Samsung YP-MB2 – Android competitor for the iPod Touch

Although mobile phones have grown to become multimedia players as well in the last years, there still is a big market for PMPs. I for one am a fan of PMPs myself and have own quite a couple in the last years, including the 1st iPod Touch, a Samsung YP-P2 and the Zune HD I just bought in my recent trip to the States. Still, I was not aware that Samsung were working on a new device, the YP-MB2. And quite a gadget it is.

First, this is built on the backbone of Samsung’s Galaxy S, the smart-phone they’re pushing aggressively these days in US and Europe. Thus, it brings a big 4 inch AMOLED display, latest generation hardware (including a 1 GHz processor), fast Wi-Fi N wireless, a 3MPx camera on the back and of course, the jewel in the assembly: Android 2.1 as the OS.

So this Samsung YP-MB2 looks like quite a match for the iPod Touch, bringing the bigger and way better display (AMOLED screens can display more vivid colors and come with better brightness and contrast than regular LCDs, making them usable even in bright light). There’s no info on resolution though. Plus, there’s the camera, which should record 720p content. That’s something the current iPod Touch lacks, but will get with the new 4G version coming out, supposedly next month.

Samsung YP-MB2 - nice looks, nice features, but one can't help noticing the stagering resemblance with Apple's iPod Touch

And then there’s Android. The biggest problem for my old Samsung player, and even the Zune, is their lack of applications. A PMP is no longer a device you listen to music/radio or watch movies on, it’s more. It should connect to internet, run all kind of social media apps, run games, run all stuff of useful widgets. That’s why the iPod Touch was so popular, it had all these. And now, with Android on board, this Samsung will have them too.

Of course, details are still scarce, we don’t know the exact specs for this gadget, we don’t know whether it will have an SD slot or Bluetooth, we don’t know when will it be available in stores and how much will it cost. We don’t even have some proper pictures, except for the press release ones and those above, posted by the guys at SamsungHUB.com ; and by the looks of them, Samsung decided to copy design from the Touch altogether, at least for the front side.

Some of the very few live pictures available

However, from the info we have right now, this Samsung YP-MB2 is a PMP to keep an eye on. It won’t become more popular than the new iPod, not in the US at least. I don’t see many people migrating from an Apple to this one, mainly because of DRM and content ownership problems (if you have all your content in iTunes, you will have a hard time using it on this Samsung), but I for one love to have options when buying electronic devices. And this Samsung will be one of them, if not the best.

Stay tuned, details will follow and I’ll update once I found more things about it.

Via SamsungHUB

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Tags: Android, multimedia player, Samsung, touchscreen

Last updated: August 16, 2010 | Published: August 16th, 2010 | Add the first comment!