Apart from being colored differently, the NW-S640 (top left) and the NW-S740 (top right) are pretty much identical, though the S640 lacks noise canceling.

The players have an FM radio, usual codec support, and an eye-opening stated battery life of 42 hours for music, and 10 hours for video. They also come with premium MDR-EX300SL earphones, and a matching speaker bundle will be available when they arrive in Japan in October.

The S740 series will be: 8GB (Y16,000; $177), 16GB (Y19,000; $210), and 32GB (Y25,000; $276). The slightly cheaper S640 series is: 8GB (Y14,000; $154), and 16GB (Y17,000; $188). We'll fill you in when we know more about an almost-certain U.S. release. [Sony Insider]

Along with standard codec support, there's also new drag and drop feature that auto-transcodes video from your computer. And in Japan at least, the player comes with premium MDR-EX300SL earphones. Battery life is listed as 29 hours for music, and 9 hours for video.

No word on U.S. availability yet, but if the recent S and E series Walkmans are any gauge, the wait won't be long after it hits Japan on October 31. Pricing there will be: 16GB (Y24,000; $226), 32GB (Y30,000; $332), and (Y40,000; $443).

Enough to tempt you away from the more powerful $280 32GB Zune HD or $400 64GB iPod touch? I just don't know about those Mickey Mouse like controls myself... [Sony Japan (translated) via Akihabara News]

According to iRiver Fans (where we also found these apparent press images), the E200 has been slimmed down to 9.9mm, versus the E100's 11.3mm.

The current model's 2.4-inch (262-color) display has also been bumped up to 2.8-inches on the E200. According to Engadget, it may also be a brighter OLED screen. You can also add to the limited storage (4GB or 8GB) thanks to a MicroSD card slot.

There's not too much else to report—the touch-sensitive controls and interface are said to be the same—so I'm left feeling kinda myeh, unfortunately. [iRiver Fans via DAP Review via PMP Today via Engadget]

The folks over at DAPReview spotted a notice on iriver America's front page advertising the P35's release this fall in the States. The P35 is a 4.3" screened flash-based PMP with an 8/16GB capacity (expandable with MicroSDHC), impressive codec support, Wi-Fi, and a touch/tactile control combination like the company's Spinn player. Looks pretty sweet overall, we just hope iriver can keep the prices out of the stratosphere when it's released Stateside. [DAPReview]

The P3 is a followup to Samsung's successful P2, and while it makes quite a few changes, this is an evolution, rather than a revolution. The P3 boasts a few new tricks from Samsung's galaxy of phones, like haptic feedback, a teeny-but-clear speaker, "desktop" widgets and an improved GUI, but this is assuredly not a competitor to the iPod touch. The P3 is not a platform: There's no way to expand the player's catalog of programs or widgets, and, most importantly, it doesn't have Wi-Fi. Despite its big ol' touchscreen and appearance of a fully customizable experience, the P3 is a closed environment, like the nano.

It is, however, one of the best standard flash players on the market—possibly the best. Available in 8/16/32GB sizes (priced at $150/$200/$300, respectively), the P3 comes with a bevy of great extras, a sleek body, and a (mostly) intuitive and pretty GUI. Most importantly, its touchscreen and broad video codec support makes it the best compact video player for the money, and something anyone not suckling at the iTunes teat should get a good look at.

The Physical
The P3 retains the same form factor as its predecessor, which means a gorgeous 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen covering most of its front, a few physical buttons—volume and power/hold, moved to the top for easy in-pocket use—and a very thin metal body. No, it's not quite as thin as an iPod nano, but there's only a tenth of an inch difference. Underneath the screen is a marginally useful touch strip, a bit like the upcoming Palm Pre's. On the bottom is the headphone jack, a mic and Samsung's proprietary USB port.

The P3 feels really great in the hand; it's slightly heavier than the P2 and feels very solid. It's also quite the looker, with a brushed aluminum back, matte front, and chrome accents. To give you an idea of the size, it fits perfectly in that little change pocket of a pair of jeans.

The GUI
The P3's user interface is, for the most part, similar to the P2's—a very intuitive, simple, touch-based design. The main screen has three pages, like an iPhone or T-Mobile G1, that can be turned by a swipe in either direction. The center page has the icons you'll be using most often (Music, Videos, Pictures, FM Radio, etc), and the ones on the left and right house the widgets. Some of the widgets are pretty handy, like a calculator, a calendar and a lightbulb that adjusts screen brightness when tapped.

There's also a goofy but sort of handy "quick tray" with speaker toggle, Bluetooth and other actions that pulls down from the top when you tap, almost like the system tray on the Android G1.

