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89-405: Zvue was a brand of portable media player devices made a company named HandHeld Entertainment. They released in the mid-2000s and were aimed at teenagers, with prices around $ 99. Zvue used to be listed on NASDAQ but was removed due to heavy losses in 2008. The media player supported MP3 files, JPG images, and videos under its own file format named HHe. These videos had to purchased from

178-404: A USB floppy drive key , an ordinary USB flash drive with the capacity to emulate floppy drives, allowing it to be used for updating system firmware where direct use of USB flash drives is not supported. The desired mode of operation, regular USB mass storage device or floppy drive emulation, is selected via sliding a switch on the device's housing. Most current PC firmware permits booting from

267-517: A line-level audio signal (radio, voice, etc.). Devices such as CD players can be connected to the MP3 player (using the USB port) in order to directly play music from the memory of the player without the use of a computer. Modular MP3 keydrive players are composed of two detachable parts: the head (or reader/writer) and the body (the memory). They can be independently obtained and upgradable (one can change

356-490: A micro USB plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices. Inside the casing is a small printed circuit board, which has some power circuitry and a small number of surface-mounted integrated circuits (ICs). Typically, one of these ICs provides an interface between the USB connector and the onboard memory, while the other is the flash memory . Drives typically use the USB mass storage device class to communicate with

445-617: A personal organiser are emulated, or support for video games , like the iriver clix (through compatibility of Adobe Flash Lite ) or the PlayStation Portable , is included. Only mid-range to high-end players support "savestating" for power-off (i.e. leaves off song/video in progress similar to tape-based media). Nearly all players are compatible with the MP3 audio format, and many others support Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) and WAV . Some players are compatible with open-source formats like Ogg Vorbis and

534-453: A 1 TB USB-C flash drive, the smallest of its kind. [REDACTED] Internals of a typical USB flash drive On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single Standard-A USB plug ; some flash drives additionally offer a micro USB or USB-C plug, facilitating data transfers between different devices. On a USB flash drive, one end of the device is fitted with a single USB plug ; some flash drives additionally offer

623-493: A 2 GB drive being marketed as a 64 GB drive). When plugged into a computer, they report being the larger capacity they were sold as, but when data is written to them, either the write fails, the drive freezes up, or it overwrites existing data. Software tools exist to check and detect fake USB drives, and in some cases it is possible to repair these devices to remove the false capacity information and use its real storage limit. Transfer speeds are technically determined by

712-408: A USB drive, allowing the launch of an operating system from a bootable flash drive. Such a configuration is known as a Live USB . Original flash memory designs had very limited estimated lifetimes. The failure mechanism for flash memory cells is analogous to a metal fatigue mode; the device fails by refusing to write new data to specific cells that have been subject to many read-write cycles over

801-407: A battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type. There are typically five parts to a flash drive: The typical device may also include: Most USB flash drives weigh less than 30 g (1 oz). While some manufacturers are competing for

890-667: A challenging subject that depends on the SLC / MLC / TLC memory type, size of the flash memory chips, and actual usage pattern. As a result, a USB flash drive can last from a few days to several hundred years. Regardless of the endurance of the memory itself, the USB connector hardware is specified to withstand only around 1,500 insert-removal cycles. Counterfeit USB flash drives are sometimes sold with claims of having higher capacities than they actually possess. These are typically low-capacity USB drives with modified flash memory controller firmware that emulates larger capacity drives (for example,

979-486: A colour liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen is used as a display for PMPs that have a screen. Various players include the ability to record video, usually with the aid of optional accessories or cables, and audio, with a built-in microphone or from a line out cable or FM tuner . Some players include readers for memory cards , which are advertised to equip players with extra storage or transferring media. In some players, features of

