davinci", created by TI to improve on the "movie playback" end of things.

COWON will display lots of stuff at the CES: the D2, N2, U3, T2, F2, X5, A3 and Q5 will all be there in one form or the other.

LINK (Korean, thanks Kevin)

Well, we'll just go ahead and see with our own eyes if their new materials are any good, shall we? Heh. I'm about to head off for Vegas myself, catch you all on the flipside!
Comments

bloodycape

Comments: 730
Jan 05 (2007) 12:07AM  

sweet

Wait does this mean the Q5 can make phone calls and surf the net since it HSDPA 3G service?

Also, is the A3 going to look like the A2 but in black?

[ edited Jan 05 (2007) 12:12AM ]



Michael
Location: New York City
Comments: 2802
Jan 05 (2007) 01:46AM  

Yes the A3 is a slightly upgraded version of the A2 and it looks so nice in black. I'm still hoping to see an X5 successor from them but it doesn't look like there will be one.

Safe travels Rob!
[ edited Jan 05 (2007) 01:49AM ]



toomanyollys

Comments: 6
Jan 05 (2007) 04:08AM  

seems a bit odd that they're displaying the X5 at the CES, given that it's about 2 years old!

hey, maybe it's a typo, and they meant X6!!? no, i don't think so either...





Allen
Location: Dub Vee Ooo
Comments: 1511
Jan 05 (2007) 06:13AM  

So they stuck with the joystick control?



addz

Comments: 2
Jan 05 (2007) 07:01AM  

seems so, but take a look at the Q5 on the Korean page. What a screen 5inches is a nice size, and touch screen as well. (if that is a real picture of the Q5)



Roger767

Comments: 206
Jan 05 (2007) 09:11AM  

finally Cowon actually upgraded a product instead of entirely redesigning a product, like what they do with their flash
players.



dap_pad

Comments: 519
Jan 05 (2007) 09:43AM  

Wow... didn't really live up to my expectations but all wait until to CES to do the final decision on these... although the Q5 looks pretty cool...



Michael
Location: New York City
Comments: 2802
Jan 05 (2007) 10:00AM  

Hmm, so it seems that the Q5 is the P5 mentioned here: [Linky]



pecker

Comments: 501
Jan 05 (2007) 10:25AM  

wow should be A2.5 not a3



bloodycape

Comments: 730
Jan 05 (2007) 12:22PM  

Well now it seems like that I may keep my a2? It just looks like the same player in a different color and with a better TI chip, same chip as the Archos 04 series players. Wait a second if this has the Davinci chip would this mean gapless is possible seeing that Archos brought a firmware out for gapless on the 04 series(?).



Michael
Location: New York City
Comments: 2802
Jan 05 (2007) 01:28PM  

Gapless doesn't work on the Archos players from what I've tested as well as read from others. This is with the 404 at least.



bloodycape

Comments: 730
Jan 05 (2007) 02:09PM  

Well Cowon could do a better job of implementing it, seeing how well they do their firmware.



XooM

Comments: 57
Jan 05 (2007) 03:06PM  

gapless is completely independent from the chipset in question, as rockbox has managed to put gapless and crossfading on every single player they've ported to (except maybe for the ooold archoses with hardware mp3 decoding? i dunno about them)

A3 looks underwhelming; they've retained the joystick from hell i see. Oh well, we can still hope for the X6 with good controls etc.



Design Fabulous

Comments: 1038
Jan 05 (2007) 03:19PM  

Yes! It's about time! I'll be picking up the A3 for sure, I've been waiting way too long for it. I really hoping that Cowon put a better screen on it, that would be perfect. I wonder if the Q5 has an actual hard-drive or is one of those 1-2GB navigation systems, it would really be nice if it did.



rockinamigo14

Comments: 188
Jan 05 (2007) 03:54PM  

stop displaying the X5! make a successor already.


the a3 looks nice though.



dap_pad

Comments: 519
Jan 05 (2007) 04:30PM  

LOL i like the black, but until they show me what they've done with the DaVinci chip (ie. gapless, Real Media, faster processing, etc.) i'm not impressed... even though i don't hate the joystick, i though they would've at least used a touch sensitive thing like the i6. Oh well... if the Q5 has a HD, it'd be pretty awesome...



Michael
Location: New York City
Comments: 2802
Jan 05 (2007) 05:31PM  

Yeah I also thought we'd see touch sensitive controls. The diagonal one on the iaudio 6 is pretty unique and actually works well.



bloodycape

Comments: 730
Jan 05 (2007) 06:06PM  

I guess I am the only one who has not problems with the joy stick? I remember when I spoke to some one at TI about the Davinci chip they were like, "this chip also improves view ability and video quality, which makes the screen look nicer"



Allen
Location: Dub Vee Ooo
Comments: 1511
Jan 05 (2007) 10:03PM  

I would take all of this with a grain of salt, who knows whats the real products look like/ do.



pata2001

Comments: 141
Jan 06 (2007) 12:39AM  

If the only thing Cowon add to the A3 is support for xvid video with GMC + QPEL + VBR MP3, I'd be happy. The A2 is almost perfect already.



pecker

Comments: 501
Jan 06 (2007) 08:41AM  

Doesnt the archos 04 series use the same chip?



