After about a half-year break from making anything substantial, the well-rested Cowon has just announced two new portable media players. The S9, seen above, will be primarily geared towards light portable computing and more with a 3.3-inch 480×272 AMOLED display, 500 MHz dual-core CPU (Atom, possibly?), capacitive touchscreen, TV-out, voice recorder, digital TV (T-DMB), Bluetooth, and music/movie/photo/document viewers. It’s also got a built-in dictionary.

The Cowon O2 will feature a 4.3-inch touchscreen, movie/music/photo/text viewer, T-DMB, dictionary, recorder, and 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of storage plus an SD card slot, TV-out, and a built-in speaker.

No word on price or availability but Cowon usually releases its stuff in Korea first, followed by a worldwide release a month or so afterwards. Here in the states, these units would be missing the T-DMB antenna and possibly the dictionary feature.

[via CNET Asia]

It looks like the perfect thing to carry around a ton of standard def videos on — YouTube silliness, .flvs downloaded from all over the net, and so on. Foreign stuff like this is always compatible with almost any format and is extremely customizable.

I can kinda see where they’re coming from but it just sounds a little odd to call a media playing device what basically amounts to a phone-less iPhone and not be referring to the iPod Touch which is, in fact, basically the true iPhone of personal media players. 

The Q5W does have some impressive specifications, though, like "Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, GPS, an audio player, photo browser, and a video player, with a 5-inch touchscreen LCD, built-in speakers, and 40-60GB of storage."

"The device can hook up to the Internet anywhere there´s a Wi-Fi connection, and it runs on Windows CE, providing Internet Explorer and MSN Messenger. Users can type with an onscreen keyboard, and navigate with a stylus.

One of the greatest features of the Cowon Q5W is its compatibility with a wide variety of music, video and photo formats. Video formats include DivX, XviD, MPEG4, WMV7/8/9, music formats include MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG, WAV, FLAC, APE, MPC, and photo formats include JPEG, BMP, PNG, and even RAW files from various camera manufacturers. Also, its 800×400-pixel screen resolution makes images and video bright and crisp.

The device also has voice-guided, 2D/3D GPS, along with a car dock, and conveniently plugs in to the cigarette lighter adaptor. Also, while you´re in the car, the built-in FM transmitter can wirelessly transfer sound to the car´s speakers, giving a better overall sound."

I’ve sworn off stylus-based navigation forever, so that feature seems more like a detriment and the whole Windows CE thing is a bit weak but other than that, this looks like a pretty cool doodad. Gizmodo also gave it a full rundown a couple days ago, too, if you’re interested and found the player to be "fantastic".

Cowon’s Q5W the iPhone of Personal Media Players? [Physorg.com]

Gadgetaholic likes them some Cowon iAudio devices and this latest version, the iAudio 7, is making them very, very happy. It is a mini player that improves and enhances audio with on-board audio improvement technologies along with a 60 hour battery life.

It has a 160×128 TFT screen for video playback and line-in for recording. It can also display images and supports just about every lossless and lossy format known to man including OGG and FLAC. No price and it looks pretty Asia-only, but it’s a fun look at a cool little player.

Cowon iAudio 7 [Gadgetaholic]

Looking for a decent alternative to the iPod? Give Cowon’s new iAudio 7 a look-see. It comes in either black with 4GB of storage or red with 8GB and has a supposed battery life of around 60 hours on a full charge. The iAudio 7 can handle multiple file formats too, including all the DRM’d Windows Media files as well as OGG, MP3, WAV, WMA, and XviD and MP4 video.

If that stack of features and insane battery life wasn’t enough to convince you that the iAudio 7 is worth buying, then consider the built-in mic and line-in jack so you can make recordings on the go. Linux, OS X, and Windows are supported as well. Sounds like a winner to me. The 4GB version will retail for $170 while the 8GB version comes in at $220.

Cowon ships iAudio 7 jukebox [Electronista]

Why would you need PiP? There’s also a GPS receiver built in, so you can view maps and video or photos or your music library perhaps, at the same time. There are 2GB of onboard flash memory and an SD slot for up to 2GB more. Not bad for around $320 US and certainly beats the piss out the 5G iPod’s features. And yet, even if it were to be available in the States, I still wouldn’t care. It’s too much “look what we can do” and too little “wow, this is useful.”

Cowon’s L2, you don’t know yet but you already need it [akihabaranews.com]

The analog controls are along the top, including a hold/power switch, volume up/down, and a menu/custom button, as well as a pinhole mic for voice recordings. The AC power jack and standard USB mini ports (AC adapter and USB cable are included) are covered by a plastic door on the left side next to the headphone jack, and an SD card slot is on the bottom.

The D2 shows up as an external drive on Macs and PCs (and Linux boxes), but you can sync via Windows Media Player or your MTP-compatible client of choice if that’s your thing. While you can play music and other media off of an SD card, you can’t transfer files to or from the card.

Using the touchscreen is surprisingly easy, thanks to just the right amount of sensitivity and a mostly well-thought-out interface that works well with your fingers or the included stylus (which doubles as a kickstand). But the menus aren’t always intuitive; I often found myself in the wrong menu or accidentally stopping a track or video. I’m into the user-assignable menu button–when you tap it once, you’re brought to the main screen, but when you hold it down, you can set it to be a play/pause or track skip button.

The integrated FM tuner is sensitive enough to pick up even fringe stations very well, and you can record radio at up to 256Kbps in MP3 format. The voice recorder also works fairly well, though the tiny pinhole mic is very easy to overload. For better recordings, purchase the optional line-in cable and use a real mic and preamp.

The D2 can play WMA (including PlaysForSure audio content), MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, and APE, plus AVI files (320 by 240 or less). To create playable video files, I recommend using the excellent and extremely speedy included JetAudio video conversion software. Unfortunately, the D2 can’t handle protected video downloads.

The player’s file browser is tree-based; although you get artist and album info once a track is playing, you can’t browse by ID3 tags. You can make a single on-the-fly playlist, and you can set bookmarks in any file.

The D2′s sound quality with the stock earbuds is very good right out of the box–partly because several of the sound enhancement modules are active by default. I set everything to zero (or off), and the sound was still pleasing, but there’s nearly infinite opportunity to tweak it. Watch out, though: The bass distorts if you crank up the Mach3Bass and then try to bump up the bass again in the graphic equalizer.

Video and photo playback are both excellent in terms of clarity, smoothness, and color. Photos take a while to render fully, though, which can be a bit annoying, though it’s not a problem during slide shows. You can view media on an external monitor or TV, but you’ll need to pick up an optional video cable from Cowon.

Battery life is one of the D2′s biggest wins: It will play audio for around 50 hours and video for 8 to 10 hours–very impressive on both counts. The only thing better would be if the battery were removable.

Overall, this is one of the most versatile and satisfying players out there; the battery life alone is worth the price. You’ll get a lot more out of the D2 if you know what you’re doing. If not, you may want something with a simpler interface, like the iriver Clix or an iPod. will run you $189.99 for the 2GB model and $219.99 for the 4 gigger (TV output cable included if you buy direct).

Perhaps most important: If someone figures out why Cowon chose to use “Invincible” as the marketing tagline for the D2 (or would like to speculate), please let me know in the comments section below!

It’s available in 512MB to 2GB sizes, has an FM radio and FM radio recording, voice recording, and USB 2.0 connectivity. No pricing yet, but the iAudio F2 does look pretty slick, even though, or maybe because, it looks so much like a phone.

Product Page [Cowon]

Cowon announces the iAudio F2 [iAudiophile]