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1068-831: A crossfade mixer. Many such devices also tend to be smartphones . Many mobile digital media players have last position memory , in which when it is powered off, a user does not have to worry about starting at the first track again, or even hearing repeats of others songs when a playlist, album, or whole library is cued for shuffle play , in which shuffle play is a common feature, too. Early playback devices to even remotely have "last position memory" that predated solid-state digital media playback devices were tape-based media, except this kind suffered from having to be "rewound", whereas disc-based media suffered from no native "last position memory", unless disc-players had their own last position memory. However, some models of solid-state flash memory (or hard drive ones with some moving parts) are somewhat

1157-462: A decline in sales of PMPs, leading to most devices being phased out, such as the iPod Touch on May 10, 2022, though certain flagship devices like the Sony Walkman are still in production. Portable DVD and BD players are still manufactured. Digital audio players are generally categorised by storage media: Some MP3 players can encode directly to MP3 or other digital audio formats directly from

1246-568: A feature. Furthermore, for installation of Windows XP , using a USB flash drive with a storage limit of at most 2 GB is recommended in order to boot from it. In Windows Vista and later versions, ReadyBoost feature allows flash drives (from 4 GB in case of Windows Vista) to augment operating system memory. Flash drives are used to carry applications that run on the host computer without requiring installation . While any standalone application can in principle be used this way, many programs store data, configuration information, etc. on

1335-622: A few hundred dollars. Some DAPs have FM radio tuners built in. Many also have an option to change the band from the usual 87.5 – 108.0 MHz to the Japanese band of 76.0 – 90.0 MHz. DAPs typically never have an AM band, or even HD Radio since such features would be either cost-prohibitive for the application, or because of AM's sensitivity to interference. Newer portable media players are now coming with Internet access via Wi-Fi . Examples of such devices are Android OS devices by various manufacturers, and iOS devices on Apple products like

1424-537: A few months after the MPMan, and also featured a 32 MB storage capacity. It was a success during the holiday season, with sales exceeding expectations. Interest and investment in digital music were subsequently spurred from it. The RIAA soon filed a lawsuit alleging that the device abetted illegal copying of music, but Diamond won a legal victory on the shoulders of Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. and MP3 players were ruled legal devices. Because of

1513-447: A few very large ones, and mixed reading and writing to the same device. In a typical well-conducted review of a number of high-performance USB 3.0 drives, a drive that could read large files at 68 MB/s and write at 46 MB/s, could only manage 14 MB/s and 0.3 MB/s with many small files. When combining streaming reads and writes the speed of another drive, the drive could read at 92 MB/s and write at 70 MB/s,

1602-540: A flash drive can be used to run installation of Windows or Linux from USB, a process that can be automated via the use of tools like the Universal USB Installer or Rufus . However, for installation of Windows 7 and later versions, using USB flash drive with hard disk drive emulation as detected in PC's firmware is recommended in order to boot from it. Transcend is the only manufacturer of USB flash drives containing such

1691-466: A flash drive with 1 TB of storage. The first USB 3.1 type-C flash drives, with read/write speeds of around 530 MB/s, were announced in March 2015. By July 2016, flash drives with 8 to 256 GB capacity were sold more frequently than those with capacities between 512 GB and 1 TB. In 2017, Kingston Technology announced the release of a 2-TB flash drive. In 2018, SanDisk announced

1780-496: A given media player is followed by an increase in the number, for example an MP5 or MP12 Player, despite there being no such corresponding MPEG standards. iriver of South Korea originally made portable CD players and then started making digital audio players and portable media players in 2002. Creative also introduced the ZEN line. Both of these attained high popularity in some regions. In 2004, Microsoft attempted to take advantage of

1869-445: A lack of moving parts. Additionally, they are less vulnerable to electromagnetic interference than floppy disks, and are unharmed by surface scratches (unlike CDs). However, as with any flash storage, data loss from bit leaking due to prolonged lack of electrical power and the possibility of spontaneous controller failure due to poor manufacturing could make it unsuitable for long-term archiving of data . The ability to retain data

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1958-415: A number of handheld devices such as smartphones and tablet computers, though the electronically similar SD card is better suited for those devices, due to their standardized form factor, which allows the card to be housed inside a device without protruding. A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside

