IN VIEW. This portable multimedia player provides hours’ worth of video enjoyment.

AFTER my unfortunate experiences with the iPod—a shuffle that at best acted funky whenever I tried to manage the music on it via iTunes on my Microsoft Windows XP-based PC, the Windows-compatible claim of Apple Inc. notwithstanding; and a nano that, from the get-go, couldn’t provide me with enough juice for even a half day’s worth of playback—I have promised to never allow myself to again get suckered into the Apple hype machine. This, or I would render free lifelong service to J.Lo—and I don’t mean Jennifer Lopez—which would be self-inflicted punishment even more cruel than death.

Since my miserable iPod encounters, I have been pretty much satisfied having my Palm LifeDrive double as my multimedia device for hours of listening and viewing pleasure. Of course, this much-misunderstood and much-maligned handheld is, at 2.9x0.7x 4.8 inches in physical dimensions and 6.8 oz in weight, not exactly something that you could easily slip into your jeans pocket and forget about. However, the anything-but-iPod options available in the market have, thus far, failed to pique my interest—at least not enough to take me to the next step of making the purchase. The most aesthetically interesting among the bunch—the Toshiba Gigabeat and the Microsoft Zune—are not only not yet available locally but also PMPs based on a Microsoft solution that is always weighted down with philosophical baggage and a lousy user interface.

ENTER THE MATRIX. Using the Matrix menu style, the Samsung YP-P2’s dazzling screen shows its solid multimedia feature set...and then some.

I had been seriously considering ordering online the also-still-locally-unavailable SanDisk Sansa Fuze, which not only looks totally sweet and packs quite a bit of multimedia muscle for its thoroughly portable size, but also is less expensive than the new iPod nanos. That is, until I got my hands on a Samsung YP-P2 loaner from the local Samsung office.

At 3.9x0.4x2 inches in physical dimensions and weighing in at a mere 3 oz. this portable multimedia device is as thin as it looks in pictures but doesn’t look or feel flimsy in the hand. It is also as gorgeous-looking, encased in a black body that is part-metal, part-acrylic glass, making it soft to the touch but also tough to withstand scratches.

The face of the Samsung YP-P2 is dominated by a dazzling screen that is generous at three inches, making for a vibrant showcase of this PMP’s solid multimedia capabilities. Beyond the screen, the front and back are a study of Zen minimalism, with no physical buttons or any embellishment in plain sight, save for what looks like a home button at the bottom of the screen but is actually a led indicator that flashes in different colors according to the task being performed—blue during playback with the screen off, red when the PMP is turned off—and glows red when the unit is being charged and green when fully charged. Located on the P2’s sides are the physical buttons to power the unit on or off, lock it to prevent accidental presses, and crank the volume up or down. At the bottomside are the headphone jack, microphone (as this baby can be used to take calls when paired with Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone and hooked to the supplied—or third-party—headphones) and propriety USB connection port. 

FLICK AND SELECT. Go through your library of music with a simple flick of the finger.

So how do you go about the various entertainment features of this baby? Well, not unlike the iPod Touch, navigating through the Samsung YP-P2 is also thoroughly touch-driven. No doubt, Apple fanboys will be quick to dismiss this baby as nothing more than a second-rate, trying-hard copycat—to borrow that notorious line from a Sharon Cuneta movie—but nothing could be farther from the truth. The P2’s very modern and very delightful user interface recalls nothing of the iPod Touch. Instead of traditional-looking icons, it goes for stylized icons glowing in an electric blue that can be displayed in a typical Matrix grid, a My Skin style where you can choose your own wallpaper and the icons are arrayed at the bottom of the screen, or the seriously cool Cosmos layout where the icons seem to float in a vertical carousel.

Behind the yummy eye candy is a multimedia feature set and a long battery life (a claimed 30 hours from a single charge; from my own hands-on testing, the juice is good for five days with average music playback) that provide plenty of fun time. Both the music player and video-player applications are very intuitive to use, each with preset sound output options depending on the environment you find yourself in, along with an equalizer and even more surround-sound and bass tweaks for you to fiddle to your heart’s content. Music playback with the headset that comes with the packge is rich and vibrant, and you have a variety of display options to go with it (album art, album/song information or several liquid-smooth visualizations. Meanwhile, the video quality on the 3-inch screen is crisp and thoroughly immersive, and watching nonstop three episode of the maiden season of Lipstick Jungle on the P2 didn’t hurt my eyes either. It also has a built-in FM tuner, image viewer, text viewer, address book, calendar, alarm function, world clock, file browser, and RSS feed application for news feeds and podcasts. Moreover, its Bluetooth feature is also A2DP (stereo)-compliant, allowing it to stream audio wirelessly to Bluetooth headsets or speakers.

As with all high-tech gadgets, the Samsung YP-P2 does have its issues, beginning with the Samsung Media Studio that one would be advised to install on one’s PC and use to manage media, this despite the device’s compatibility  with the Windows Media Player 11 that is available as a free download for Windows XP and already built into Windows Vista. That is, unless you want to rip your CDs in Windows’ WMA audio format, as Windows Media Player doesn’t offer MP3 ripping off the bat, or most of your audio files are already in WMA format, which is doubtful. To be fair, using the Samsung Media Studio won’t give you a major headache but, at already Version 5-plus, it still has a way to go in reaching the ease-of-use level of iTunes.

Also, support for various multimedia formats can still be greatly improved. Where’s the support for such common video formats as .avi, .mpeg, .mp4 and H.264? Samsung could also have throw in easily support for .ogg audio/video files, since the format is patent-free anyway. Moreover, the Korean-based global consumer powerhouse could have further differentiated the P2 from Apple’s touch-driven iPod offerings by employing haptic technology to provide the user tactile feedback during navigation, as LG did for its similarly touch-happy device, the superb Viewty multimedia mobile phone.

That said, it should be underscored that these issues don’t come close, not even remotely, to being dealbreakers. As it is, the Samsung YP-P2—with its exceptional build, sensational interface and solid feature set—is just the fabulous device for people who want to not only take their kind of entertainment everywhere but also not become another casualty of the Apple hype machine.

Make your own kind of music

AFTER my unfortunate experiences with the iPod—a shuffle that at best acted funky whenever I tried to manage the music on it via iTunes on my Microsoft Windows XP-based PC, the Windows-compatible claim of Apple Inc. notwithstanding; and a nano that,

Help File: Go 17 inches or not?

AFTER disabling some start-up programs and using a registry cleaner on my Gateway, the screen saver stops working, and the machine redetects the graphics card after a restart. Gateway said only a system restore would work, but I find that hard to believe.

Feeling the fear

NAOMI WATTS feels guilty. That, at least, is the reaction the actress says she had when she first watched Funny Games, the 1997 film she has just remade shot-for-shot with its original director, Michael Haneke.

When she plays, we smell ‘sinigang’ and ‘adobo’

SHE can play in the dark. While reading musical notes, she can already hear the music inside her head. Heaven forbid, but she can go deaf and blind and still give justice to the works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and other gods among composers.

A critic’s criticism of actor’s actors

LET’S retire the phrase “actor’s actor” before it does any more damage. Maybe it was a useful label when serious actors worked nonstop on-stage and didn’t have time to feed off tons of high-toned adulation.

The Alchemy of Ann Tiukinhoy Pamintuan

IT was a rare date, February 29, 2008, one that comes only once every four years. My friend Ross Camara prodded me to join her for dinner at Ann Tiukinhoy Pamintuan’s place after we finished watching portions of American Idol and the Makati rally on television.