Today, Apple announced updates to most of their iPod line. The most drastic of these is the 6th gen nano. The device now looks like a super-sized shuffle. It even sports the same built-in clip as the screenless wonder. The clickwheel is also gone, and replaced with a multi-touch touchscreen display. All of these changes make for a very fun looking little player. Despite the smaller form-factor, the new nano still has all of the same features as its larger predecessors including the "Shake to Shuffle" mode, and an FM tuner with a Live Pause feature. The 6th gen nano will get approximately 24 hours of battery life, and has a retail price of $148 for the 8GB, or $179 for the 16GB.



While the nano says goodbye to physical controls, the 4th gen Shuffle gets to welcome theirs back. There's nothing much to talk about here, this is pretty much Apple's way of owning up to a poorly designed 3rd gen model. The new Shuffle only comes with 2GB's for $49.

Finally, the iPod touch received a long overdue update that now brings it up to par with the iPhone 4. It has the same "Retina Display" (Orwellian newspeak for nice screen), as well as "FaceTime", HD video recording, and GameCenter. The new model will range from $229 for the 8GB to $399 for the 64GB.

Apple

Pre-order 2010 iPods at Amazon

Sandisk has been pretty quiet lately, but I suppose everyone else has too. Following the "Plus" edition of the Clip, it looks like they have plans to release a Sansa Fuze+ as well. Like the Clip+, this new Fuze isn't too different from the original. It supports the same formats, and even has the same estimated battery life of 24 hours.



It does come with a bigger and better screen however, going from a 1.9" LCD to a 2.4" OLED display. Max capacity has also been raised 16GB's. Additionally, Sandisk has replaced the circular D-pad found on the original for an "invisible" capacitive touch layout. Rounding out the changes is a long overdue makeover to the graphical interface. That's about all we know so far. We'll keep you updated once we get a release date and some pricing info.

via engadget

It's been a while since we've posted a deal here, but here's a pretty good one. Newegg is selling an 8GB Sansa Fuze for just $39.99 and Free shipping. The player is recertified, but from my experience, they should be as good as new. Sansa Fuze Specs 8GB with microSDHC slot Display: 1.9" QVGA Audio: MP3, WMA , OGG, FLAC, and Audible Video: MPEG-4 simple profile at 30 fps FM Tuner and Voice recorder Battery life: 24 hours for Audio, 5 hours for video Dimensions: 3.1 x 1.9 x 0.3 in. LINK

It looks like iriver has a touching new story to tell. Terrible puns aside, IriverFans has a nice collection of photos and information about the iriver Story "Touch Edition". The upcoming e-reader looks rather compact, replacing the original story's keyboard for a touchscreen E-ink display. There isn't a lot that separates it from the nooks and crannies Kindles released to date, but it does have support for OGG, as well as some MS Office formats.

iriver story Touch Edition Features:

• Display: 6.0" e-ink Touchscreen (600 x 800 resolution)
• Capacity: 2GB internal, plus SDHC expansion (up to 32GB)
• E-book support: E-Pub, PDF, TXT, FB2, DJVU, CBZ
• Office support: DOCS, PPT, XLS, HWP
• Audio support: MP3, WMA, and OGG/Voice Recorder
• Dimensions: 126mm x 162.8mm x 9.5mm

Like the previous Story, this new model will likely be exclusive to the Korean market.

LINK

Thanks michaelzhang

Amazon has a new Kindle, well two actually, your standard 3G model, as well as a Wi-Fi only model. The new reader comes in black, or white and has the same size display as previous generations, but contrast has been increased by 50%. The device itself is 21% smaller, and 15% lighter. Amazon has also doubled the internal storage from 2 to 4GB. There's a few other minor improvements including a new webkit-based browser, and improved PDF support.

Kindle 3rd Gen Features

• Display: 6.0" E-Ink display
• 4GB storage (holds approximately 3,500 books
• 3G Wireless or WiFi
• Battery life: 1 Month with Wireless off
• Books download in 60 seconds
• Enhanced PDF reader
• new Web-kit based web browser
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 4.8" x 0.335" (weight: 8 ounces)

The Kindle begins shipping August 27th starting at just $139 for the Wi-Fi model, and $189 for the 3G.