2047-424: A plastic, metal, or rubberized case, which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. Some are equipped with an I/O indication LED that lights up or blinks upon access. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing connection with

2136-413: A popular standard format and as a result most digital audio players after this supported it and hence were often called MP3 players . While popularly being called MP3 players at the time, most players could play more than just the MP3 file format. Players also sometimes supported Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Vorbis , FLAC , Speex and Ogg . The first portable MP3 player

2225-464: A port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist (e.g. micro-USB and USB-C ports). USB flash drives draw power from the computer via the USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a portable media player with USB flash storage; they require a battery only when used to play music on the go. The basis for USB flash drives is flash memory , a type of floating-gate semiconductor memory invented by Fujio Masuoka in

2314-465: A possible inventor of the device. Given these competing inventor claims, patent disputes involving the USB flash drive have arisen over the years. Both Trek 2000 International and Netac Technology have accused others of infringing their patents on the USB flash drive. However, the question of who was the first to invent the USB flash drive has multiple claims persist, the Natec Technology get

2403-468: A spartan user interface and a smaller form factor, the iPod was initially popular within the Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple introduced the second generation update to the iPod, which was compatible with Windows computers through Musicmatch Jukebox . iPods quickly became the most popular DAP product and led the fast growth of this market during the early and mid 2000s. In 2002, Archos released

2492-688: Is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory , microdrive , SD cards or hard disk drive ; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media , such as cassette tapes or vinyl records . Digital audio players (DAP) were often marketed as MP3 players even if they also supported other file formats and media types. The PMP term

2581-417: Is affected by the controller's firmware , internal data redundancy , and error correction algorithms. Until about 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disk drives in addition to USB ports, but floppy disk drives became obsolete after widespread adoption of USB ports and the larger USB drive capacity compared to the " 1.44 megabyte " 3.5-inch floppy disk. USB flash drives use

2670-401: Is also often used, which has up to 500 write cycles per physical sector, while some high-end flash drives have single-level cell (SLC) based memory that is good for around 30,000 writes. There is virtually no limit to the number of reads from such flash memory, so a well-worn USB drive may be write-protected to help ensure the life of individual cells. Estimation of flash memory endurance is

2759-452: Is downloaded and placed onto a FAT16 - or FAT32 -formatted USB flash drive connected to a system which is to be updated, and the path to the new firmware image is selected within the update component of system's firmware. Some motherboard manufacturers also allow such updates without the need to enter the system's firmware update component, making it possible to easily recover systems with corrupted firmware. In addition, HP has introduced

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2848-966: Is nearest competitor in 2006 being SanDisk . Apple also led in Japan over its homegrown makers Sony and Panasonic during this time, although the gap between Apple and Sony had closed by about 2010. In South Korea, the market was led by local brands iriver , Samsung and Cowon as of 2005. European buying patterns differed; while Apple was in a particularly strong position in the United Kingdom, continental Western Europe generally preferred cheaper, often Chinese rebranded players under local brands such as Grundig . Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe including Russia, higher priced players with improved design or functionality were preferred instead, and here Korean makers like iriver and Samsung were particularly popular, as well as such OEM models under local brands. Creative

2937-484: Is not necessarily helpful to install one of these file systems. Sectors are 512 bytes long, for compatibility with hard disk drives, and the first sector can contain a master boot record and a partition table . Therefore, USB flash units can be partitioned just like hard disk drives. The memory in flash drives was commonly engineered with multi-level cell (MLC) based memory that is good for around 3,000-5,000 program-erase cycles. Nowadays Triple-level Cell (TLC)

3026-412: Is required not to alter in any way the information stored on the computer being examined. Other forensic suites run from CD-ROM or DVD-ROM , but cannot store data on the media they are run from (although they can write to other attached devices, such as external drives or memory sticks ). Motherboard firmware (including BIOS and UEFI ) can be updated using USB flash drives. Usually, new firmware

