Monday, June 4, 2007
SanDisk Delays Sansa View Until 2008, I Cry Out in Anguish
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 05:46 PM
It's no secret that I've been really looking forward to SanDisk's Sansa View Pocket Player: a big-screened, thin, light, flash memory-based media player that looked perfect for taking with me on trips. I interviewed one of the product managers, and have been holding my breath waiting for this thing to come out. The hands-on pictures looked good, even if the non-final UI didn't, and it seemed like this was going to be a solid product. Alas, SanDisk put the brakes on it.
The official word from their PR person: "...late last week it was official that the Sansa View is being re-scoped. This means it will come to market sometime in 2008. Reasoning here is that since we originally scoped the product, the market has evolved very quickly - there are now many news things you can do in the PMP space. So rather than bring the wrong product to market we're going back to the drawing boards to re-create a product that meets today's market."
Damn. I really wanted this thing as it was. For me, I only needed something slender, decent battery life, decent screen, and good codec support. Sure, it would be cool it had other features, but as a v1 product I think the Sansa View was ready to rumble. I think SanDisk made the wrong call here: they should have put it out in the market, learned what users wanted moving forward. At any rate, it looks like we'll be waiting a while longer, and I have no good mobile video player. Maybe by the end of this year the Zune will have some decent codec support and I'll have a workable solution...
