TechRadar reviews the Samsung Galaxy Player 50. I’ve long been amazed that while companies are clamouring to rip off the iPhone (and, more recently, the iPad), none have really taken on the iPod touch. And yet Apple’s iPhone-without-the-phone is a breakout hit, especially with kids, where it’s often replacing a DS or PSP, or with people happy with a simpler mobile phone but eager to embrace mobile apps.

So, given that Apple hugely rips off the entire world when it comes to pricing, surely Android wins through, right? Spoiler: TechRadar thinks the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 is utter shit.

The review notes that you get some extras over Apple’s device, notably a microSD card slot and built-in GPS; also, it’s £40 less than the equivalent iPod touch. But, like so many others competing against Apple, Samsung’s tried ticking off checkboxes on a specs sheet rather than polishing what really matters to the majority of consumers. For example, the screen boasts a miserly 240 x 400 pixels (pathetic compared to the Retina display on the Apple device and similar screens on Android phones), lacks a front-facing camera and also cannot record video in HD.

Amazingly, TechRadar found things got worse when they started using it:

It spends the majority of its time crashed when you try to launch apps, or even when you just wake it from the lock screen. It’s unusable in the sense that you are completely unable to use it.

Quite how such a device managed to score 1.5/5 is beyond me, but with other reviewers having similar problems, something is becoming clear: Apple isn’t entirely the Apple of old. Its kit isn’t cheap by any means, but it’s more aggressively priced than you’d think. This is perhaps the real reason why we’ve not seen dozens of iPod touch clones, and also why most of the incoming Android slates that aren’t total garbage are as pricey—or even more expensive than—Apple’s iPad.