I actually want to call this little droid R2-MP4, since I think that would be a more appropriate name. The musical R2 unit even comes with earbuds which look like C-3PO’s head. Hopefully, when you stick them in your ears, he won’t go blathering on about how he he’s fluent in over six-million forms of communication, and just let you listen peacefully to your playlist.

Now, this R2-D2 media player isn’t exactly high-end. It’s only got 2GB of storage – or about 500 songs, and despite the screenshot above, I’m not convinced it can play video or view photos. That sure looks like an screen grab from an old iPod with some Star Wars images tossed in. But I could be wrong. Heck, maybe it can project holograms and hack into the Death Star’s security system for all we know.

Anyhow, if you’re buying this, you’re probably not getting it for its tech specs, and just because you have to own every Star Wars gadget and gizmo. R2-MP4 sells for $44.99 (USD). If you want one, you’ll have to go to your local Toys R Us and poke around, as they appear to be sold out online right now.

[via 7 Gadgets]

The Quantum offers a 3-inch touchscreen display, and is loaded up with a variety of mobile applications, including a calculator, contact manager, clock, FM radio, games, MP4 video player and voice recorder among other things. The quad-band phone works on all GSM networks worldwide, and has dual SIM slots so you can switch between two mobile accounts with the flip of a switch. The phone also supports Bluetooth connectivity, including A2DP and AVRCP so you can play music or even operate remote-controlled devices over Bluetooth.

There’s also a built-in video/still video camera, but it maxes out at a paltry 640×480 resolution. And just like the iPhone that it so desperately wishes it were, it even has a motion sensor which detects when you switch from landscape to portrait modes. And unlike the iPhone, it already has MMS support out of the box. Did I happen to mention that it has a built-in TV too? Too bad it’s analog, so it probably doesn’t receive anything in the US now that analog broadcasts are done. For those of you in other countries where analog TV still works, you can tell us how well it works.

You can find the Quantum CVFD-M46 over at Chinavasion for just $94 (USD). The price drops to just $90 bucks if you buy 3 or more.

No App Store, though

Chinavasion’s CVHD-E16 media player lets you play videos in a wide variety of formats on your HDTV. There’s support for video files in MP4, MKV, MOV, MPEG, MPG, VOB, AVI, DIVX, XVID and RMVB formats, as well as audio files in MP3, AAC or WMA formats too. Wherever would you find videos to play on this thing?

Just load up your video files onto an SD/MMC card or USB flash drive (SD max size 16GB/USB max size 32GB), plug it into the front of the player, and you’re off to the races. In addition to the HDMI digital multimedia output, there’s component video with coax, optical and plain old stereo analog outputs. The player supports HDMI 1.3, and outputs video in either 720p or 1080p resolutions. Also in the box is an infrared remote for you to easily navigate through your digital media from the other side of the room.

The CVHD-E16 HD media player is available over at Chinavasion for $108.66 (USD).

At the center of its colorful face plate, the Atree J2 media player has a dome-shaped controller called the “Red Eye” that you use to navigate the system’s menu system. But don’t get your hopes up that it’s as deft as the iPod’s scroll wheel. You actually move around the menus by clicking up, down, left and right on the flat plastic surface around the red eye – or clicking right in the middle to activate your selection.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

In addition to playing audio files in MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, APE and FLAC formats, the video playback can handle AVI, MPEG4 and WMV formats at a solid 30fps. The screen has a bright TFT 320 x 240 display and is designed to play video in landscape mode for the optimal viewing experience.

And with 38 hours of audio or 8 hour of video on a single charge, it’s no slouch on battery performance, either. In comparison, the similarly-priced iPod Nano can only handle 24 hours of audio or 4 hours of video per charge.

Perfect for listening to movies through headphones, the J2 has a 5.1 virtual surround sound mode. There’s even an FM tuner for listening to radio broadcasts, and a handy Korean-to-English dictionary app. But my favorite feature is the Adobe Flash Lite 3.04 implementation that lets you play a wide variety of SWF format games on the portable’s screen.

Available in either 4GB (115,000 KRW/$93 USD) or 8GB (138,000 KRW/$112 USD) versions, there’s also a microSD card slot for adding up to 8GB of additional storage. Unfortunately, there’s no word on a release outside of Korea at this point, but you might be able to find one over on eBay if you keep an (red) eye out.