Some of the widgets are poorly executed, like the 24 subway maps from around the world—the NYC one is awful, devoid of an actual geographic map, making you zoom to view specific stops. Do not rely on this to get you around Hong Kong, or you'll be sorry. Some of the widgets are overtly purposeless, like a gingerbread man that crumbles when tapped. That's all he does. Crumbles.

The touch interaction features haptic feedback, that's supposed to rumble when an item is pressed, thus confirming the selection. Unfortunately, it's more a gimmick than anything else: It's fairly weak (more of a buzz than a rumble), inconsistent, and in the end it doesn't seem to aid the overall accuracy of the touchscreen.

Menus are very easy to navigate and are very intuitive, but scrolling through lists of artist names, albums or what have you isn't quite as simple as it should be. Lists can be dragged up or down with a finger, but the system isn't as smart as it is on an iPhone—you can't turn the "drag" into a flick at the last minute. So when you do drag, you only view about 15 items before you have to pick up your finger and drag again.

The P3 does support the flick motion, but you have to do it deliberately. Besides, it's more of a delayed reaction and doesn't feel very organic—one flick will move the list exactly one full page, every time, regardless of how enthusiastically you've flicked. There's also a scroll bar on the side that's nice for jumping from the As to the Ms, but it's not particularly accurate. All in all, it's a little slower to navigate long artist or track lists than I'd like.

There are other gestures as well—tap, double-tap, circle. Some of them will grow into usefulness as people carry and use the P3 for a while, though out of the gate, they're a little specific to feel intuitive.

Playback Quality
Samsung's PMPs are some of the best-sounding players out there, and the P3 continues the trend: Bass is full but not overpowering, treble is clear, and mids are focused. Basically, the P3 sounds great, and is powerful enough to drive big Sony MDR headphones while sounding halfway decent in my 16-year-old car's crappy stereo, too. It supports MP3, WMA, OGG, AAC and even FLAC for you lossless-loving audiophiles.

Video quality is absolutely beautiful—this is the best flash-memory video player I've ever seen. With a firmware update (already available), the P3 will play DivX and Xvid files up to 800x600 resolution, which means yes, pirates, this will play your torrented episodes of 30 Rock perfectly without any conversion necessary. In addition to DivX/Xvid AVI files, the P3 supports MPEG-4, WMV and H.264 (though not clear on how high a resolution is supported), which makes it one of the most well-rounded video players on the market. As I mentioned above, the screen is stunning, with nearly flawless viewing angle range.

Nuts and Bolts
The P3 also has an FM radio, though at least out in the suburbs, reception was barely listenable.

Bluetooth works perfectly—it paired with my BlackBerry quickly and easily, and since it has a mic and speaker, it can be used as a speakerphone.

Battery life is rated at 30 hours for audio and 5 for video.

Its default setting is for MTP, which means that, out of the box, it may only work on Windows machines. Fret not, because you can also switch it to UMS to run on Macs and Linux machines. In Windows it will show up as a drive for easy drag-and-drop, and is happily compatible with media software like WinAmp and MediaMonkey. On the Mac, it's going to be as drag-and-droppable as any USB disk.

Overall
We've come to a crossroads in the world of PMPs. High-end devices with Wi-Fi, like the iPod touch, Archos 5/7 and Sony's upcoming X1000, are the future. The Samsung P3 is not one of these players.

The iPod nano is the elephant in the room here; The P3 is priced to go head-to-head with the nano at the 8/16GB range, although the P3 offers a $300 32GB version as well. I think the P3 holds its own against the nano, besting it in quite a few categories. The hardware looks and feels great, the GUI is prettier and more customizable, the touch interface can be useful, and most importantly frees up real estate for what matters most: a bigger, better screen.

As my catalog of nitpicks above will tell you, the P3 may not have the simplicity of an iProduct. Nevertheless, if you use Windows, or use a Mac but not iTunes, if you download a lot of video, and if you don't have a hard drive full of DRM'd music—if that describes you, then you would be a fool to buy an iPod nano instead of Samsung's P3. [Samsung MP3 Players]

The only trouble with that is, as the link to the P5 shows, Cowon has had a few months head start. The P5 also has a bigger screen (SmartQ 5 checks in at 4.3 inches—why not 5?), although the two devices share the same 800x480 resolution. Both devices also come standard with wifi, Bluetooth, GPS via USB and all the other little PMP features we expect today, like touchscreens. Oh, the exception is 3G, which is unavailable on both devices. Boo.

So what's the big differentiators here? Well, there's only one we can seen, and it relates to price. PMPtoday speculates the SmartQ 5 will surprise PMP fans with its comparatively lower price point. Is that enough? [zol via PMPToday]

The Price: $450 as tested ($350 60GB model with optional $100 DVR station add-on).

