Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Rather than giving us potentially misleading song capacities using the 64kbps WMA music format (as some music phone makers do when quoting eAAC+ song capacities, a format the Fuze does not support anyway), SanDisk uses 128kbps mp3 file sizes instead (at 4 minutes per song) when it claims the 2GB model will store 500 songs, the 4GB 1000 songs and the 8GB 2000 songs.
But of course, if you prefer to have your mp3 collection at the higher quality 192kbps mp3 format, or even better, the number of songs your player can store will naturally fall accordingly.
In terms of video and photos, the 2GB Fuze holds 6 hours or 1000 photos, the 4GB model holds 12 hours or 2000 photos and the 8GB model holds 24 hours or 4000 photos.
As you’d expect, any combination of all three will see less of each media type being able to be stored on the device, these figures are the maximum you can store if there was only that type of media on the unit.
Eric Bone, vice president of product marketing for Sansa, SanDisk’s audio/video product line, enthused that: “The Sansa Fuze is an eye-catching player that consumers will enjoy for its looks, capabilities and incredible value. This new MP3 player combines some of the best features found on other Sansa products, including great sound quality. It’s yet another strong offering by SanDisk in the sub-$150 music player market.”
US users might care about the fact that the Sansa Fuze MP3 player “gives users access to subscription download services from numerous sources, including Rhapsody To Go, Napster, eMusic and others”, but Australian users can snooze off at this point, as none of these nifty subscription services are available down under: thank you record companies for allowing US users to access these services, while keeping us in the digital media dark ages.
That said eMusic was prepared to let me enter my credit card details even though it knew I was in Australia, but as eMusic is "the number 1 seller of independent music", it won't have the big names from the major music labels.
Besides supporting mp3 music files, it can also play WMA files, WAV files, and Audible audio book files. Video support includes MPEG-4 video, while photo support is standard JPEG.
Battery life is claimed at 24 hours for audio and five hours for video, while the unit works with Windows XP and Vista, and if you use the Sansa Fuze in ‘mass storage MSC mode’, you can use it on Macs and Linux PCs as well.
So... the Sansa Fuze is an mp3/media player that you could certainly use, and will no doubt appeal to a segment of the market.
But if the iPod loving masses are anything to go by, the real deal of an iPod - despite the higher price and lower feature set, but bigger screen, thinner size and greater cool factor - is still very much likely to be the first choice of a new generation.
David Bass
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