14 DAY TRIAL // I am not sure whether all these wonderful gadgets will ever catch into a real trend, but the fact that they are real and functioning well is quite a great thing, especially when very serious brands like iRiver decide to go this way. Their newest contraption is called the Aquabeat and by all means, the name says everything: it will provide you with your best loved music beats in the wettest environment possible: underwater!
[admark=1]The iRiver Aquabeat is no news in itself, at least as far as its working principle is concerned, yet we're dealing with a truly fancy piece of technology meant to dramatically extend the range of your musical preoccupations in places where MP3 players usually don't tread. Electronics and water don't usually mix well together and the result of such a misfortunate equation is pretty much all the time the same: electronics ending up fried.
Well, the Aquabeat MP3 player from iRiver has been built for the river, so to speak: its design has been carefully engineered to withstand prolonged complete submersion and still deliver great audio thanks to its special headphones. The in-ear buds come with a real sense of isolation: not only will they fit snugly in your ear canal and isolate the ambient noise from your favorite tracks but they will also prevent water from entering your ears, at the same time letting you enjoy your audio version of the Swan Lake... at the bottom of the lake, literally!
It might thus prove that the iRiver Aquabeat can be a very cool gadget for the professional swimmers, aiding them in their training programs and offering a whole new approach on swimming. With complete rubberized design and controls, the iRiver Aquabeat can be mounted on the swimming goggles' head strap for easy and handy operation. The player comes with 1GB of storage and can deliver up to 9 hours of continuous playback, which is significantly more than you'd usually spend swimming.
The iRiver Aquabeat could also mean a new concept of "pool party", especially if some syncing between multiple players will ever be available. The guys running fancy LCD brands should think about an underwater TV set... not that there would be any serious sense in such a thing, but hey, it could be fun, after all!
Now, the "around $145" price tag is quite affordable and the only thing between you and your iRiver Aquabeat is the fact that it will be launched in Japan, July 4th and there is no word on when it will hit the world.
We are just a few, but there are many of you, Softpedia users, out there. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to create an email address for you to help us a little in finding gadgets we missed. Interesting links are bound to be posted with recognition going mainly to those who submit. The address is 
.
