Without putting much thought into why this news seems to have taken so long, iriver has confirmed, or at least offered a nice teaser for the US availability of the P35 portable media player. Unfortunately, the release will not be until sometime “this Fall.” Not to mention, the pricing has not been made official, of more »

Shiro recently announced the availability of a more green MP3 player, which uses solar cells on the back to recharge its internal battery. A pretty cool idea, but the question remains, is it practical? Before I get into the specifics of the player, I want to mention how the solar cells work in terms of battery life.

The SQ-S Solar Media player, uses both solar cells and conventional USB to charge its internal battery, so it hasn’t fully gone solar. It takes 6 hours to become fully charged under direct sunlight, but only 4 hours when using normal USB charging. Now, if it were to go fully green, solar charging would have to occur a lot faster, and since the sun isn’t always shining, there has to be some back-up way to get charged.

In efforts to showcase the best looking portable media player’s and digital audio player’s at IFA, iriver has announced a new PMP and a GPS with media capabilities.

The first device announced is the iriver P20, which was originally shown off at the past CES in January 2008. It sports a 4.1-inch AMOLED touch screen, which is a bigger screen than most PMP’s these days. In addition, the battery life is pretty good, 12 hours for music, 9 hours for video, and up to 8 hours with DMB TV. Although, I do think the battery life when just playing music should be a bit higher, but for video and DMB TV, it’s good. It is expected to come with either an 80GB or 120GB hard drive.

ZVUE has just unveiled their latest digital audio player, a special 1GB model that is not only branded with some bitchin’ Journey graphics, but also comes pre-loaded 11 classic tracks as well as 11 that are new.

I will admit a little guilty pleasure when it comes to some of the classic Journey, but still have to ask, they have new stuff? Anyway, perhaps the best part, and maybe the only savior is that that you can pick one up for the low price of $39.88. The Journey branded ZVUE will be available from Wal-Mart online and seems to be available for home delivery or in-store pickup.

I just cannot resist some sarcasm here, but something about a Journey branded player being released in 2008, that is available from Wal-Mart is just screaming no-class. However I am sure there are still some Journey fans that will find this a little to hard to resist. Of course for under 40 bucks that could be a decent player to use when you are afraid of damaging your real portable player.