November 20, 2006 iRiver released an interesting new personal media device onto its home Japanese market last Friday (November 17) which is one of the first of an entirely new breed of wearable device that combines the elegance of jewelery with some compelling functionality. Firstly the S10 is little larger than a postage stamp and with dimensions of 42 x 30 x 10.8 mm, small and light enough (17.5 grams) so it won’t get in the way. It also has a small 96 x 128 pixel, 65,000 color 1.15 inch OLED screen which can play MPEG-4 video or run a slide show and its Lithium polymer battery offers eight hours of continuous playback so the lights don’t go before the party's over.
The voice recording function adds another dimension to the S10 in that it's capable of recording 16 hours of audio with its high sensitivity built-in microphone and is being pitched to Japanese students as a way of recording lectures and as an aid in the study of foreign languages. We have written before about concepts for recording our lives such as Sensecam and the S10 is certainly a step in this direction, capable of recording the audio of an entire day's activities.
iRiver's new S10 media player has an elegant interchangeable neck strap and comes with five different coloured straps – the earphones are integrated into the neck strap, and feature a clever pivot that enables you to easily see the menu while you’re wearing it. The S10 supports MP3, WMA, and OGG files, and has an interesting universal jack which connects via USB 2.0 for recharging, loading music and for the headphones.
The S10 also functions as a clock and an alarm clock with the user's choice of sound/music to match the alarm and it's also possible to set up the S10 to record FM broadcasts at a pre-appointed time – as with a video recorder.
iRiver's new Plus3 content management software is included, which controls the entire library of video, images and audio, and offers Gracenote Music ID functionality. 1 GB and 2 GB capacities are available now.