3115-546: Is supported in Windows 7 and Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 with a hotfix). A recent development for the use of a USB Flash Drive as an application carrier is to carry the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE) application developed by Microsoft . COFEE is a set of applications designed to search for and extract digital evidence on computers confiscated from suspects. Forensic software

3204-501: The EU , demand for MP3 players peaked in 2007 with 43.5 million devices sold totalling 3.8 billion euros. Both sales and revenue experienced a double-digit shrinkage for the first time in 2010. In India, sales of PMPs decreased for the first time in 2012, a few years after developed economies. The market was led by Apple with a share of about 50%, while Sony and Philips were the other major brands. Meanwhile, sales of Apple's best selling product,

3293-521: The FAT32 , or exFAT file systems . The ubiquity of the FAT32 file system allows the drive to be accessed on virtually any host device with USB support. Also, standard FAT maintenance utilities (e.g., ScanDisk ) can be used to repair or retrieve corrupted data . However, because a flash drive appears as a USB-connected hard drive to the host system, the drive can be reformatted to any file system supported by

3382-505: The Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Audio files purchased from online stores may include digital rights management (DRM) copy protection, which many modern players support. The JPEG format is widely supported by players. Some players, like the iPod series, provide compatibility to display additional file formats like GIF , PNG , and TIFF , while others are bundled with conversion software. Most newer players support

3471-548: The MPEG-4 Part 2 video format, and many other players are compatible with Windows Media Video (WMV) and AVI . Software included with the players may be able to convert video files into a compatible format. Many players have a built-in electret microphone which allows recording. Usually recording quality is poor, suitable for speech but not music. There are also professional-quality recorders suitable for high-quality music recording with external microphones, at prices starting at

3560-535: The Sansa line of players, starting with the e100 series, and then following up with the m200 series, and c100 series. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPod Touch , the first iPod with a multi-touch screen. Some similar products existed before such as the iriver clix in 2006. In South Korea, sales of MP3 players peaked in 2006, but started declining afterwards. This was driven partly by the launch of mobile television services (DMB), which along with increased demand of movies on

3649-517: The USB mass storage device class standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Windows , Linux , macOS and other Unix-like systems, as well as many BIOS boot ROMs. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than much larger optical disc drives like CD-RW or DVD-RW drives and can be read by many other systems such as the Xbox One , PlayStation 4 , DVD players, automobile entertainment systems, and in

Zvue - Misplaced Pages Continue

3738-491: The Windows 95 and NT operating systems, which did not have native support for USB connections. In 1999 the first hard drive based DAP using a 2.5" laptop drive, the Personal Jukebox (PJB-100) designed by Compaq and released by Hango Electronics Co with 4.8 GB storage, which held about 1,200 songs, and pioneered what would be called the jukebox segment of digital music portables. This segment eventually became

3827-522: The iPhone , iPod Touch , and iPad . Internet access has even enabled people to use the Internet as an underlying communications layer for their choice of music for automated music randomisation services like Pandora , to on-demand video access (which also has music available) such as YouTube. This technology has enabled casual and hobbyist DJs to cue their tracks from a smaller package from an Internet connection, sometimes they will use two identical devices on

3916-437: The "best of both worlds" in the market. Media players' firmware may be equipped with a basic file manager and a text reader. There are three categories of audio formats: Keydrive Common uses of USB flash drives are for storage, supplementary back-ups , and transferring of computer files . Compared with floppy disks or CDs , they are smaller, faster, have significantly more capacity, and are more durable due to

4005-477: The 2000s. Other non-phone products such as the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation Vita have also been considered to be PMPs. DAPs and PMPs have declined in popularity after the late 2000s due to increasing worldwide adoption of smartphones that already come with PMP functionalities. Sales peaked in 2007 and market revenue (worth $ 21.6 billion) peaked in 2008, albeit notably mobile phones that could play music outsold DAPs by almost three to one as of 2007. In

