YP-T9 : Alice in Digital

According to the opinion, outlook and even with my personal thoughts, the MP3 player market is over its limit and in saturation. Now not only things that can be used in MP3 player, but also all imaginable functions are all installed in MP3 and PMP, mobile phone and even digital camera can play MP3 files, so MP3 players are losing its location of industry. But similar products are keep appearing in the market and with low price Chinese products are combined, so the MP3 player has become a red ocean for long time.

The main issue in the analog period in the past was a performance (Spoken by sound quality or function), but in a digital period when performance is standized, the main issue has become a concept including design instead of the performance. Therefore Apple that has pushed on the design and concept rather than functions was able to achieve a market possession rate of 75% in worldwide.

There was an informal gathering for discussion for celebrating the launching of T9 on 8th of September at Park Hyatt Seoul for reviewers. The main item was a MP3 player and it was the first time that reviewers are invited in such gathering. This event shows the confidence of engineers on T9. Then what made them to have such confidence?

Concept

As a project name for the very first Korean nuclear development project was ‘rose of Sharon is bloomed’, there was a project name for T9. Do you remember Alice (Not the Alice in Alice in Chains)? I mean the Alice in <Alice in Wonderland>. T9 development team has thought T9 as Alice – normally people think the girl travels with a rabbit is Alice, but actually the name of the rabbit is Alice – to show and play everything that users want. And this project has been worked on for more than 1 year and T9 is the result.

Normally the MP3 players are considered as products with lack of individuality and sometimes they are misunderstood as ‘They are just produced roughly from factory’, but when T9 is looked, various elements are well considered from the product development level. Therefore engineers of T9 wanted to show the results with confidence. The reason that they’ve invited only reviewers can be that reports normally are more interested in the expected sales or marketing strategy rather than appreciating the results to create details and concept.

Also if they didn’t complete the product until the announced date of launch or if they didn’t have confidence on products, it might have been difficult to present products in such event. You might wonder how good the product really is for me saying all these things. But if you look at the product in real, you will do the same. First of all, the firmware version starts from 1.09. It means that there were different kinds of changes before the launch.

Design, T8? No T9!

In fact, for people who know T8 will not have difficulties to find the appearance of T8 from T9. If a look of mobile phone was seen from T8, the next model, T9 also have an image of slim phone. The thickness of T9 on a specification is very thin, so people might think the grip is not very good, but it is comfortably held in hands.

Different from T8 in non-shining plastic material and Z5 in non-shining aluminum, T9 is made of shining plastic material. The shining material looks good, but there is a disadvantage that fingerprints is well shown. The external side has toughness, so it doesn’t have many scratches like products of I product of A company. On the front side, the silver color of 5-way buttons is a side point of a design and the material of atypical rectangle around this button is non-shining, so a harmony of thesis-antithesis-synthesis is occurred.

In fact, the first thing that has got my attention was YEPP logo. Instead of solid font type with blue and red is changed to soft single colored font type. There were lots of issues regards of logo, the changed logo is applied from T9 and this logo is only applied in Korea. (The previous logo is only used in Korea and Asia and for other areas, Samsung logo has been used) Now for products that are sold in all other areas, SAMSUNG logo same as in USA or Europe is going to be used.

When the side of T9 is looked, it is very slim, so the buttons are emphasized. On the side that reflects the slim trend, there are hold button on the left and 4 operating buttons on right side (From the top, recording, Back, menu and play/pause and power). For YP-Z5F that was launched some time ago only had 2 buttons for volume control, so it was very simple, but about this button arrangement, I feel little bit disappointed. And T9 is a product of right hander.

When T9 is held in right hand, it is possible to operate with one hand, but when it is held in left hand, it is not convenient to operate with one hand. Functions could have been added by adding edges on control pad like Z5F that was easy to operate with one hand no matter which hand it is held with, but then the simple front design would not been achieved. So unfortunately, it might have been the best solution for developers.