Hey massassians.. I was wondering if someone could send me some insight. I currently have a Creative Zen Vision W 30 gig which I love to death, its actually a great mp3 player and has a huge screen with really good resolution and can play movies and has an external speaker etc etc. Well sadly its getting long in the tooth... I mean it works great but its bulky. I was wondering what is out there that works just as well that isn't an ipod. I really don't want to use itunes to sync my **** up and I also don't really care for paying for the apple premium.

I tried checking out creative's website to see what they have that's new but I am honestly disappointed because 1, the largest thing I see is 16 gig.. wtf!?!?! and all the reviews are 3 stars max which is pretty terrible.

I was hoping for something that has 30-60 gig storage and is slimmer than my Zen since its pretty thick...

now before anyone asks, I have a HTC Evo 3D and the battery life on it blows ass so I don't want to story my music on it...

also in before "just get an ipod lulz"

What MP3 player?

No, I'm serious. MP3 players are all but dead now. Everything on the market is either rehashes of stuff that was out 5 years ago, or is ACTUALLY from 5 years ago. Smartphones and even many featurephones have almost completely supplanted the MP3 market.

Frankly, I say solve your EVO 3D battery problem and use it. It's far more capable of an MP3 player than anything else out there anyway.

(Also, if you absolutely insist, you need to give a budget)

get a ZUNE!!!!!

I just got a 30 mb zune that my dad had in like 2006 or something that he gave to me

I also have a tracfone that I've had for about 3-4 years, I'm very behind on technology but I don't mind at all. I just don't feel the need to be entertained all the time.

The only times besides travelling where I have used this mp3 player are during grocery shopping (pickin produce with Rossini on playa) and while falling asleep to opera so I don't distrub my roommates

I was thinking about a ZUNE, wasn't sure how well they are since it seems like they were not well received cause it was a "hipster" device. but I mean if they work well and have a good battery then I can look into it.



Yea I know its outdated to have a separate item to play music when phones can do so much now-a-days but seriously my phone's battery is not good. I looked into the longer lasting batteries and they all have negative reviews saying you get at most 10% more life which is not much at all. I do biking pretty regularly as Triscuit knows and I use an app on my phone that keeps track of how far I go and such so that eats away at the battery I can only imagine what it would do if I had music playing through it too.

Actually, GPS that you use when biking eats more battery than anything else you can possibly do on your phone. By like, a significant margin as well.

Music playback, especially with the screen off, will go for many, many hours. Especially if it's not streaming, but even if it is, it'll go quite a while. Music playback on phones is hardware accelerated by a special part of the CPU, so the CPU doesn't need to really do much to actually play the music.

Basically, here's the order of things that devour battery:

Anything GPS > 3D Gaming > Web Browsing > 2D (lite) gaming > Video Playback > Typical app usage > Music Playback > Idle

Also, I didn't mean get a bigger battery (although ones that require a bigger case back do significantly increase life, way more than 10%), I meant figuring out why it's dying fast, and tweaking it. Of course, I don't know what you mean by "fast" anyway, nor what all you have on your phone and what you do with it.


Edit: Don't get a Zune. As much as I absolutely loved mine, the platform is dead. They're no longer making anymore Zune devices, and they're killing off the Zune brand as well, slowly. If you really want to go this route though, the Zune HD was the best MP3 player ever. Period. End of story. Unless you're one of those loons who uses rockbox.

If you get an hd zume you may be good, but i went through the first generation zune (Wayyy back when) and after that broke I had 3 or 4 120 gig zune's (they kept breaking and id just argue on the phone with indian people till they sent me a new one). The last time it broke they basically told me to suck it.

The older ones still have moving parts which attributed to their constant breaking. The hd ones now utilize flash memory (which ipod has done for a while now probably even all along). The lack of moving parts within makes for smooth sailing.

Fuck Zunes tho, they havnt even come out with anything bigger than like 30 for their hd ones.

Sansa. Small capacity, less than your looking for, but great products IMO. I used one before I ever had an iPod, never had a problem. Gave my mom one for Christmas and she loves it.

