Chinese Haier and American AOL’s Linux-based WiFi and Bluetooth-enabled PMP that was announced in January was showcased at the CTIA fair.

A serious iPod contender, its stainless steel casing is more smudge and scratch proof. Its got a QVGA LCD screen, 30GB of internal memory and Bluetooth for A2DP headphones and is set to be out Q2 2007 priced at $249. The Haier PMP will be branded under the AOL name, which presumably also will offer subscription based music services.

Other features of this sleek looking player include MPEG-4, AVI, WMV 7/8/9 and H.264 video playback; PlaysForSure WMA files, AACPlus, AACPlus Enhanced, WAV, and MP3 for audio; OTA capable and trackpad control.

More pictures of this badboy after the break.

[Infosyncworld via PMP Today]

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So gone brush your shoulders off. Here at The Gadget Site, we know a shiny gadget when we see one, and the $250,000 platinum-coated Gundam sure is one shiny mother! Set for display in Basel, Switzerland next month, this robot will sure satisfy the deepest desires of those gangster/geek kids. I, for one, welcome our new iced-out overlords.

[Via Engadget]

Chinese manufacturer RAmos had just recently released the q13, a player that looked like the 2G iPod Nano. Apparantly, cloning Apple product is out of fashion now and RAmos has no doubt been secretly admiring the success of the Teclast C260 - a real LG Chocolate lookalike.

RAmos does not even try to deny the LG Chocolate-esque apprearance of their new players RM550 and RM650, their new marketing slogan goes “Chocolized Times”! The big difference between these two players lie in the insides, RM550 will be run on the Rockchips 2608 solution, where the RM650 will be powered by the better Sigmatel 3650 solution. Both of them will feature a 2.4″ 320 x 240 TFT display.

The RM550 will cost 399 CNY for 1GB and 499 for 2GB, while the RM650 will cost 499 and 599 for the same capacities. The prices roughly translate to US$ 52/65/65/77 respectively.

[Via The MP3 Players]

The Meizu M3 Music Card is said to be released in China this week. Already today, some stores have said that they either already carry the new player or will have it in stock within one to two days.

The Meizu Music Card is a MP3 player with a 1.5 inch color screen capable of playing music in MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, FLAC and videos in AVI at 25 FPS. The feature that interest people the most is probably the insanely low prices they are being offered at. The final pricing for this unit is 500/599/899 CNY (approx. 65/80/120 USD) for capacities 2/4/8 GB respectively.

[Via Meizu Me]

As if the rootkit scandal and all the unpopular proprietary formats weren’t enough, Sony are continuing their campaign for negative PR.

It is reported that Sony is developing a new proprietary format for licensed music, CLEFIA DRM and will reveal more details at the Fast Software Encryption 2007 conference to be held tomorrow in Luxembourg.

This new technology is said to be stronger, faster and more efficient than its predecessors, reaching a maximum data bandwidth of 1.42 Gb/s in 90 nm CMOS cell libraries - a speed of which, according to Sony, is sufficient for usage in smartcard environments.

No information on when implementation in consumer products can occur was released by Sony.

[TGDaily via Engadget]

COWON teams up with Japanese retailer Yodobashi Camera to release a red version of their latest flagship player, COWON D2. Only 300 copies of this special red player will be made.

The D2 measures 78 x 56 x 17 mm and weighs 96 grams, it is a digital audio player by Korean COWON that supports WMV & MPEG-4 video files and MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC and WAV audio files.

[AkihabaraNews via PMP Today]

Meizu Music Card is the latest offering from the recently famous brand of digital audio players, Meizu Electronic Technology. This nano-esque player is already pretty sought after and the guys from fan site Meizu Me have managed to get the first live footage of this player while it was on show at CeBIT 2007.

Let’s not comment the video quality.

[Via Meizu Me]

It’s semi-official. EB Games have confirmed the existence and disclosed the release date for which the pink Microsoft Zune digital audio player will be released; May 1st 2007. Apart from the color, no other differences to the original Zunes have been reported.

No word from Microsoft yet.

This should be good news for those who got outbid on these previously limited pink Zunes on eBay. For the rest of us… let’s keep an open mind for now at least.

[cliczune via Anything But iPod]

iriver T50 is truly one of those “next” DAPs. By “next”, we do not mean it in the “next big thing” sense, we mean that it literally makes you say “next”.

The T50 features all the latest and coolest functions of what one would expect of a DAP from year 2002. First of all, it comes in colors black and white and can hold an amazing one gigabyte of songs in formats MP3 / OGG / WMA. Additionally, it can even display Bitmap pictures on its one inch CSTN LCD screen. The only plausible feature is its 52 hour runtime on a single AAA battery.

At a price of 9,980 yen (roughly $85 USD), kindly skip to the next, more superior DAP in the same segment; the Teclast C280.

[Impress via Engadget]

USB items are all the hype these days. We thought we’d seen it all after seeing USB missiles, USB cupwarmers and USB sushi. But no, Samsung releases yet another USB powered device. Oh well, at least this one seems a bit more useful.

Samsung claims to have created the world’s first USB-connected display, one which also needs no graphics card. The Samsung UbiSync is a 19-inch 1280×1024 pixel LCD screen. Apparently, this screen also includes some on-board memory which it uses to render graphics when connected into a USB port.

UbiSync will face the light of day sometime around March this year for a whopping $678. But then again, who doesn’t really need an USB powered screen?

[PC World via OhGizmo!]