iRiver SPINN PMP: Just As Tactile As Expected

While those of us not in the UK or Korea look on enviously, Crave UK have been busy playing with iRiver's SPINN PMP.  Though it's merely a preliminary hands-on, for the moment it sounds like everything we thought about the SPINN is true: the AMOLED display really is that crisp, colorful and lovely; the wheel controller is a good addition to the touchscreen; and yes, not having expandable memory (beyond the max 16GB installed) is frustrating.

Particular kudos goes to the sound quality, reportedly both clear and high in volume.  MP3, FLAC, WAV, WMA, APE and ASF are all listed on the box, but Crave have found that WMA Lossless is also supported. While Flash support doesn't extend to YouTube videos, it does work with games up to 1MB in size.

Battery life remains to be seen, as does just how frustrating that limited memory turns out to be.  Admittedly in offering 16GB but no microSD slot the SPINN finds itself in good company (mentioning no names, mister iPhone), but if you got into the habit of encoding your music in lossless formats it could fill up mighty quickly.

[thanks Andrew!]