A. The older Zunes used hard drives just like the old iPods. That's how they had such large capacities at the time. Flash storage was EXPENSIVE.
B. The second generation did have flash Zunes.
C. Even with the hard drive they were well known for being rock solid. I dropped my old 30GB numerous times and it still works to this day. Suggest not using it when working a jackhammer.
D. There is a 64GB Zune HD. Good luck finding any of them though, no more units being made for any size.

the great thing about sandisk players is there are models that support microsd... you can get a 16GB Fuze+ and toss in a 32GB microsd

now if you care about video playback they do make android based players... but that would get funny looks if you have an android phone and an android player

I've got a Sansa with microSD and love it.

This thread reminds me of a conversation that I had with my wife the other day.

Wife: I would like to get an iPod.
Me: You have an iPod--it's called your iPhone.
Wife: Oh.

There was a bit more to it than that but that's the gist of it. However, I'm the one looking like an ******* now that I can't seem to sync the chainsawing thing with Rhythmbox (or any other Linux music application for that matter). Which reminds me of another conversation with my wife.

Wife: I can't believe you installed Linux on your Mac. All of my friends are dying to have a Mac & you put this **** on it.
Me: I have an alternative application for everything that I did in OSX. The only problem left to solve is improving the audio.
Wife: Yeah, well, it took me 30 minutes to figure out how to play a movie. Plex was so much better.
Me: You do realize that I can install Plex on Linux as well & that I could've installed XBMC in OSX? I simply prefer XBMC now.
Wife: Well, it's ****. I can't believe you installed this ****.

My mp3 player is my HTC Evo 3D. I use it for hours while at work, usually streaming music via Pandora. The GPS is definitely a killer on the battery. Of course, I'm rarely some place for very long where I wouldn't be able to plug it in if I need to. Of course, the more you have running on it, and the more you have things syncing more often will affect the battery. I'm definitely with Cool Matty - look into tweaking settings to save the battery life.

I got an iPod nano 16 GB in January 2009 and it has served me superbly ever since. I absolutely prefer having a separate mp3 player since cell phone battery lives are still horribly short and it'd get much shorter if I used it for MP3s as well. However, if the ipod ever decides to falter it's always good to have a fully charged cellphone as a backup.

At any rate, iTunes sucks which is why I use Winamp to upload music into it. I don't like Winamp either but it's still a far better alternative.

Back in 2005 (when I ended up getting an iPod mini due to ... relations) I nearly set my eyes on an iAudio X5 but I think the company's been out of business for quite a while now. Maybe.

I had a Creative Vision:M 30gb which unfortunately, was too small. I got bored of constantly removing/adding stuff then 3 months after deleting something I'd think "Damn. I really want to listen to [something I'd deleted]". Although the player was fantastic it wasn't large enough.

So I was in the exact same predicament as you. I checked creative's website and was equally disappointed. I ended up getting a 160gb iPod classic. The price wasn't as bad as they used to be and unfortunately they seem to the the only manufacturer making players with a capacity > 32gb. There are some things about the iPod I'm not keen on but overall it's not that bad, and it's physically smaller than the Creative with better battery life and the much larger capacity.

I agree with not wanting to use your phone as well. My (admittedly, rather cheap) HTC Wildfire has shocking battery life and I like to have it available. I often go to friends/my girlfriends for the weekend and am without a charger, my phone doesn't last as is, and playing music on it would be even worse.

iAudio is a product line from Cowon... they still exist

and it looks like they have added some of those android based toys to their lineup

I don't know why people seem to think music on a phone devours battery life, even remotely.

A quick analysis: my oldass HTC EVO, which is well known for poor battery life, was able to play Spotify (locally downloaded songs) for 15 minutes, using only 2% battery life. And this is on an old battery. That means on a full charge, it would be able to play music for 12 hours straight. Newer model phones should be able to nearly double that time.

One of the largest drains on your phone is backlight on the screen. If you want a device that lasts a really long time, pehaps you could get an e-ink device with a headphone jack, or one of the more primative mp3 players. :-p

After googling for e-ink mp3 player, I'm actually seeing that ordinary black&white LCDs use much less power than the current crop of color displays.

BTW, what is the uncertainty for energy levels in your battery cells? My phone derives its reading from voltage levels, which is such a poor indicator that the percent stored sometimes jumps up 7% or so.

Well it's not that so much as the fact that my phone already dies frequently enough without me using it much. It also depends how you use it, if you're listening to music it's low power but if you're turning on the screen to ajust volume, switch tracks, etc, it is going to be a heavier drain than your example.

My phone dies frequently because it's on all the time. My iPod can be turned off when I don't need it.