Would love it if someone would make a simple player which was controllable by the user.
high battery use, bad DACs, and clumsy interfaces.
There are exceptions, but not many.
Single purpose devices that are designed to do a specific thing just work better -- go figure.
Pretty much all of this, plus not risking a device that I have to rely on for communications. Each of my Sansa players fell like a dozen times without getting a single scratch because they were very light and the screen was small and sturdy; had I used a cellphone I would probably have destroyed at least its screen multiple times or ruined it from prolonged exposition to salty air at the sea. Also I don't use smartphones due to the above points, and I still have to see a traditional phone with a decent player (and a decent camera, but that's another story).
The PinePhone might change this, however. Silently waiting for it to hit the market.
Am definitely interested in the PinePhone, but suspect that its dimensions will mean that I shall be restricted in not using it while running/cycling and (more importantly for me) as a cheap audiobook player that I fall asleep to in bed and occasionally drop out of the bed onto the floor or sleep on top of.
Dedicated music players tend to have a much longer battery life, are lighter, cheaper to replace (weather, drops, being left on wet ground...). It allows me to listen to things without sacrificing my safety net.
If you want a cheap device to run rockbox...
> Either develop a a player from scratch or port a subset of Rockbox (no games, FX, etc.) on a small SBC plus added display, DAC, SD and LiPo circuitry. The SBC could well be the ESP32 which would add wireless functionality; *Pi and other Linux boards would be tremendously overkill for the task. Shouldn't be that hard for skilled developers, and it would surely sell among those of us who don't want to use a cellphone.
...this feels like it's going to end up as being an expensive device. There are a bunch of other MP3 players available from companies like FIIO, Cowon, Shanling or others. Would you be able to build something that competes with these? https://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/Digital_Audio_Play...
EDIT: Thinking about it, if you had braille on the buttons and a clear simple layout you could push it to both markets: people who want a hackable MP3 player, and people who want an accessible mp3 player for things like audio books. (Which is something my Clip Jam is not great for).
The rockbox-compatible sansas (and earlier cowons) were: 1. cheap (circa 30 bucks) 2. very small (I just measured my Clip Zip as: 5cm x 3cm x 1cm ) 3. very light 4. has an SD slot (I don't know its max supported size but 32GB works fine for my audiobooks) 5. is easily flashable with rockbox
Thanks! I have one in original packaging somewhere. Bought it to give away but never did for various reasons.
It works with Rockbox[0], has a monochrome OLED screen, can take 2 MicroSD cards, and has two 3.5mm sockets: one for line out, and one for headphones.
The only thing I don't like about it is the headphone socket, which is prone to fail. It feels tight on insertion/removal, and the extra force can eventually cause it to lose connection with the mainboard.
They cost about $100 new, or half that used.
it's quite interesting with more modern rockbox supported pmps, rockbox is run as an SDL program stuck into the modified linux firmware. this device is moderately powerful with a 1GHz MIPS ingenic x1000 CPU. fun to tinker with.
fiio has some nice devices (some with RB support, e.g. the M3K), too. but i wish they had bluetooth. i guess it's not cool with audiophiles so intentionally excluded.
All it would need is an ESP32, IMU, heart rate sensor, micro SD card reader, audio jack, LiPo and touch display. Make it work with the Arduino IDE and things get very exciting for hack-ability.
Honestly, the watch makes me more excited than the phone.
I found an Android app called MortPlayer which is very close to Rockbox in terms of functions and configurability. It hasn't been updated in a years, but still works well.
The F/OSS part is the most important. Rockbox allowed an incredible degree of customization. For something like a music/audiobook player personal tastes in interaction with the a small device mean that configurability is key. That, I suspect is why there are only larger devices with loads more buttons and touchscreens available.
The ability to set timeouts and restart from last position on power-on, led light-level, sort-order etc made devices supported by them something that I could use. I have tried various Alibaba sourced devices that were in the US$20-50 range and none of them had the right form-factor and customizability.
Here's hoping someone tries to fill the market hole.