Samsung keeps 'MIDs' alive, ships Galaxy Player to U.S. in Spring

At an event in New York City today, Samsung announced its Galaxy Player portable media players will be available in the U.S. this Spring. The Android 2.2 devices come in 4" and 5" screen sizes and offer most of the same features of the high end Galaxy S smartphones or the Galaxy Tab, but lack the option for cellular connectivity.

Though Samsung has wide variety of portable media player styles this year, the Galaxy Players will fall alongside Archos' line of Android-powered "Internet tablets," in the MID (Mobile Internet Device) category; a sort of portable grey area that falls between traditional mp3 player design and the current mobile tablet/slate design trend.

While these media players are definitely designed to be portable, they also strive to be large enough to be used to browse the Web or watch videos.

In other words, larger than the iPod touch, but smaller and more pocketable than the Galaxy Tab.

Both Galaxy Players have 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, GPS, front and rear cameras (VGA/3.2M), stereo speakers, Adobe Flash 10.1 support, AllShare (DLNA) support, 8GB of onboard storage and support for microSD cards up to 32GB in size. Supported video codecs include DivX/Xvid, WMV, MPEG4, H.264; Audio codecs: MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg, Flac.

Samsung on Wednesday said they will be available "in the Spring," but did not specify the cost.