iRiver's New SPINN Portable Media Player Gets You Spinning

Despite not being nowhere near as famous as Apple, SanDisk or Creative outside Korea, the iRiver company did manage to come up with a very interesting product lineup over the years, most of them featuring certain design features way ahead of their time (and of the competition, for that matter). And that seems to be the case as well with the company's latest announcement, the SPINN, a device that delivers a very innovative, hybrid control system and extended playback capabilities.

First things first, let's see what the secret behind the SPINN moniker is. Actually, it seems that the portable player features a dial that allows users to scroll quickly through the user-interface, which, at least to some extent, resembles that of an old radio. The interface grants access to the various content stored within the device, but also to the FM radio tuner and, more importantly, the DMB Mobile TV reception system (although this particular module will most certainly enjoy a very low level of success outside iRiver's home market of Korea).

However, the SPINN also has an additional control system, namely the 3.3-inch AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) touchscreen display, which allows users not only to access the device's functions but also to view video content in perfect conditions (480 x 272 pixel resolution).

Besides the aforementioned DMB and FM tuners, the iRiver SPINN is a full-fledged portable media player, since it's compatible with a very wide array of file formats, ranging from MP3s and WMAs to APE, FLAC, ASF, AVI and WMV. Additionally, the PMP can also be used for viewing digital photos in JPEG format or for reading TXT files.

As far as the storage space is concerned, the SPINN is available in 2 different variants, namely one with a 4 GB capacity and one with 8 GB of space. Moreover, it's relatively reasonably priced, since the 4 GB model sells for around $250 (the equivalent in Korean currency), while the 8 GB version will probably be available for around 290 US dollars. Unfortunately, there's no info on where this thing will be available outside Korea, but it will probably ditch the DMB receiver and sell at a significantly lower price point.

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