Pre-order Kindle 3G
Pre-order Kindle Wi-Fi

Karaoke is huge in Japan. The term originates from there of course, and is a combination of two words meaning "open orchestra". There are hundreds of venues around Tokyo dedicated to the entertaining, often embarrassing endeavor of singing along to your favorite pop singer. For those that can't make it out to these "Karaoke boxes", as they're called, Sony has a portable solution for you. The new NWZ-E450 Walkman series has a new Karaoke mode that reduces the vocal track on songs. This is accompanied with a new scrolling lyrics feature called "Lyrics Sync" that supports standard .lrc files.

The rest of the specs are about what you'd expect from a Sony Walkman. It has a 2.0" display, capacities ranging from 4 to 16GB's, support for MP3, WMA, AAC, WMV, H.264, and MPEG-4, and has an FM tuner and voice recorder. It also gets an estimated 50 hours of audio playback on a single charge. So really, the only thing truly different about this is the Karaoke mode, which sounds rather gimmicky to me. I think a lot people actually enjoy singing with their favorite artists, not instead of them.

My suggestion for Sony is to release a portable version of their popular Singstar games on the player. Singstar uses a points-based system to evaluate how close you've come to the actual song. I think that would be far more rewarding than a standard Karaoke feature. Additionally, Sony could actually make revenue from selling song packs for the game. But I guess all of this makes too much sense, so we'll never see it happen. The E450 series comes out next month, with no official pricing info released thus far.

via Pocket-Lint

Fellow DAPreview editor Andrew Kim, aka Design Fabulous, is no stranger to getting recognized for his great concepts. His latest is the "HTC 1", a mobile phone concept that's both stylish and functional. For instance, the bottom half of the solid brass casing rotates, allowing it to double as a kickstand. If you're a germaphobe, you'll feel sane knowing there's a UV light built-in to kill any harmful microbes, as the phone charges.



Kim set out to design a phone with a premium look, and a user interface that complimented that. I think he's accomplished that, and then some. Andrew already has an impressive body of work behind him, and from the looks of it, an even more promising future ahead.

HTC 1 concept

as seen on: engadget

Thanks Saijin_Naib!

Our friends over at GenerationMP3 have just released a video comparing the Cowon S9 to the J3. The differences between the two don't appear to be anything major. Among other things, the J3 improves on the S9 with a cleaner looking menu system, larger album art, and faster loading images. Response times for the touchscreen looks to be about the same on the two players.




via GMP3


Cowon J3 at Amazon

E-book readers are finally hitting my target price. Being the cheapskate that I am, I had a hard time plunking down $250 or more for a Kindle. Well today, Barnes and Noble's officially announced a Wi-Fi version of their popular Android-powered nook reader for just $149. Aside from the switch from 3G wireless to Wi-Fi the reader appears to be identical to the original. It has a 6" E-ink display, as well as a 3.5" color touchscreen. It's loaded with 2GB's of memory plus a microSD slot, and supports PDF, EPUB, and MP3 files. B&N also dropped the price of the 3G model to $199. Hopefully this will put a little pressure on Amazon to release a WiFi-only model of their own.

LINK

Update: Well that was fast. Amazon has now dropped the price of the Kindle to $189. We got ourselves a good ol' fashioned pricing war!

Kindle at Amazon

Yesterday at E3, Nintendo officially revealed the 3DS. The successor to the DS may not look too different from the current DS line, but as the name implies, it does 3D. Better yet, it does 3D without glasses. Having to wear glasses is perhaps one of the biggest turn-offs of this new 3D craze. I don't know exactly how Nintendo accomplished it, but from the demonstrations I've seen, it works pretty well. Nintendo announced a ton of games for the new system including Metal Gear Solid, Kid Icarus, and Star Fox. It's also capable of playing 3D movies. Nintendo had trailers for "How to Train Your Dragon" and others playing back perfectly in 3D. The Nintendo 3DS won't arrive on shelves till 2011, but it's already shaping up to be a killer handheld
device.

LINK