4094-549: The CW100, under the brand name iAUDIO . In December 2000, some months after the Creative's NOMAD Jukebox , Archos released its Jukebox 6000 with a 6 GB hard drive. Philips also released a player called the Rush. On 23 October 2001, Apple unveiled the first generation iPod , a 5 GB hard drive based DAP with a 1.8" hard drive and a 2" monochrome display. With the development of

4183-577: The South Korean giant Samsung Electronics . Sony entered the digital audio player market in 1999 with the Vaio Music Clip and Memory Stick Walkman , however they were technically not MP3 players as it did not support the MP3 format but instead Sony's own ATRAC format and WMA . The company's first MP3-supporting Walkman player did not come until 2004. Over the years, various hard-drive-based and flash-based DAPs and PMPs have been released under

4272-478: The US. However, in 1988 Kramer's failure to raise the £60,000 required to renew the patent meant it entered the public domain. Apple Inc. hired Kramer as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior art in the field of digital audio players during their litigation with Burst.com almost two decades later. In 2008, Apple acknowledged Kramer as the inventor of the digital audio player The Listen Up Player

4361-713: The USB logo only if sold with a separate extension cable. Such cables are USB-compatible but do not conform to the USB standard. USB flash drives have been integrated into other commonly carried items, such as watches, pens, laser pointers, and even the Swiss Army Knife ; others have been fitted with novelty cases such as toy cars or Lego bricks. USB flash drives with images of dragons, cats or aliens are very popular in Asia. The small size, robustness and cheapness of USB flash drives make them an increasingly popular peripheral for case modding . Most flash drives ship preformatted with

4450-612: The Walkman range. The Samsung YEPP line was first released in 1999 with the aim of making the smallest music players on the market. In 2000, Creative released the 6 GB hard-drive-based Creative NOMAD Jukebox. The name borrowed the jukebox metaphor popularised by Remote Solution , also used by Archos . Later players in the Creative NOMAD range used microdrives rather than laptop drives. In October 2000, South Korean software company Cowon Systems released their first MP3 player,

4539-593: The ability to download music to FlashPAC. AAC and such music downloading services later formed the foundation for the Apple iPod and iTunes. The first production-volume portable digital audio player was The Audible Player (also known as MobilePlayer, or Digital Words To Go) from Audible.com available for sale in January 1998, for $ 200. It only supported playback of digital audio in Audible's proprietary, low-bitrate format which

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4628-505: The ancestors of digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There are several types of MP3 players: British scientist Kane Kramer invented the first digital audio player, which he called the IXI . His 1979 prototypes were capable of up to one hour of audio playback but did not enter commercial production. His UK patent application was not filed until 1981 and was issued in 1985 in the UK and 1987 in

4717-623: The basic copyright of American in Dec 7, 2004. And in the lawsuit, the PNY company paid 1,000 million dollars to Natec. Flash drives are often measured by the rate at which they transfer data. Transfer rates may be given in megabytes per second (MB/s), megabits per second (Mbit/s), or in optical drive multipliers such as "180X" (180 times 150  KiB /s). File transfer rates vary considerably among devices. Second generation flash drives have claimed to read at up to 30 MB/s and write at about half that rate, which

4806-426: The clustered data), and the additional wear on flash drives may not be significant. Some file systems are designed to distribute usage over an entire memory device without concentrating usage on any part (e.g., for a directory) to prolong the life of simple flash memory devices. Some USB flash drives have this ' wear leveling ' feature built into the software controller to prolong device life, while others do not, so it

4895-469: The company's now defunct store website, which was similar to iTunes. Zvue media players often had a lower price point than their competitors, at $ 99. Some models came with no built-in memory, instead requiring an SD card. Zvue also released MP3 players with built in storage and songs. This product article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Portable media player A portable media player ( PMP ) or digital audio player ( DAP )

