I just went to Best Buy yesterday after being away from all US electronics stores for nearly a month. Even though I het most of my consumer electronics information from online sources, it is always fun to actually check out the physical items. There is absolutely no substitute for handling an item by yourself.

One thing that really stood out for me was the incredible variety of tablet devices of all sizes, manufacturers, and purposes. The tablet market continues to be dominated by iPad (and will be so for a foreseeable future), but there is an increasing list of (mostly Android-based) alternatives.

Amongst the tablets was also the new generation of Android-based mp3 players by Samsung. It was always a bit puzzling to me why there are hardly any Android alternatives to iPod. This is probably due to the relatively low margines that such devices would have, but still – there ought to be a few companies that would love to take a slice of the mp3 player market share.

The Samsung’s Galaxy Player comes in two sizes: 4 inches and 5 inches. The former is closer in size to the most smartphones, while the latter almost approaches the tablet territory. In the limited time that I played with them I did not have a chance to asses how good their specs were, but they certainly seemed like fun, highly functional devices that would be a good option for someone who wants all the benefits of an android device without all the hassle of subscribing to a phone company contract. I just wish that such devices would have a cellular data option, something that most tablets already enjoy. My guess is that the phone companies would be loath to have such a device out there since it could potentially be used as a VOIP cell phone. And a VOIP cell phone would completely ruin most cell companies business model as it would make the voice contracts almost superfluous.