File support is, as usual for Samsung, strong for audio and weaker for photos and video. The P3 plays MP3, WMA, OGG, FLAC, AAC, WAV, and ASF audio files. Video support is limited to WMV9, MPEG-4, and H.264; for any other file you want to watch, you'll need to convert with the aforementioned software, which is easy to do but can be time-consuming for longer files. Only JPEG, BMP, and PNG files are supported for photos.
Samsung players are consistently strong at playing back music. Like Sony, Samsung knows how to make an EQ that both looks cool and responds as it should to user adjustments. But because the screen buttons are slow to respond, navigating to the music menu and playing a song is slower than on the iPod touch, even though both processes involve about the same number of steps. The Now Playing screen has several different animated graphics to choose from; my favorite, the "Spectrum," shows EQ bands pulsating to the music, like an eighties-era stereo system. Another cool feature in the music menu is the "horizontal stroke" option, which lets you skip a certain time interval in a given song when you swipe your finger across the screen. Alas, there's nothing here like Apple's Cover Flow that truly utilizes the touch screen's capabilities, and there's not even an accelerometer to switch the screen to horizontal mode when you rotate the player—something you find on other touch competitors, like the Cowon S9. (Accelerometer aside, the S9 is inferior to the P3 in just about every respect.)
width="75%" height="75%">Video is a pleasure to watch. Sure, the P3's screen's resolution is slightly lower than the touch's (480 by 320 pixels), but because the P3's screen is half an inch smaller, images end up looking just as crisp. All files automatically switch to a horizontal orientation on the screen, and, as with music, playback controls appear when you select a file and tap the display.
For a player with no Internet access, the P3 still has plenty of features, even if they're not all mind-blowing. Among them: an FM radio with 30 presets and a recorder, a voice recorder, and Samsung's usual Bluetooth pairing options. (Want to answer your cell-phone calls through your player? Simply pair the two and you're set.) The included games are incredibly simple—one involves popping virtual bubble wrap by tapping on the screen—and not always consistent given the screen's fickle response to fingers. The widget collection is extensive, if a little underwhelming: a short-term alarm called Sleep Cat makes an animated kitten meow when your alarm sounds, there's a detailed virtual map of every major subway system in the world, plus an international clock, a calculator, an address book, and a memo pad. These extras pale compared with most of the free apps you can load onto an iPod touch, but they do add value to the P3.
source : http://www.pcmag.com
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