I can't really upload pics and don't have any other models to compare to, so can't say much about the firmware sorry
Hard to describe without pictures.
Anyway, since I'm bored I think I'll go ahead and post some thoughts here, maybe like a mini-review.
* As I suspected the 99 song per folder limit in the book is wrong, I loaded a whole bunch of music in there and it still works. The random feature is still a bit annoying but with more music listed it is less noticeable.
* The movie playing works better than I'd expected, but so far I only got a couple of pre-converted movies from a spanish site just to check movie/sound quality. I didn't plan to use it for this anyway, it's just a nice bonus.
* The text reading feature is pretty much completely useless. The player seems to have a default 8 seconds of no activity -> black screen setting. This is turned off for movies, but for some reason not text! So if you are reading and it takes you more than 8 seconds to read the screen, it will go black and you need to hit a button. Very annoying. Also, words do not wrap, they cut off in the middle. I don't mind this so much, but some people might. Of course, this slows you down, leading to - a black screen! Woohoo.
* Radio works fine for me, though seeking stations is a hassle - why can't it let us just input the numbers instead of slooooooowly going up/down the list? Once you add your favourites to memory though it's all good.
* The charger they gave me doesn't seem to work, so I just USB charge it. If I'm ever stuck in a hotel wanting music, this might annoy me so I'll probably look for a solution.
* The book lied about games. They promised more but all they gave me is a Tetris clone boo. Not an issue though as I wouldn't use them anyway, but thought I'd mention it.
* Didn't try voice record/playback yet, might be good for spying on people but probably not from my pocket.