Real Zune Now (tm)

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My iPod Nano has passed away. I believe its the fifth iPhone in our family that has stopped working withing a year and a half. The durability of these products borders on scandalous. My friend Tom carried around an old Ericsson phone for years. He really, really wanted a new fancy phone, but couldn't get himself to just throw away his old phone. After all it was in perfect working order, he is a environment friendly guy etc, etc. But that darn phone just would not stop working! In the end he took it out into the backyard and shot it.

So now that the iPod is gone I'm going to have to get myself a new PMP. And quickly. For the time being, I use my Nokia N95 to listen to music and podcasts. It works fairly well, but it sucks battery juice like there is no tomorrow!

There is some interesting user interface developments going on. Especially with music players. The PMP manufacturers often are less conservative, have a shorter development cycle, and frankly a simpler product to design and build.

The second gen iRiver Clix just came out. I like how the entire front panel is clickable. The X+Y navigation UI scheme is maybe a little bit uninspired, but they have one of the most important things down: speed. The sluggishness of mobile phone UIs really adds to any frustration felt by skeptic users.
Video can be found here.

A second gen Zune was just announced. The UI seems polished and looks like it has some nice attention to details. And attention to details are something we like a lot around here. With DRM free music and Podcast support, this device actually don't look too shabby.

I of course love the Sony Rolly. Might not fit easily into any pocket, tho.

Some phone manufacturers are also cooking UIs

Check out the Neonode N2. This is an amazing and tiny little mobile phone with an optical touch screen.

And the Bang&Olufsen Serenata is a pretty wild design. Certainly a case of form over function if there ever was one.

Lastly, check out Lucid Touch where he user controls the application by touching the back of the device. Its a research project done by the research labs at Microsoft at Mitsubishi.