The Samsung Galaxy Player is the only real competitor to the iPod touch, and it makes a great alternative for folks who don't want to use their phone as a music player, and prefer Android to Apple.

The first real iPod touch competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 ($229.99 list, 8GB) gives you all the features of Google's popular Android OS, just without that annoying phone stuff. That means a quarter-million apps, a Web browser with Flash, free navigation, and a decent media player, but no monthly contract or 3G fees. It's a fun, useful gadget and some people will prefer it to the ($199, 5 stars), though we think the simplicity of Apple's software system is enough that the iPod touch can keep our Editors' Choice.

First, stick with me here: I'm going to be comparing this device to the iPod touch a lot in this review. That's because the touch is the Galaxy Player's main competitor. Neither device is a simple, dedicated MP3 player like the Editors' Choice ($49.99, 4 stars); rather, they're smartphones with the phone yanked out of them.

Yes, you could also buy an unlocked Android smartphone such as the Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670 ($239.99 street) or the LG Optimus Me ($200 street), and simply not use the phone capability. But we're assuming you're specifically not looking for a phone here, for instance to avoid wireless carrier data charges.

I'm also writing off products like the ($79.99, 2.5 stars) because once you've seen the real, Google-approved version of Android on the Galaxy Player, with its Android Market full of apps, you won't want to go back to Archos's app-poor version.



Design and Pricing

Also available in a 5-inch version ($269.99 list, 8GB), the Galaxy Player 4.0 looks and feels just like a member of Samsung's super-popular Galaxy S smartphone family, most notably, the for T-Mobile. It's a plastic slab in black or white, with a bright, 4-inch 800-by-480 LCD on the front above three standard Android touch buttons. At 2.5 by 4.9 by .4 inches and 4.3 ounces, it's the exact size and weight of a high-class smartphone. There's a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front. Like the Galaxy S devices, the Galaxy Player feels like a well-constructed, quality product.

The base model of the Player costs a little more than the iPod touch: both have 8GB of integrated storage, but the Player costs $229.99 where the touch is $199. Jump up a notch, though, and the Galaxy Player gets cheaper. Because it uses MicroSD memory cards to expand, and a 32GB card (the max the Galaxy Player can handle) only costs about $35 online, a "40GB" Player costs $265 where a non-expandable 32GB touch costs $299.

This is a popular Android theme: Android devices offer you more options than Apple does, but you have to make an extra effort. You can create a "72GB" Galaxy Player by swapping two 32GB cards for about $300 compared with the 64GB iPod touch's $399, but then you have to keep track of two memory cards. You'll see more examples of Android's flexible-but-complicated ethos in the Galaxy Player's other features too.

Apps and Web

The Galaxy Player 4.0 runs Google's Android 2.3.5 with Samsung's TouchWiz extensions. This means the quarter-million apps that run on Samsung's popular Galaxy S line of phones will all run here. The Galaxy Player 4.0 benchmarked like a midrange Android smartphone, on par in many ways with the iPod touch. You can find pretty much anything you want in the Android Market nowadays, including a very good selection of games.

Along with the Android Market Samsung loads its own app store, Samsung Apps, which offers some apps (like the game Glyder HD) for free, even though they're paid apps elsewhere. You're free to download Amazon's app store, as well, or get apps from Getjar's online app store. The same app can cost different amounts in different stores, so it can pay to shop around. It's that Android choice thing again: more options, but not as clear a path.

You can tell the same story with all sorts of features. The iPod touch has FaceTime; the Galaxy Player has Tango, Fring, and Skype, none of which are as smooth or easy to use as FaceTime. The Touch has GameCenter; the Galaxy Player has various games connected through OpenFeint. The Touch has iCloud; the Galaxy Player has Google services, DoubleTwist's Wi-Fi syncing, and Samsung's Kies Air local syncing. The Touch has iMessage; the Player has WhatsApp and half a dozen competitors. It's all there. There's just more of an onus on the user to download the right apps and put it all together.

Like the iPod touch, the Galaxy Player connects to the Web by using Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n; it had no trouble connecting to any of our networks during testing. The built-in Android Web browser supports Flash, unlike the iPod's. There's a much broader range of alternative browsers here than for the iPod, so you can pick Opera Mini for pure speed, Dolphin HD for features, or Firefox Mobile for geek cred.

The standard Google apps are here as well. That means the Galaxy Player has terrific Gmail and Google calendar support, along with free GPS voice-guided navigation, something that isn't available on the iPod touch.

Multimedia

There's no Android equivalent to iTunes, Apple's one-stop-shopping app for organizing, purchasing and playing media on your Mac or PC. Instead, the Galaxy Player offers a bunch of overlapping, confusing options.

To sync with your home computer, you can use the free DoubleTwist app, or Samsung's Kies app, or Windows Media Player, or drag and drop; none of those options are as seamless as iTunes.

The Android Market app store offers ways to buy music (through the Amazon MP3 app), rent movies (through Google's Video app) and stream video (through Netflix), but none of those are preloaded and the purchase paths aren't as clear as on the iPod. Also, there's no legal way I could find to actually buy movies.

This is all old news to Android users, and many prefer this way to Apple's: For instance, if you have a library of XVID-format video files, dragging and dropping to the Galaxy Player is superior to transcoding through iTunes. But it's all just not as simple for beginning users.

The Galaxy Player 4.0 supports an impressive set of audio and video codecs. Videos play at up to 720p (but not 1080p) resolution in MP4, H.264, WMV, XVID, and DIVX formats; music plays in MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and OGG, as long as it isn't encumbered with copy protection. The music player offers a virtual seven-band equalizer with a dozen presets, but of course the biggest factor in music quality will be the headphones you use. Samsung ships the typical lousy earbuds in the box. There's no way to dock or connect the player to a bigger screen to watch video on a TV.

The Galaxy Player's 3.2-megapixel rear camera is significantly sharper than the iPod touch's 0.7-megapixel camera for still shots, but it takes an irritatingly long 1.7 seconds to lock in focus. Videos are smooth at 720-by-480 resolution and 30 frames per second indoor and out, but the iPod can capture higher-definition 720p video.

The Galaxy Player had no trouble connecting to our Bluetooth headphones to play back music or video, and lip sync stayed intact.

The Player managed 8 hours, 8 minutes of video playback with Wi-Fi on and the screen brightness set to max. That's considerably longer than the 5 hours and 32 minutes of video playback we got with the iPod touch under the same conditions.

Conclusions

The Galaxy Player might be the right portable media player for me. But it might not be for you.

At our house, right now at least, we're an Android family. We've spent some money on, and downloaded, Android apps. We like to have the same platform so we can discuss apps we like, or be familiar enough with each other's devices to be able to protect and troubleshoot them. If I were to get a handheld for my daughter to play games on (but not make phone calls!), the Samsung Galaxy Player would be perfect.

If you're an iTunes family, on the other hand, you'd obviously go with the iPod touch. Are your friends suggesting great apps from their iPhones that you'd love to run? Get a touch. Want to buy movies and TV shows from Apple, in a quick and easy way? The iPod touch is for you. But the difference is less about which device is better, and more about which ecosystem, Apple or Android, fits you best.

The Samsung Galaxy Player is on par with the iPod touch in many ways. It's not as good in some (lower-resolution screen) and better in others (sharper rear camera.) Ultimately, the iPod touch narrowly retains our Editors' Choice designation because of its appeal to less ambitious users. Although there are more options for various features on Android, Apple's OS makes the paths to using its features much clearer.

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