Rumor round-up time! According to news from an unaffiliated, unofficial Samsung-watching blog site called Samsung Hub, the electronics giant has confirmed it will announce a new Android-based Galaxy Player at the Consumer Electronics Shows (CES 2011) taking place in Las Vegas in January. If true, the Galaxy Player would likely be a popular Android-based iPod Touch-like media playing device, although not the first one of its kind.
But what we want to know is this – does this music player’s impending launch mean we’re going to see Google Music launch soon thereafter? We can only hope.
A Samsung Android iPod Touch
Samsung has previously launched other Galaxy players based on Android, as has Archos and others. However, this Galaxy Player would arrive at a time when the Samsung Galaxy line of smartphones is at an all-time high – the company announced it has shipped nearly 9.3 million units as of Friday, December 24th, which is close to its sales goal of 10 million by year-end.
This would be an ideal time for the company to expand upon the Galaxy S’s popularity to launch a new “phone-less” device.
The Specs
Assuming the news Samsung Hub has is official, the Galaxy Player will be based on the Galaxy S smartphone specifications. It will be 9.9 mm thick, run Android 2.2 (code-named “Froyo”), will offer a 1 GHz CPU, 4-inch Super Clear LCD screen supporting up to WVGA resolution (800×480), T-DMB, SoundAlive audio enhancing technology, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3.2 MP rear camera, VGA front-facing camera, GPS, HD video playback, microSD card slot, 1200 mAh removable battery and will come in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB models.
The media player will also include access to the Android Market and Samsung’s own application line-up.
Rumors Point to Google Music?
In addition to being able to capitalize on the popularity of the Galaxy S devices, we hope that this rumored launch also points at the possibility of the Google Music launch in the near future. Google Music is not a rumor, we just don’t know when it’s shipping.
Google demonstrated a version of the Android Market with a Music link to download songs at the Google I/O developers conference in May. At the time, it was also revealed that Google had quietly acquired Simplify Media a couple of months prior. Simplify offered free software for Mac and PC users that let you stream music from iTunes or Winamp libraries from your home computer over the Internet.
For Google Music Demo, Skip to 5-Minute Mark of this video
Obviously, this would only be a partial solution for a Google Music service, and not a very good one at that – there are plenty of DIY “cloud music” services and apps out there today; Google Music, to be successful, would need to do more…like implement the same technology, but on Google’s own servers, not an end user’s PC.
Google Music Player Leaks, Too
While obviously a media player’s launch doesn’t mean that Google Music is just around the corner, speculation heats up when tied together with another recent leak – that of Google’s new Android Music app, set to debut in the next version of Android, code-named Honeycomb.
The new music player includes a menu button on the right, frosted glass widgets, and blurred backgrounds, Engadget reported. You can also see the Player in action in this YouTube video here.
We do know that “Honeycomb” is arriving in 2011, because Google’s Andy Rubin said so on stage at December’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference. He demonstrated a Honeycomb-based tablet, and confirmed that Honeycomb would be out “sometime next year.” Rumors have pegged February as the launch date for this, debuting the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Honeycomb is now believed to be Android 2.4, not 3.0, as previously reported, at least, according to the source of that rumor.
I’ve put a Q1 2011 launch for Google Music on my 2011 predictions list, and I hope it comes true, for the sake of all the Android users out there (now including myself, as it turns out). I’m also predicting, for the fun of it, that Google and Amazon will partner on the service, but I have no information to that regard. I just think that it would be easier for Google to partner with a company that already has deals with the labels in place instead of having to start from scratch. What do you think?