4984-687: The device more attractive for more applications. By reducing the probability of the device's premature failure, flash memory devices can now be considered for use where a magnetic disk would normally have been required. Flash drives have also experienced an exponential growth in their storage capacity over time (following the Moore's Law growth curve). As of 2013, single-packaged devices with capacities of 1  TB are readily available, and devices with 16 GB capacity are very economical. Storage capacities in this range have traditionally been considered to offer adequate space, because they allow enough space for both

5073-488: The device's lifetime. Premature failure of a "live USB" could be circumvented by using a flash drive with a write-lock switch as a WORM device , identical to a live CD . Originally, this potential failure mode limited the use of "live USB" system to special-purpose applications or temporary tasks, such as: As of 2011 , newer flash memory designs have much higher estimated lifetimes. Several manufacturers are now offering warranties of 5 years or more. Such warranties should make

5162-659: The dominant type of digital music player. Also at the end of 1999 the first in-dash MP3 player appeared. The Empeg Car offered players in several capacities ranging from 5 to 28 GB. The unit did not catch on and was discontinued in the fall of 2001. For the next couple of years, there were offerings from South Korean companies, namely the startups iRiver (brand of Reigncom), Mpio (brand of DigitalWay) and Cowon . At its peak, these Korean makers held as much as 40% world market share in MP3 players. These manufacturers however lost their way after 2004 as they failed to compete with new iPods . By 2006 they were also overtaken by

5251-481: The early 1980s. Flash memory uses floating-gate MOSFET transistors as memory cells . Multiple individuals have staked a claim to having invented the USB flash drive. On April 5, 1999, Amir Ban , Dov Moran , and Oron Ogdan of M-Systems , an Israeli company, filed a patent application entitled "Architecture for a Universal Serial Bus-Based PC Flash Disk". The patent was subsequently granted on November 14, 2000 and these individuals have often been recognized as

5340-405: The entire contents of the chip. Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into

5429-516: The first PMP, the Archos Jukebox Multimedia with a little 1.5" colour screen. The next year, Archos released another multimedia jukebox , the AV300 , with a 3.8" screen and a 20 GB hard drive. In the same year, Toshiba released the first Gigabeat . In 2003, Dell launched a line of portable digital music players called Dell DJ . They were discontinued by 2006. The name MP4 player

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5518-454: The globe and by 2005, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones and all major handset makers in the world had released MP3 playing phones. By 2006, more MP3 playing mobile phones were sold than all stand-alone MP3 players put together. The rapid rise of the media player in phones was quoted by Apple as a primary reason for developing the iPhone . In 2007,

5607-466: The go led to a transition away from music-only players to PMPs. By 2008, more video-enabled PMPs were sold than audio-only players. By the mid-2000s and the years after, Apple with its iPod was the best-selling DAP or PMP by a significant margin, with one of out four sold worldwide being an iPod. It was especially dominant in the United States where it had over 70% of sales at different points in time,

5696-694: The growing PMP market by launching the Portable Media Center (PMC) platform. It was introduced at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show with the announcement of the Zen Portable Media Center , which was co-developed by Creative . The Microsoft Zune series would later be based on the Gigabeat S , one of the PMC-implemented players. In May 2005, flash memory maker SanDisk entered the PMP market with

5785-433: The head or the body; i.e. to add more memory). Today, every smartphone also serves as a portable media player; however, prior to the rise of smartphones in the 2007–2012 time frame, a variety of handheld players were available to store and play music. The immediate predecessor to the portable media player was the portable CD player and prior to that, the personal stereo . In particular, Sony 's Walkman and Discman are

5874-419: The host operating system. Flash drives can be defragmented . There is a widespread opinion that defragmenting brings little advantage (as there is no mechanical head that moves from fragment to fragment), and that defragmenting shortens the life of the drive by making many unnecessary writes. However, some sources claim that defragmenting a flash drive can improve performance (mostly due to improved caching of

5963-430: The host. Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost, lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in semiconductor device fabrication technology. The memory storage is based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had limited capacity, were slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could be re-written only after erasing

