Philips Cam, Muse and Ariaz mark a renaissance for the boring PMP

This is soon enough to market that it's hard to blame the iPod nano specifically for its appearance, but either way it seems that the Philips Cam is the newest member to the oh-so-small club of MP3 / camera combos. The new player is joined in its life of crime by the new Muse and Ariaz, which at last offer a higher-end aspect to Philips' long-lackluster PMP lineup. The Cam does up a 1.8-inch screen, 8GB of storage and a 2 megapixel camera for $100, but the Muse has a full 3.2-inches of touchscreen, 16GB of flash, SD expansion and HDMI out for a mere $50 more. The Ariaz finds a simpler calling, with a 2.4-inch LCD, HDMI, 8GB and an $80 tag. We'll have to play with these to see if they're worth taking home from Walmart, but we're glad to see Philips is trying to stay in the game -- we can't all be lucky enough to be Zune HD owners.

[Oflife Posted Jan 13th 2010 4:45PM]

My old (still functional) Sony Ericsson K800i does this and more. And it's 4 years old and has a 3MP Auto Focus camera with a Xenon flash, not to mention an excellent FM Radio, 3G speed web browsing and more.

[Jamma Posted Jan 13th 2010 5:03PM]

@Oflife This.

Seriously, I've had countless "smartphones" since then but that K800i was the most reliable phone I've ever had

[Wwhat Posted Jan 14th 2010 12:21AM]

I've seen the camera output on SE phones, and I certainly hope this thing is better than that, I think those phones use some sort of 4bit sensor.

[ljm Posted Jan 13th 2010 4:56PM]

Come on Paul, can't we just leave any music player gadget post void of Apple fodder?

[CtrlBurn Posted Jan 13th 2010 4:59PM]

Another post about PMPs, another post about PMPs with too little storage. One of these days I'm going to click on a post about a new PMP with more than 32GB of storage that isn't a Zune or iPod. One of these days...

[Aaronage Posted Jan 13th 2010 5:20PM]

Hey Engadget, is there an Engadget app for Android on the way?

Impressed by the iPhone app, would be great to have something for Android :)

[midnightblade Posted Jan 13th 2010 5:59PM]

It's funny how KIRF PMP's have been including a camera for ages now, but now apple has it in their nano so everyone else will rush to include a camera as well.

[croquembouche11 Posted Jan 13th 2010 6:18PM]

What a way to one-up Apple by including a higher resolution camera; 2 megapixels compared to 0.3 megapixels.

[sowhatu Posted Jan 13th 2010 6:37PM]

@croquembouche11

i think the ipod nano's camera is more than 0.3MP

or i should sure as heck hope so considering the "old" iphone 2G had a 2MP camera.
why would they put old tech in the nano??

[benjgvps Posted Jan 13th 2010 7:26PM]

@sowhatu If I recall it records 640x480 video and doesn't take photos.

[HardToBelieve Posted Jan 13th 2010 7:38PM]

I'll take the Muse with the price of the Ariaz. Kthxbye,

[ComradeZ Posted Jan 13th 2010 8:21PM]

This Amazon.uk link http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002FL4FW6 says that the Muse is available in 32Gb. On the other hand, the user comments make it clear there's no SD expansion. So is the Muse mentioned in the writeup an updated model? Is the SD expansion for real or is it just another piece of bad journalism one comes to expect with non-Apple PMP reporting?

[Wwhat Posted Jan 14th 2010 12:24AM]

They list their source, after the word 'source', and it's a chinese site reporting from their CES visit, so nobody knows for sure.