


Remember that digital audio player with the slide-out built-in speaker? Samsung made it official today, with a U.S. release coming this month. When it's turned off, the Samsung K5 looks kind of like a small obsidian brick, but this little guy is a party waiting to happen: once you slide out the built-in speaker, you have instant background music wherever you are. As a bonus, the display is an OLED screen, eliminating any "hard" buttons and keeping the surface nice and smooth. I got a chance to check out the K5 a few weeks ago and although the sound wasn't exactly room-filling, it was still impressively clear and hefty considering it was coming from such a small device. And if that rated 5 hours of battery life — that's with the speaker at full volume — is nonfiction, I definitely like-y. It's good to see some innovation among the MP3-player playas, but will the portable-party factor outdo the iPod? Well, after spending just $210 for 2 GB and $260 for 4 GB — a mere $10 above pricing for the iPod nano, which of course has no speaker — you've already got something to celebrate.
UPDATE: Well, that's better. We just got the correct pricing from Samsung, and it's much more to our liking. Return to the corrected sentence.