[Atree via Early Adopter]

While the PXP-900 steals more thant a few of it’s design cues from the Sony PSP, don’t expect it to play the latest PSP games – it only plays retro game ROMs. The system is the latest and greatest cheapie jack-of-all-trades media player, digicam, audio book reader, FM radio, gaming combo system fresh from the streets of China.

The handheld runs an emulator that can play NES, Famicom, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Super Famicom, SEGA MegaDrive and  some sort of 32-bit ROM games too (although the product description doesn’t elaborate). And while most retro games are built for a 4:3 screen ratio, it looks like the console works some sort of stretchy magic to make games play on its 4.3″ widescreen 16:9 LCD.

So if you’re willing to take a gamble on one of these questionable mutant consoles, you can find the PXP-900 over at Chinagrabber for $89.99 (USD).

From everything I can tell, this MP7 media player is about on par with every other PMP out there. It’s got a 2.8″ LCD color screen, plays video, audio, tunes FM radio, captures pictures and even has a voice recorder. Big whup. If I’m gonna upgrade my MP3 or MP4 player to an MP7, it had better warp space and time. Or at least slice, dice or make julienne fries.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t look like the case here. Still, if you’re looking for a cheap multimedia player and want to tell your friends that their olde tyme MP3 and MP4 players are for cavemen, you can get your own MP7 player over at eCrater for $70 bucks.

Designed to look like a curvy retro television, complete with rabbit ear antennae, the QTV frame shows your digital images on its doll-house-sized 3.5″ LCD screen.

Just plug in your USB thumb drive or your SD/SDHC memory card, and you can view your media in a snap. Of course, with an underwhelming 320×234 pixel screen resolution, image quality should be just about as good as that old 1960s Zenith you have sitting in the basement.

What the QTV lacks in image resolution, it certainly tries to make up for it in features. Not only does it let you view your JPEG images, it offers MP3 playback, an alarm clock, a calendar, and an FM radio. It even includes AVI/MP4/DIVX video playback, so you can watch all your favorite (pre-recorded) TV programs on the teensy weensy screen. About the only thing the QTV doesn’t do is tune actual TV broadcasts. Go figure.

You can find the QTV digital photo frame in pink and yellow versions over at Brando for $89 USD. The only thing missing is a tiny little remote control.

In addition to playing your MP3s and MP4s, the Media Street eMotion EM-SOL2GIG media player offers compatibility with NES/Famicom, GameBoy, GameBoy Color and SEGA Mega Drive (aka the Genesis stateside). Of course, that assumes you’ve got an idea of where to find some ROM files (hmm, ever heard of Google?) And when you’re done playing games, you can get some culture thanks to a text-to-speech E-book reader capability that can read any TXT file in either Chinese or English. It offers 2GB of on-board storage, plus an SD slot for memory expansion.

The portable console offers a 320×240 color display, and measures in at 5.5″ wide x 3″ high x 1″ thick – with most of the heft coming from the fold-out solar panels. The large solar panel not only charges the player’s internal battery, it can provide emergency juice to other portable gadgets such as mobile phones and digital cameras.

You can find the EM-SOL2GIG over on Amazon for $169.99 USD.

(BTW, this player looks awfully similar to this other solar game system, but that one makes no claims of SEGA emulation).

All of the requisite electronics are crammed into a sphere that’s just a hair smaller than a ping pong ball.

The Camball can record 320×240 or 640×480 resolution video using MPEG-4 encoding. Since it stores everything on a tiny SD memory card, you can save up to 8GB of video with the appropriate card.

Alas and alack, this nifty little gadget is only available in Korea at this time, and there aren’t any plans to offer them stateside at this point. For the time being, you’ll just have to admire them from afar over at Korea’s Funshop.

Prices for the Camball range from 189,000 to 229,000 Korean Won (appx. $185 to $225 USD), depending on if you want the optional MP3 player capability.

The case design and the on-screen icons of the DigitalRise Sci-Phone D990i definitely look quite a bit like a legitimate iPhone, but upon closer look, you’re likely to be able to tell the difference (gotta love that floppy disk icon for documents). The iFake even tries to outdo the original by offering something called “shake control”, which lets you shuffle through songs by simply shaking the phone.

