The Korean company "Safa" has been around for a couple of years by now. They've designed a pair of new players, the most appealing of which is called "SS220". Not an awful lot is known about, other than the fact that it can play videos on a 1.5-inch color screen while also offering the usual rim-ram like picture viewing, text viewing and a built-in FM radio.


Safa's trademark-like feature, the built-in speaker, can also be found within the slickly-designed, slender shell. It's USB2.0 compatible and yes, it's able to play music files; I just don't know which formats right now. The controls on the SS200 add to the stylish look, being all touch-based, flat and nicely-backlit and all. Haven't got a clue about the capacity range, but I'm figuring/hoping "up to 4GB" (probably ends up being 2GB, then).

The other new player, "SS200", illustrates an ethical problem I've mentioned not too long ago. Here we have Safa, designing a (granted, rather generic-looking) new shell for their latest mini-PMP. They've only just put it on display, with Maxfield ordering up a batch; a few days later, some random Chinese company comes up with the same shell and cheaper internal components (there are about 4-5 SoC solutions dominating the Chinese market right now - all their GUIs look alike as a result of this). Customers unaware of the situation figure they might just as well go with the "cheaper" Chinese version, because "it's the same thing anyway" (not true, obviously).

If you think this isn't an issue affecting anyone outside of China, then think again. Let's just say Safa's bookkeeper has to keep track of a lot less personnel records since the last year, mainly due to the fact that their shells have been copied so many times - unaware/budget-restrained customers simply pick up the cheaper alternative in batches of 1000. Cry me a river? Meh. I'd rather see you cry me an iriver (I'd prefer a Clix). Still, pretty interesting material.

Update: out of fear that their slick design might be subject to more Chinese mass-copying, Safa kindly requested us to pull/blur the pictures of the SS220.

Safa's SR-M800 series has been dropped nearly altogether, because there was no way to distinguish the original from the copied version just by looking at it. The copying behaviour goes to such extents that Safa's unused IR transmitter on the M800 (little black plastic thingy at the top of the player) can be seen on almost any of the "fake" versions - in which case it's just a piece of black plastic of course.

Back to the SS200 now. It's a very small (71 x 48 x 12mm, 43 grams), cute-looking PMP (sort of like a miniature version of Cowon's A2) that will run for about 6 hours when playing videos (and a mere 2 hours extra for audio playback). There's your average-day 260k, 220 x 176, 2-inch'ish color display, a voice recorder, picture viewer and support for MP3/WMA/WAV. I did find it rather hard to control, as there's no "main joystick" to be found on any side.

I'd like to thank Ray for the extremely weird but tasty Vietnamese food and his in-depth views on everything Korea. Now, I'm off to look for answers to your previous questions (always legging one day behind during these events) and some random sleuthing.