Mike Kelly, the PR contact for iriver America, left a comment here a few months back divulging all kinds of details about the W10, arguably the second-most anticipated new device (the clix 2 being the first) the company showed off at CES this year.
I wasn't sure how much stock to put into his set of specs at the time, but having just completed my usual scouring of iriver's global pages, it turns out I should've rolled over my entire portfolio. Because exactly as Kelly suggested, the upcoming 8GB W10 portable media player will feature a miniSD card slot for expanded memory, 3-inch WQVGA (480 x 272) TFT touchscreen display, wi-fi adapter for VoIP calls and wireless-based GPS, and outstanding codec support that actually surpasses what iriver is already known for. That means that on top of the usual Flash Lite 1.1, MP3, WMA, ASF, Ogg Vorbis, AVI, and MPEG4-SP compatibility, the W10 is also all set for playback of AAC and H.264 files.
And just in case your head's not spinning yet, the black and white players run on Windows CE (ensuring that "future applications can be integrated swiftly in the form of firmware upgrades") and are equipped with an FM tuner and recorder, built-in microphone for voice recording, mono speaker, and photo and text viewers.
Pricing and availability haven't been announced (though Kelly says next month is looking good for the U.S. market), but so far it looks like whenever and wherever the W10 does start shipping, it'll come with nothing but a USB cable and earphones.
Source: iriver Europe