The Sci-Phone D990i features a 3.2-inch color touchscreen (some of the docs say 3.5-inch, so I don’t know which is accurate) , a 1.3-megapixel digital camera, and offers Bluetooth support. Since it’s an unlocked quad-band phone, it’ll work on any GSM-based network, and uses GPRS for data services (sorry no Wi-Fi or 3G ).

With the new iPhone 3G hitting stores next week for just $199, and Sun working on Java support for the real iPhone, you’d be hard pressed to come up with a reason to drop over $200 on this complete fake. The only reason I can think of is if you’re not an AT&T customer and want people to think you have an iPhone. Frankly, you’d be better off picking up an iPod Touch and pretending to speak into it.

Even though Maxx doesn’t win any awards for originality, the PDV-8500BLK does look like a pretty capable portable DVD player. The player features a nice 8.5-inch LCD widescreen, and can play videos in DVD, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, CD, CD-R/RW, VCD and SVCD formats. There’s also support for JPEG, MP3 and MPEG4 files via a built-in SD, MMS/MS card reader slot. About the only thing it won’t play is video games or UMD discs — but you’ve got a PSP for that already, right?

So if you think the PSP’s screen is just too small to watch movies on, you can supersize with one of these players for about $120 over on Amazon.

[via ChipChick]

Under the hood of the U200i mobile phone wristwatch dwells a quad-band (unlocked) GSM phone, complete with a 1.3MP digital camera, Bluetooth connectivity, and full media player capabilities. And thanks to an external OLED display, you can check the time, signal strength and battery meter at a glance.

You can even watch tiny little MP4 videos on the 1.5-inch color display, which also happens to offer touchscreen capabilities. In addition to the stainless steel case shown in these pictures, the U200i comes in a solid black case design as well. But my favorite part of the design has to be the decidedly retro round dial pad, complete with otherworldly blue backlighting.

So if you’re ready to wear the kitchen sink on your wrist, you can grab the U200i mobile phone watch from Chinagrabber for $234.99 USD.

[with a tip of the hat to TFTS]

JWD’s pint-sized MP3 media player has a compact 2.0-inch full-color LCD screen which can play MP4 format video clips. The tiny screen offers a 220×176 resolution, and can play clips from its internal 1GB memory or from an SD/MMC memory card. Audio can be played through headphones, or via the players built-in stereo speakers. In addition to media playback, it can tune FM radio and even lets you read e-Books (if your eyes can handle the small print).

It’s available in either white or black cube designs, and is and available from gadget importer Shop Kami for $88 USD.

[via Chip Chick]

In addition to taking on retro gaming sans batteries, the Mobile Power Station plays popular audio and video files, including MP3, WMA and MP4 (converted to AVI) formats. The compact player features a 3.5 color display, 2GB of built-in memory and an SD slot for up to 2GB more. The jack-of-all-trades can also display or speak E-books, has a voice recorder, and even a built-in LED flashlight. Heck, it’s even got a USB-out connector so you can use the solar panels to charge other devices.

So what are you waiting for? You can grab one yours gadget importer Chinavasion for about $123 USD.

[via Albotas]

This wannabe version of the iPhone copies the basic case design of Apple’s beauty, but certainly falls short on the details. For starters, there’s no glass face or durable aluminum back here. We’re talking cheap plastic and shiny chrome plate. Plus, it looks like it’s about twice as thick as the real iPhone.

Under the hood, you won’t do too much better. It’s pretty much your run-of-the-mill MP3/MP4 player phone, with just 256MB of on-board memory (although you can expand storage up to 2GB with an SD card). Of course, the touchscreen isn’t multi-touch, and needs a stylus to function properly. On the other hand, the bargain basement iFone does offer video recording capability with its 2-megapixel camera – something Apple hasn’t yet added to the iPhone. It’s also not locked to to a single carrier. The phone supports all GSM/GPRS networks, has SMS and WAP capabilities, but no real HTML web browser. At least they did manage to include Bluetooth connectivity inside the iFone’s bulky shell.

