Quote:
Originally Posted by =X=
Nice write up thx, esp on the battery & charger.
I have the Galaxy S, my daughter has the GPlayer 5" great devices she loves her player very much. And with ICS on my GS I'm really enjoying my phone and have no desire to upgrade.
=X=
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If you already have a high end smart phone, and don't mind racking up the extra battery time, I can see your point.
A separate dedicated media player may still make sense for some smart phone users though if they listen to lots of MP3 music or audio books.
The Galaxy Player is highly optimized as a media player so it has much better run-time when playing MP3s and Video than some smart phones.
I like it because I can easily listen to a full 15 or 20 hour audio book on a single charge.
Video playback is also surprisingly good, and watching two full feature length films during a 5 hour plane flight is also no problem. The video player plays AVI WMV/ASF and MKV formats with XVID, DivX, and H264 codecs suported up to 1280x720 resolution (720p). So far my Galaxy Player has handled pretty much everything that I have thrown at it flawlessly (even exotic 60fps MKV files) and I really like that I can just drag video files onto the player without the special conversions and transfer hassles of the iPod.
I was also pleasantly surprised with the interface and features of the built in media player. For example the built in audio player displays embedded album artwork when available and allows title selection and sorting either using standard Album/Artist MP3 ID3 tags OR using simple Folder/Filename navigation (very useful for untagged or badly tagged MP3s).
The audio player also has a nice instant-access widget that pops up at the top of the lock screen so you don't have to unlock the device to pause your music or skip tracks (In other words, if the device is sleeping with the screen off, the music player still plays, and all you have to do to have instant access to the playback control widget is tap the power button).
The GPS and Compass also work really well, and since Goggle Maps now let's you cache up to 10 local map regions, you can use it offline without a WiFi connection.
And, getting back to the main topic for this forum, I was also very pleasantly surprised to see how well the little Galaxy Player 4 works as a book reader. It's super lightweight, the screen is sharp and clear, and when using it as a book reader at reduced screen brightness (the most comfortable setting) I can easily read for 8 hours or more.