Had a rought start with my new Glacier... is it really 2GB?
My white 2GB Glacier came today, and of course, couldn't wait to check it out. I was very happy with it, as it blew away my old Nano clone in every way. Beautiful 2" screen, large enough to watch movies on, more depth of color (I think its 262k) and sharpness, and little to none of that bothersome "ghosting effect" the old CSTN screen.
ERGONOMICS:
The controls were easy to use, the battery cover not that bad (tight enough). It even had a speaker which wasn't bad, and which I found handy to test the unit without having to keep earbuds in. (The earbuds suck, though, but they look nice doing it). There is a problem with the rubber USB cover that I kept reading about... its damn hard to open, because the tab to grip it is made for people who have needles for fingers. I'm thinking that cutting the part inside the cover that goes into the usb plug might make the cover easier to open.
The menus are much nicer, the software is faster to navigate, and best of all, it remembers your place in text and movies, which the Nano clone wouldn't! And the lyric thing finally works on this unit, when it wouldn't on my Nano clone! (It comes with 2 WMA songs that have lyrics. Unfortunately, one of them is "Say You, Say Me" by Lionel Ritichie. And the other one's worse). It also plays WAV files, but only via a different menu option (VOICE - PLAY).
THAT CRAZY LITTLE RUBBER THING OVER THE USB PORT:
Note: Okay, here's the trick to that. Snip off the part inside the rubber cover that protrudes from the cover and plugs into the USB jack itself. Now when yo close the cover, not only does it stay closed and keep out dust & dirt, but it opens real easy. Scissors.... is there anything they -can't- do?
TRANSFERS:
Thing is, I needed to format it before giving UXCELL feedback, because I'd heard of people here receiving 2GB Glaciers that were 2gigabits. Well that didn't work so smoothly, and when it didn't come on after, I was sure I bricked my player! (I probably just had the slider switch set to OFF). Versions of MP3 Tools that were older than the 4.09 package wouldn't format the player AT ALL. The 4.09 version gave an error at about 13% into a LOW LEVEL format. After that, things got worse. The encryption method as described in the hacked player guide did not seem to be compatible with this player, although the slider in that tab did show about 1920MB. The windows format wouldn't work, but after numerous attempts, I finally got MP3 Tools (4.09) to do a high level format.
Then I copied 3 or 4 mp3's before it crashed.... About 21MB's worth. The player played the MP3's but rebooted at the end of the last. Now I was worried I had the world's worst hacked player, with 21MB flash! After more attempts at high level formatting, I managed to fill the player with about 1.89GB of audio / video files. The process took about 1.5hrs. Of course I wasn't sure if the files really transferred okay, so I went about playing the first couple of seconds of each track.... very tedious! I didn't test them all, but I figure that I fast forwarded through at least 1GB's worth of video and audio files.
FORMATTING:
As with my other MP4's, I find you have to high level format the player with the MP3 Player Utils first before attempting a low level format. Plus, the Glacier wouldn't low level format at all with the latest version of that software.
OVERALL CONCLUSIONS:
Let me say this: If this is REALLY 2GB, then this one of the best values on the MP4 player market now. Put in one of those 1700mAh BL-4C batteries from eBay that last 35 hours, and you're laughing at the iPod sheep-bots. The only thing I'm not sure of is how fragile it is, since its all plastic case, no metal (but for the buttons). And let me say this as well: the box clearly labels it as supporting MP3 and MP4 format, when it doesn't play MP4's!!
Receipt and first impressions of my first Glacier (2GB)
