14 DAY TRIAL // Until recently, Apple's iPod Touch didn't have that many competitors in the portable media player space, but Samsung, and now Cowon, are ready to challenge the Cupertino-based company with their new PMPs, the later just making official the Android-powered D3 Plenue.
Just like the recently announced Samsung Galaxy Player, that will be unveiled during CES 2011, the D3 is also built on top of Google's mobile operating system, although, this time, we are dealing with a slightly older version, namely Android 2.1.
However, this doesn't mean that Cowon skimped on features when it designed the D3, as the unit comes with a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen display capable of pushing 800x480 pixels as well as WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity.
In addition, the D3 should also get a T-DMB TV tuner (a radio transmission standard developed and used in South Korea), an accelerometer and vibration feedback, making it look more like a smartphone than a PMP.
As far as storage is concerned, the D3 Plenue is available with 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of on-board memory that can be expanded via a microSD card slot.
Apart from the wireless technologies employed, connectivity options are further expanded by the USB 2.0 and HDMI ports built into the device, the HDMI output being extremely useful considering the Plenue is capable of 1080p video playback, according to Cowon.
Furthermore, as one would expect from the Korean company, the number of supported file formats and codecs is impressive, including MKV, DivX, XviD, H.264, OGG Vorbis, FLAC as well as a wide range of subtitle files.
According to SlashGear, it seems like the D3 won't come with Android Market access, but Cowon does throw in a Twitter and social networking app to make up for this.
Sadly, no information is available regarding pricing and availability, but it shouldn't take long for the D3 Plenue to get out of Korean and reach US and European shores.