Samsung S3 (YP-S3) portable multimedia player

Cool Yule Rating: 4.5 stars

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Cool Yule Rating: 4.5 stars

Price: $79.99 (Amazon.com)

Product Web site

Description: With the iPod being so dominant in the digital music and multimedia player space these days, you would think that other companies would just want to stay away from this space – after all, the Microsoft Zune is more of a punch line than a serious threat to the iPod's dominance. So why on earth would Samsung want to come out with a player? Clearly, they must think that someone will want to buy their devices.

The S3 (model YP-S3) is the latest multimedia player from Samsung. The very tiny device comes with 4GB of space, letting you import music, photos and video files to the device, as well as podcasts (Samsung calls them Datacasts) and other files (it has a file browser application). Included on the device is an FM Radio, a few games and an alarm clock application. The S3 uses a touch interface (no physical buttons), and each of the buttons (a center button did most of the selecting, including the "play/pause" function) worked easily. It wasn't difficult, for example, to figure out that the right button skipped to the next song, and that the top/bottom buttons increased/lowered the volume.

The multimedia files are transferred to the S3 through the Samsung Media Studio application, a Windows app that can scan your PC for the appropriate music. Once it's discovered the music you want (the auto scan picked a bunch of Ogg Vorbis files used in some computer games on my PC), you can then transfer the files over to the S3 media player. For video and photo files, you can go to the menu screen and click "Import", and then tell the program which files you'd like to transfer over

The music player application was pretty basic, but did a good job letting me choose a bunch of songs to play (based on playlist, album, song title, artist, etc.). I couldn't immediately find a "shuffle" feature, that would have been nice (if it's there, it needs to be more obvious).

The video player was also OK, you need to rotate the screen to view the videos. The photo application also was nice, although photos were basically squares, some of your photos may be unintentionally cropped.

Surprisingly, I really enjoyed the FM radio application, which is something the iPod doesn't have. You can manually scan the dial for your favorite radio stations, and when you find them you can add them to the pre-set menu. Switching to pre-set mode, pressing the right button advances you to the next preset. The app was very cool, and the interface was designed well.

The S3 probably won't suddenly outsell the iPod and its various models, but the player is a nice device that lets you play music, watch videos, view photos and listen to the radio. The price (around $80) fits a gap between the 2GB iPod Shuffle (at $70, but only music), and the $149 iPod Nano (with 8GB of capacity). Holiday buyers who want something like the nano but with half the space and about half the cost should investigate the S3 from Samsung as an alternative.

View complete list of Portable Entertainment products | View slideshow

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World's Wireless & Mobile section.