yep yep.

i have another little (ok, well... i think you'll still have to buckle in) tech deep dive for you guys today: samsung's yepp mp3 players! 

we are starting with jaejoong again... i came across an image of him and another member (forgot who, i think it was junsu?) holding two mp3 players. at first, i thought they'd be walkman models. they were popular in japan, so it makes sense...

but see. that was a picture from 2004, when they hadn't made their debut in japan yet. so that wasn't likely to be a walkman ad... moreover, it appears that mp3 walkman models weren't as popular in korea as their domestic counterparts. and zoomed out, the ad was in korean! what the squid, me? thinking nonsense... but, so... what sort of mp3 was it?

i found the image again, in another blog. i saw that it was a commercial for something called yepp, hence a quick search, and... now we're here. 

announced in 1999, yepp was samsung's digital audio player brand, until the label was fully retired in 2011. for another two years, they would simply be known as samsung digital audio players. and then, in 2013, they were discontinued.

to be upfront with you... you need a decoder book to understand the models' naming schemes, lolz. the example wikipedia used was the yp-p2jeb. get this: every yepp player model name began with yp. the third and fourth letters are the general model. most of them correspond to the style / appearance of the model (such as being sleek or round), but they could also reference the use of aa / aaa batteries or usb transfer. 

the fifth letter refers to the method of media tranfer (app / program used), but only on mtp models, until the use of usb became mainstream. the sixth letter corresponds to the amount of storage it has-- e means that it holds 16gb. the seventh and last letter tells you the color. in this case, the model was black. some models use r or f at the end to indicate other functions such as an fm tuner, but not all models do...? so, like. do you see what i mean... the numbers would also imply a sort of continuity, but numbers that are lesser than others aren't always necessarily the ones that came first.

THAT ALL TO SAY! the model dbsk were... well, modeling for (lolz) was the yp-t5. t corresponds to the use of flash storage, even though... gah! whatever. i'm not gonna try to make sense of this anymore.

anyway. (i'll be basing most of this model info off of the old cnet review;) it's pretty tiny-- barely the length of any of the guys' fingers-- and weighs a little under an oz. no battery within, you have to supply it with a single aaa. it has a backlight lcd display, which has different colors so you can choose which one is readable. there's an fm tuner and voice recorder, and multiple equalizer settings. and, it supposedly has up to about 13 hours of playback time on a single battery.

and it has a joystick for navigation. i can't wrap my head around it, but in a "huh, never even thought that was an option" sort of way. it's sort of cool.

i guess i'm interested in these too, now. from what i see, they weren't as good as either walkmans or ipods, so it would take me a while to get to them, but. i'll keep it in the back of my mind for now.

ah, and! when i was poking around a bit, i came across the u5 model. the entire u series was meant to be a mirror to sony's walkman usb sticks, right? but... the u5 came with these cute little guys called popcon. they were sort of like tamagotchi, but for your mp3 player. when you first booted up the player, you get to choose one out of eleven, and they'd greet you every time you turned the player on. if the song you were listening to didn't have an album cover, they'd show up and dance instead. i think they also had some sort of fitness-related function, as this particular u model had a fitness program pre-installed on it. it sounds sort of endearing though, doesn't it? 

anyway. what's most interesting to me-- and what probably made ipod last longer in public conscience than its contemporaries-- is the lack of storage other companies gave these devices. the first ipod debuted with 5gb of storage in 2001. given, it was a hard drive, which is what made it sort of a brick. other companies' devices usually used flash storage instead, so those that came out in the same year or even before didn't hold as much despite being more convenient to carry due to the cost of flash storage. i really don't think there's much of a chance when you compare 5000mb to a tenth of that, or less.

admittedly, i'm a bit confused. but maybe i'm just tired? ultimately, this comes down to what they would think a consumer would want, right? why would they choose style over substance? if the music is what matters, why would they not keep the user supplied with adequate space? from what i see, these other devices were cheaper than ipods and were compatible with more computers (take it from me, itunes on anything but macos is sort of a joke), so they already have that advantage. why kneecap themselves like that? were they banking on their ease of transport to pull them ahead?

ah, but... i suppose, even so, that perhaps they wouldn't really be competing with apple as much. apple's in a bizarre league of its own due to its brand value and program exclusivity, and how its higher price point makes it more appealing and accessible to rich folks, and then, well. y'know. could that be it? rather than relying on the device's power alone, its lower price would be what makes it attractive. the style is a plus. apple already has its own aesthetic, but the variation within the other devices could suit more people.

eh, those are just my thoughts. hope you enjoyed this deep dive. have you heard of yepp before? do they sound interesting?

thanks for reading. i didn't expect to make this so long, again. sorry ㅠㅠ 

 

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