6052-481: The iPod, were eclipsed by the iPhone in 2011. DAPs continue to be made in lower volumes by manufacturers such as SanDisk, Sony, IRIVER, Philips, Apple, Cowon, and a range of Chinese manufacturers namely Aigo, Newsmy, PYLE and ONDA. They often have specific selling points in the smartphone era, such as portability (for small sized players) or for high quality sound suited for audiophiles . PMPs are capable of playing digital audio , images , and/or video . Usually,

6141-448: The inventors of the USB flash drive. Also in 1999, Shimon Shmueli , an engineer at IBM, submitted an invention disclosure asserting that he had invented the USB flash drive. A Singaporean company named Trek 2000 International is the first company known to have sold a USB flash drive, and has also maintained that it is the original inventor of the device. Finally Pua Khein-Seng , a Malaysian engineer, has also been recognized by some as

6230-747: The late 1990s following the creation of the MP3 codec in Germany. MP3-playing devices were mostly pioneered by South Korean startups, who by 2002 would control the majority of global sales. However the industry would eventually be defined by the popular Apple iPod . In 2006, 20% of Americans owned a PMP, a figure strongly driven by the young; more than half (54%) of American teens owned one, as did 30% of young adults aged 18 to 34. In 2007, 210 million PMPs were sold worldwide, worth US$ 19.5 billion. In 2008, video-enabled players would overtake audio-only players. Increasing sales of smartphones and tablet computers have led to

6319-448: The memory chips than parallel access , simplifying the manufacture of multi- gigabyte drives. Computers access modern flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above. Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and

6408-549: The new technology, and instead young startups would come to dominate the early era of MP3 players. Other early MP3 portables included the Creative Labs Nomad and the RCA Lyra . These portables were small and light, but had only enough memory to hold around 7 to 20 songs at normal 128 kbit/s compression rates. They also used slower parallel port connections to transfer files from PC to player, necessary as most PCs then used

6497-419: The norm as data security needs increase; on-the-fly encryption systems are particularly useful in this regard, as they can transparently encrypt large amounts of data. In some cases, a secure USB drive may use a hardware-based encryption mechanism that uses a hardware module instead of software for strongly encrypting data. IEEE 1667 is an attempt to create a generic authentication platform for USB drives. It

6586-427: The number of phones that could play media was over 1 billion. Some companies have created music-centric sub-brands for mobile phones, for example the former Sony Ericsson 's Walkman range or Nokia 's XpressMusic range, which have extra emphasis on music playback and typically have features such as dedicated music buttons. Mobile phones with PMP functionalities such as video playback also started appearing in

6675-486: The operating system software and some free space for the user's data. Installers of some operating systems can be stored to a flash drive instead of a CD or DVD, including various Linux distributions , Windows 7 and newer versions, and macOS . In particular, Mac OS X 10.7 is distributed only online, through the Mac App Store , or on flash drives; for a MacBook Air with Boot Camp and no external optical drive,

6764-507: The player's notoriety as the target of a major lawsuit, the Rio is erroneously assumed to be the first digital audio player. Eiger Labs and Diamond went on to establish a new segment in the portable audio player market and the following year saw several new manufacturers enter this market. The PMP300 would be the start of the Rio line of players. Noticeably, major technology companies did not catch on with

6853-461: The protocol overhead that translates to a 35  MB /s effective throughput. That same year, Intel sparked widespread use of second generation USB by including them within its laptops. By 2010, the maximum available storage capacity for the devices had reached upwards of 128 GB. USB 3.0 was slow to appear in laptops. Through 2010, the majority of laptop models still contained only USB 2.0. In January 2013, tech company Kingston, released

6942-572: The same field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this. The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for

7031-578: The slowest of three factors: the USB version used, the speed in which the USB controller device can read and write data onto the flash memory, and the speed of the hardware bus , especially in the case of add-on USB ports. USB flash drives usually specify their read and write speeds in megabytes per second (MB/s); read speed is usually faster. These speeds are for optimal conditions; real-world speeds are usually slower. In particular, circumstances that often lead to speeds much lower than advertised are transfer (particularly writing) of many small files rather than

