Sony bringing iPod Touch clone to market at CES?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 13 December 2008 17:57

IT Industry - Market

The Sony Insider site lists some familiar sounding specs for a modern media player.

These are as follows:

- 16GB of 32GB storage with “drag and drop” capability for transferring media files

- Wi-Fi (WEP and WPA support)

- 3-inch OLED touch screen at WQVGA resolution, 10,000:1 contrast ratio

- Web browser (Flash support unknown)

- YouTube, podcast and Crackle video feeds over Wi-Fi

- FM radio

- Audio codecs include MP3, WMA, AAC, PCM

- Video codes include AVC (H.264), MPEG-4, WMV

- Built-in search “to learn more about your favourite artist”

- Ability to purchase music online through Amazon and download direct to the player

- S-Master digital amplifier

- Digital noise cancelling

- The assumption of hardware buttons for volume, REV, Play/Pause, FF

From a media player perspective, these are the sorts of specs you’d expect. There’s no mention of a built-in microphone, which would be handy for recording voice notes, or perhaps doing VoIP chats through the browser.

I can only hope that if Sony is going to all the trouble of making such an advanced media player that is has a way to also turn it into a handheld computer, or has such capabilities planned for future models.

Otherwise, beyond an OLED screen, a built-in FM radio, digital noise cancelling, the S-Master digital amplifier and support for a few more audio and video codecs, why would you buy this over the iPod Touch?

Especially given that most consumers are more than happy with existing audio quality and haven't been swayed by iPod beating features in the past, the iPod Touch offers simply offers so much more.

Future iPod Touch models will also likely to deliver even better audio quality, OLED screens and other features that competitors have shown consumers are truly interested in.

Roll on January! Not only will we get to see the beta of Windows 7 unveiled at CES, the now expected unveiling of this new Walkman and a host of other surprises, we’ll get Macworld 2009 as well, with who knows what “one more thing” Steve Jobs has up his sleeve to shock and awe!