Digitalbath83

Comments: 87
Jan 06 (2007) 09:24AM  

any hope for id3 browsing?



dap_pad

Comments: 519
Jan 06 (2007) 02:46PM  

I don't hate the joystick but i would prefer a touch sensitive one... just seems more durable. Hopefully Cowon will impress us with what they've done with the DaVinci chip since it doesn't seem that spectacular right now.



SplinTit

Comments: 14
Jan 06 (2007) 03:46PM  

if there trully isnt much difference between the a2 and the a3 i might look into the 5inch p5.
are there any pics of the Q5? is the q5 the p5?
is the a3 the same screen size?
[ edited Jan 06 (2007) 06:16PM ]



FatalAce

Comments: 34
Jan 07 (2007) 01:06PM  

woooo cowon!!!



Scarpad

Comments: 65
Jan 09 (2007) 05:27AM  

They joystick is the one Item on my A2 that I could see breaking so I wish they had went to another input device, still it's ok, although it's often tough to control, I think the screen on the A2 is pretty decent already



Roffles

Comments: 1
Aug 19 (2007) 04:39PM  

I can't understand how anyone could be underwhelmed by the A3's slight improvements over the A2. The A2 is more or less the perfect PMP. DAPreview themselves have named it their favorite PMP....and that review came long before several firmware upgrades which made the player even greater. In my opinion, after owning the A2 for 18 months, the only real problems with the A2 is that it only comes with 30GB and the button response times and interface are laggy. The A3 should fix this and improve on a lot of other things.

I'm sort of split down the middle with the joystick control. I also own a 4GB i7 and it almost seems like the touch pad would work better on a larger player. Even with the sensitivity set to low, it is still impossible to handle the i7 without accidentally touching a button because the thing is so small. You have to constantly take it on and off hold mode if you are going to be handling it...such as jogging or in a car where you want to often change tracks....totally annoying.

This wouldn't happen with the A3 because its size offers better ways to hold it in your hand so that the buttons are not accidentally touched.



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Saijin_Naib
Good good. Have you run a more thorough chkdsk on the volume?

The default one only checks for filesystem errors, but you can force it to look for bad sectors on the volume. If it finds any, it'll flag them unwriteable and should extend the usable life of the drive by preventing writes to the bad sectors.

Be warned, this will take a long while.

If you can find another H140, maybe you could do it to that? Battery tech has really improved in the intervening times, and so has solid state storage tech. Plus, it is fun to mod things (or at least I find it so).

SarahV
@Saijin: It seems to be fixed after the reformatting! (I also did a firmware reset before.) I am SO RELIEVED!

I've been tempted to do the battery/SSD on my old H140, but it just is so determined to keep on chugging away (9+ years and counting) I hate to mess with it... the battery life is still fantastic. I can record in WAV (which means constant hard drive access) for 3-4 hours and still have half the battery left.

Saijin_Naib
@SarahV, you can always try re-flashing the firmware on it if you suspect some sort of system file corruption. Always a great way to start clean. Follow it with a reformat like you did and you should be golden.

@tds101, Nice. Do you use anything else these days?

@Lacene, do you still use the ZVM?

I'm currently refurbishing my MPIO HD300. I have a 2200mah iPod battery in it now (needed to reverse polarity to get it to work but eh) and I'm sourcing an SSD for it. Rockbox of course.

SarahV
My J3 bricked itself today So sad. Hoping I can fix it still, but I dunno. Seems like a database/corruption issue. I did a checkdisk and that turned it from "corrupt files" to "unbootable" so then I reformatted it and am copying all my files onto it and hoping it will work. (If I were smart I would have just copied a couple of songs to test it out, but I copied the whole thing so now I have to wait 90 minutes for it to finish all 32GB.) I have only had it about a year and 9 months, it will really suck if it is dead...

tds101
Nexus 7 is in my future,...

Lacene
The ZVM is pretty much the most "high-end" DAP I ever got....I got started on DAPs by getting a Dell Pocket DJ, lol. It was a re-branded Creative DAP. All others I got are Sandisk DAPs....

Saijin_Naib
Yeah, I used to remember when I was jealous of Creative DAPs. I couldn't afford to have the "top of the line" DAPs back then, and messed with no-name Chinese OEMs.

These days, you're almost better off taking that route.

Cowon still seems to put out quality. Samsung just makes Android players, same for Archos.

MPIO (my favorite) has become defunct.

These are dark times for DAPs

Lacene
I still have my ZVM that I got when they first came out....it still works and looks like new...I never abused it and put one of those clear protective shields on it and got a silicon case for it.

A shame that Creative put it out - their most highly-regarded DAP ever - and then seemed to go downhill immediately afterwards...

Saijin_Naib
Yeah, I played with one. Pretty slick, great interface. So great in fact, that Apple largely knocked it off and sued Creative to keep the rights. Bastards.

I have a Creative Zen Vision Micro 6gb I need to repair/swap drive out of.

LiQuiD_FuSioN
Anyone have experience with the Creative ZEN Vision:M? Now that was a cool looking player too, never got to try one out though.


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