Cowon D3 Plenue. Review. With Photos. - Page 7

Bob Hope did.  A shame, to.

I expect firmware 2.31, 3/31, and 4.31 any minute now (probably Monday). For anyone who has hacker genes, Roebeet has figured out how to add the android market to the D3 as well.   Not a pretty or easy process though.  With time I expect a simple file transfer/install should do the job.

Only Cowon will know what they are planning to do.  I don't work for Cowon.  

It surprises me that 2.31 isn't out yet.  Perhaps they are working extra hard to resolve gapless and adding a few more unique feature before releasing it outside of Korea.   I would certainly upgrade my Amazon and blog reviews in that case.

4D

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheDreamthinker 

Do they actually plan to make it compatible with the Android Market?

Ogg .  I feel your pain, roebeet!

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by roebeet 

No support for Vorbis tags.    boooooooooo.    I expected better of Cowon.

Skerry,

The two devices are completely different.  One has Wifi and (almost) all that WiFi comes with. Strip out WiFi from the D3 and you basically have a J3 without gapless playback.   The D3 still comes out short when comparing it to the other android PMPs out there (Archos and Creative for now) with no camera or GPS.  It also comes out short when comparing it to the iPod Touch.  If all I had to pick between were the D3 and J3 then I'd pick the D3 for WiFi and Email/WebBrowser/Apps/etc.. But if it was between the D3 and the Archos 43 I'd pick the 43.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by skerry2006aj 

Would you pick the d3 over the j3 considering the higher price on d3?...

Stick with the J3.

Quote:

Originally Posted by freeky1 

So, if I already own an Android phone (Droid X), which can do wifi, email, internet, text, 3G, camera, phone, and apps, would the D3 be worth the price, or would I be better off sticking with my 64GB J3?

To be revolutionary any product would have to be something we wouldn't expect, would set new standards in usefullness, and would put them ahead of the competition by a year at least.  Apple knows how to do this, although they don't always hit the mark. Cowon's tendancy has been to be evolutionary, with each new generation getting just a little bit better than the previous.  The J3 was a little better than the S9. The D2+ was a little better than the D2. Not all their lines have followed that logic, but most have.

The D3 is a new breed for them.  It's the first in the line, meaning they don't have any experience to anticipate potential flaws or what customers might like the best or least about it. They shot high putting a great (expensive) AMOLED screen, amazing media codec support, and nice product design over a wild guess at what hardware would be needed this generation. No cameras or GPS.  Not enough true android to run Angry Birds properly.

Creative has done the same thing with their new Zen Touch 2's. They took the low approach, putting a cheap screen and little product design over what could be considered the minimum (good) hardware spec for android 2.2 right now.

Both companies missed the target.  At the time these devices were on the drawing board the iPod Touch was generation 3.  The gen4 Touch and latest firmware for it added cameras for facetime, Home media sharing/streaming, decent versatile bluetooth, and so on. 

So Cowon isn't hesitant.  No more than anyone else anyway.  It is VERY hard to see the future. The D3 can be updated, so at least things like home sharing and bluetooth keyboad support could be added. It'll take at least one more (hardware) generation for GPS and cameras though.

4D