Apple released the original iPhone in January 2007, and a few months later, it added a new branch to the iPod family tree by leveraging the new all-touch interface. While the iPod touch was outsold by the iPhone, it was still highly successful. Apple celebrated 100 million units sold in mid-2013.
Android manufacturers naturally wanted to have their version of the iPod touch, and in 2009, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet hit the scene. It might have been the first of its kind to run Android (v1.6 Donut) and was billed as a “PMP,” Portable Media Player. It could play MP3, AAC, FLAC, and various video formats and had a large 4.8-inch display for the time.
At IFA 2010, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Player 50 and claimed it was the first of its kind, though with some asterisks. The 8GB model cost £150, which was £40 less than an 8GB iPod touch at the time. There was also a 16GB model, but a more economical way to get additional storage space was with microSD (cards up to 32GB were supported).
Galaxy Player 50
The Galaxy Player 50 ran Android 2.1 Eclair and had full access to the Android Marketplace, allowing users to install apps and games. It, of course, lacked 3G connectivity, but it did have Wi-Fi for those apps that required internet connectivity.
With a 3.2-inch WVGA display, it was also a video player provided with built-in DivX support. For example, the browser supported Flash, enabling users to browse the entire web at home or at a cafe.
A few months later, several more models appeared, namely the Galaxy Player 3.6, 4.0, 4.0, 5.0, which were also known as “Galaxy S WiFi” followed by the same numbers (indicating display size).
The Samsung Galaxy Player 5.8 was huge
The almost last attempt was the Galaxy Player 5.8 from 2012. With its 5.8-inch 540 x 960px display, it was larger than a Galaxy Note II, though its hardware was more like the original Note, featuring a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU at 1.2GHz, 1GB of RAM.
Sony is the company that invented the tiny personal audio players with the first Walkman and it did not want to be outdone. The Sony Walkman Z100 arrived in January of 2012. The $250 player took design cues from the Xperia Arc series and featured a 4.3-inch WVGA LCD.
Sony Walkman Z-1000
The Walkman Z100 was available in 8, 16, 32, and 64GB versions (the last one was a Japanese exclusive) and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a Tegra 2 with a 1GHz dual-core CPU and 512MB of RAM. It had a microHDMI port and a proprietary connector for docks. It could also stream video to your TV over DLNA. It featured familiar Sony technologies like S-Master MX, and DSEE.
Allow us a quick detour to mention a few music streaming services, Sony’s Music Unlimited, no longer available, had desired to rival the likes of Spotify and iTunes. For $4 a month, users could listen to Internet radio, while $10/month gave them on-demand playback.
The service could also sync the user’s personal music library from the PC to the cloud and then down to patrons Walkman Z (or Xperia phone). This included Offline Playback as mobile data was highly expensive back then. Music Unlimited shut down in 2017.
Samsung had its streaming service, Milk Music, introduced in early 2015 and powered by Slacker Radio, with ad-supported and ad-free subscriptions. Samsung began shutting down the service a year later, and it was entirely gone in 2017.
Back to Android MP3 players. Sony may have given up on being a streaming music company, but it did not give up on the players. In January, it unveiled the NW-A300 and NW-ZX700.
