Perhaps overshadowed at IFA, by its 7-inch stablemate, the Samsung Galaxy Player 50 (or YP-G50, to give it its serial designation) is no less important. It is, for the Korean giant, geared up to go toe-to-toe with the new iPod touch. And there's plenty of reasons why it may just become the favourite of many.

Built around the Android 2.1 OS (Eclair) it is, for all intents and purposes, a mobile phone without the phone bit - much like Apple's device. And it does pretty much everything that is expected of a current gen Galaxy handset. Although there's no indication at present as to whether it will be upgradable to Android 2.2 or beyond.

Its main use is as a portable media device, with a 3.2-inch WQVGA TFT LCD touchscreen, but is fully compatible with Android marketplace and gaming apps. Indeed, two games were pre-installed on the demo model at IFA; shoot-em-up Pacific Wings and Paper Toss.

There's a 2-megapixel camera on board, but only rear-facing, so the iPod touch has an advantage in this instant, but the Galaxy Player 50's browser is compatible with Flash, and the variety of file types that it'll play natively, through drag-and-drop, are far more impressive than its peer. It'll happily munch through MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV and DivX/XviD video files, plus multiple music files are supported, such as MP3 (obviously), AAC, OGG, M4A and WAV.

An FM radio is inbuilt, and the 8GB or 16GB internal memory can be expanded by the addition of a micro-SD card up to 32GB in size.

A final feature of note, especially in comparison to the iPod touch, is that its battery is removable and replaceable.

We'll be looking more in depth at the specific features and functions on Pocket-lint shortly, but for now, have an ogle at the pics. It's certainly looking tasty.

What do you think? Will an Android PMP/MP3 player break Apple's hold on the market? Let us know in the comments below...

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