This looks promising. Pretty much all modern portable music players are janky Android devices with awful hardware and software. I've been looking for something to dethrone the Zune HD for me, which has a small form factor and intuitive interface
It’s wild that 40+ years after they pretty much invented the portable music player, people need to be reminded that they still exist
The NW-a30 I bought years again sounds exactly like what you are looking for. The software is not android, it’s snappy and intuitive and Sony has decades of experience making these devices
An 8gb for $79 (why is 8gb of storage still a thing when stores are giving away 32gb flash drives for free?) or a $799 player that costs more than my phone and desktop computers combined.
Nah. This ain't it.
now if only i could find a decent FOSS audio player for android. it is critical that the player interface orders files by directory structure and displays the filename because a lot of audiobooks and audio drama series or podcasts use the series title in all files and don't have a file specific title (and those that do mess it up by not having episode or chapter numbering. this often makes the individual chapters/episodes indistinguishable from each other. unfortunately most available audio players assume that the title is enough to pick a file, but that really only works for songs, not audio books, audio drama or podcasts.
sorry for the rant.