The Verdict: The Archos 5—actually the company's sixth-generation handheld—is nice, but it's not the iPod touch killer I was hoping for after the initial demo.

On one hand, the touchscreen interface is a fantastic upgrade over their last gen. The UI is more modern looking and the touch controls are responsive and more intuitive than their button counterparts. The 4.8-inch screen—a slight upgrade over the previous model's 4.3-incher—is a great size for watching videos without straining your eyes. (The iPhone and slimmer iPod touch have 3.5-inch screens.)

But despite its better look, the menu system is a pain to navigate. Certain options are lumped in categories where they don't fit, and there's an entire menu devoted to selling accessories and software function add-ons. Archos is known to sell barebones players that you have to amp up with software and hardware add-ons. But this one already has a web browser and a capable media player, so it's pretty annoying when the unit begs you to buy it upgrades. Worst of all, there's no way to turn the ads off.

Web browsing is as much of a pain. It only runs in landscape, and code-heavy sites such as Giz and ESPN never seem to fully load. The e-mail program is not clean or simple enough to be useful as a true on-the-go replacement.

While the DVR station streamed video from Archos to TV over HDMI—and did it in good detail—it uses an S-Video input to record shows onto the unit, so they look garbled, with the wrong aspect ratio and out-of-sync sound. The TV guide itself is serviceable, though slow and unattractive when compared to a TiVo or a standard cable box guide.

The Archos 5 is an improvement and brings Apple-like features to an otherwise standard PMP. However, beyond size and capacity, there is a distinct difference between the Archos 5 and the iPod touch. When it comes to quickly hitting the web, checking e-mail or listening to music, the iPod touch is smooth, and looks good, begging to be held. The Archos is far more clunky in its execution. Despite being the hands-down winner when it comes to watching video, it simply isn't as touchable. [Archos]

The new, thinner and smaller iPod nano really is smaller, thinner, and feels much better in your hand. Brian, our hand model, has small hands, so you can see how relatively small the unit is. The aluminum is slick, but the clickwheel might be slightly too slick, and not as grippy as previous models. The UI though, is fast and responsive—maybe even more so than the previous fat nano generation. The scrolling album art on the main menu is at the bottom, and not on the sides like before.

The accelerometer is as good as on the iPhone or iTouch. Landscape pulls up right away. The album art is gorgeous on the curved screen. Genius is good, and is easily pulled up by holding the middle clickwheel button. Scrolling through music is fast, and pretty much retains all the iPod clickwheel functionality you're used to from previous generations. It does have slight improvements as we noted in the liveblog—holding the middle clickwheel button gets you shortcuts to many functions—but all in all, it's what you'd expect from an iPod nano.

Comparisons vs. previous gen:
The screens are almost exactly the same size if you turn the fat nano sideways. The new nano is as thick at the thickest point as the fat nano, but tapers off to either side to give an overall "more thin" feel. The back is aluminum so MUCH less scratchy (think 2nd gen nanos).

An interview with Apple brought up these facts to the table:
-It's the thinnest iPod ever, and the smallest nano by volume
-Black, a new matte color that is slightly slate-ish, and Silver, get black clickwheels.
-The Pink is BACK and the Red is project RED.
-First iPod nano that uses USB charging only, so older firewire chargers from docks a few years old will not charge the new nano.
-Shake shake to shuffle will not activate unless screen is active and hold is off.
-Clickwheel orientation does not shift when you use the accelerometer to switch to landscape mode. Joz says that the menu button is always in the same position, and that's not a problem because in landscape, you're usually scrolling.

[Apple]

The iPod classic looks like it's getting the runt's end of the "Let's Rock" magic wand today—with boosted storage to 120GB for $250, up from 80GB for the same price. And it's death for the 160GB thickie, matching the Zune's lineup to a tee. Same form factor and colors as last time. Now, the largest iPod money can buy has been downgraded by 40GB—seem like a strange move to backtrack like this to anyone else?

We're here at the Yerba Buena Center. Our liveblog's is starting at live.gizmodo.com. That's where you should be, either sitting back and letting the auto-refresh do its thing, or hitting that button like a mad man. The music is stopping, the lights are dimming, and Phil Schiller is being jovial. It's an Apple event. [Live.Gizmodo.com]

Samsung announced that the PMP will actually receive three updates over the next four months. The first update is set for December and will include the Bluetooth 2.0 cell compatibility, as well as AAC playback. The second set of updates will be available in January and will feature games—titles TBA—and additional functions. The final update hits in March and will feature improvements that Samsung will decide based on market research. [Samsung]