7120-445: The smallest size, with the biggest memory, offering drives only a few millimeters larger than the USB plug itself, some manufacturers differentiate their products by using elaborate housings, which are often bulky and make the drive difficult to connect to the USB port. Because the USB port connectors on a computer housing are often closely spaced, plugging a flash drive into a USB port may block an adjacent port. Such devices may carry

7209-525: The user the song currently playing. The first car audio hard drive-based MP3 player was also released in 1997 by MP32Go and was called the MP32Go Player. It consisted of a 3 GB IBM 2.5" hard drive that was housed in a trunk-mounted enclosure connected to the car's radio system. It retailed for $ 599 and was a commercial failure. The Rio PMP300 from Diamond Multimedia was introduced in September 1998,

7298-601: Was 8 MB/s. These differences differ radically from one drive to another; some could write small files 10% faster than for large ones. The examples given are chosen to illustrate extremes. The most common use of flash drives is to transport and store personal files, such as documents, pictures and videos. Individuals also store medical information on flash drives for emergencies and disaster preparation. With wide deployment of flash drives in various environments (secured or otherwise), data and information security remain critical issues. Biometrics and encryption are becoming

7387-416: Was a marketing term for inexpensive portable media players, usually from little-known or generic device manufacturers. The name itself is a misnomer , since most MP4 players through 2007 were incompatible with the MPEG-4 Part 14 or the .mp4 container format. Instead, the term refers to their ability to play more file types than just MP3. In this sense, in some markets like Brazil, any new function added to

7476-424: Was about 20 times faster than the theoretical transfer rate achievable by the previous model, USB 1.1, which is limited to 12 Mbit/s (1.5 MB/s) with accounted overhead. The effective transfer rate of a device is significantly affected by the data access pattern. By 2002, USB flash drives had USB 2.0 connectivity, which has 480  Mbit /s as the transfer rate upper bound; after accounting for

7565-452: Was developed for spoken word recordings. Capacity was limited to 4 MB of internal flash memory, or about 2 hours of play, using a custom rechargeable battery pack. The unit had no display and rudimentary controls. MP3 was introduced as an audio coding standard in 1992. It was based on several audio data compression techniques, including the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT), FFT and psychoacoustic methods. MP3 became

7654-510: Was introduced later for devices that had additional capabilities such as video playback. Generally speaking, they are portable, employing internal or replaceable batteries , equipped with a 3.5 mm headphone jack which can be used for headphones or to connect to a boombox , shelf stereo system, or connect to car audio and home stereos wired or via a wireless connection such as Bluetooth . Some players also include radio tuners , voice recording and other features. DAPs appeared in

7743-517: Was launched in 1997 by SaeHan Information Systems , which sold its MPMan F10 player in South Korea in spring 1998. In mid-1998, the South Korean company licensed the players for North American distribution to Eiger Labs, which rebranded them as the EigerMan F10 and F20. The flash-based players were available in 32 MB or 64 MB (6 or 12 songs) storage capacity and had a LCD screen to tell

7832-542: Was released in 1996 by Audio Highway, an American company led by Nathan Schulhof . It could store up to an hour of music, but despite getting an award at CES 1997 only 25 of the devices were made. That same year AT&T developed the FlashPAC digital audio player which initially used AT&T's Perceptual Audio Coder (PAC) for music compression, but in 1997 switched to AAC . At about the same time AT&T also developed an internal Web-based music streaming service that had

7921-473: Was the top-selling maker in its home country of Singapore. In China, local brands Newman, DEC and Aigo were noted as the top vendors as of 2006. Samsung SPH-M2100 , the first mobile phone with built-in MP3 player was produced in South Korea in August 1999. Samsung SPH-M100 (UpRoar) launched in 2000 was the first mobile phone to have MP3 music capabilities in the US market. The innovation spread rapidly across

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