But let’s get real here. If you really want an iPhone, save your money and buy a real one. The only reason you’d even think about buying one of these is if you’re a real cheapskate, and you don’t mind looking like one. If you’re still convinced that you must have one, the iFone is available for $165 from DealExtreme (including free shipping).

For starters, the Archos comes with double the storage for less cost than Apple’s set top boxes. The TV+ also supports recording of content from analog video devices (note the component, S-video and composite inputs on the back panel), and acts as a full DVR, complete with a TV program guide. Just like it’s competition, the device only handles standard-def content, meaning that you’ll be able to store a whopping 700 hours of video on on the larger model.

In addition to its media recording an playback capabilities, the Archos TV+ can surf the web using an optional Opera browser with Flash capability. It can even read PDF files if the mood strikes you. There’s also access to the Archos Content Portal which allows for digital downloads and streaming of new content to the box. Network connectivity is provided via built-in 802.11g Wi-Fi or a wired Ethernet port. I particularly like the provided QWERTY remote control, which should make web surfing and navigation a breeze compared to normal remotes.

The 80GB version of the TV+ will retail for $249, while the 250GB model will run $349. Expect to see the Archos TV+ hit stores sometime this later this year. You can check out the detailed product specs here.

[via Ubergizmo]

With a full subscription to the Rhapsody-To-Go service, you’ll be able to download over 4 million tracks wirelessly to your player whenever you’ve got a Wi-Fi connection. The player also has built-in bluetooth for wireless headphone connectivity. The player offers a bright 320×240 Samsung color display, and can also play back video content from the Rhapsody store. Like the Zune, it’s also got an FM radio with RDS service. It’s even got a web browser built in, but I can’t imagine how challenging that would be to navigate sans keyboard.

The biggest turn-off here is the $229 to $319 price tag on the players (substantially more than iPods and Zunes with more storage). However, the integrated music store feature does look pretty sweet if you’re okay with a subscription-based music service.

The 30GB Ibiza is now available from gadget importer FirstToYou. You can also find the lower-priced 4GB and 8GB flash-based versions of the player from Amazon.

The DigitalRise Nano III even goes so far as to steal part of its name from Apple’s popular player. As you’d expect, the cloned Nanos can handle MPEG-4 video, MP3 and WMA audio file formats. They also throw in an FM tuner, digital voice recorder, and e-book reader capabilities.

Unlike the real deal, the DigitalRise players only offer 1GB of storage (vs. Apple’s 4 to 8 gigs), and a 1.8″ color screen instead of the 2″ screen on Apple’s players. While the colors aren’t exactly the same, the fakes do offer an “all-metal” case, doing their best to look like the authentic ones.

At this point, they’re available in lots of 10 or more for just $49.95 each. So if you and 9 of your cheap-ass friends are looking for some stocking stuffers for the upcoming holidays, you can grab a case of ‘em from ChinaGrabber.

As far as I know, there is no official MP5 file format. As best I can tell is that this is just some sort of marketing hooey, designed to deceive the public into thinking they’re getting their hands on something new and exciting. The $60 player looks like any other cheap MP4/MP3 media player, complete with a 2.5-inch color screen, an FM tuner and 1GB of flash memory.

If you’re willing to take a gamble on one of these players, you can pick one up here. As is always the case with this kind of stuff, Caveat Emptor.

Beside looking great, the UM10 is a very capable media player, which can deftly chew through MP4, WMV, MP3, WMA and OGG files with nary a complaint. There’s also a DMB television tuner, FM radio, E-book reader and voice recorder. Not to mention the full-on personal organizer application suite which can sync with Microsoft Outlook. Plus, it’s also got Flash Lite support, so you can take advantage of those slick interfaces and games that Adobe’s flagship web app can crank out.

Oh yeah, it is a robust electronic dictionary too, loaded with dozens of books worth of definitions, synonyms, and other reference information in a variety of languages.

It all comes packaged in a slick black case, with a sliding QWERTY keyboard and beautiful 480 x 272 widescreen TFT display. The keyboard isn’t tactile though, so you’re best off using the stylus to control it. The base models comes with 2GB of RAM, but that’s expandable through a Micro SD memory card slot.

The Atree UM10 retails for 358,000 KRW (about $381 USD), and as is often the case with these types of wondrous gadget, is only available in Korea for now.

[via The Earlyadopter's World]