MP3 Player

I thought MP3 players were basically a solved problem, meaning they are only improved in price, storage capacity and battery.

However, there are some design flaws with a new MP3 player I recently got. In this post I just want to collect some design ideas which I think are important.

Physical features:

• Dedicated volume button (up and down)
• On-off switch which does not easily get pushed by accident (e.g. a switch, not a button)
• A single "start / stop" button
• Navigation buttons: up / down / select (select can be the same button as "play / stop", but then there has to be a way to get out of the menu fast and easy)
• Illuminated display which is big enough to show battery, current title, playback time. No need to be able to play videos.
• Standard plug for headphones.
• Standard Smartphone USB slot (micro-b?) for charging and transferring data.
• microSD card slot which accepts at least 32GB cards.

Software features:

• When the MP3 player is shut down while playing an MP3, it should save where it was and play it from this point (or rather 5 seconds earlier) when it is turned on again.
• Playlists
  • Have a simple, open, standard format for playlists. For example M3U or better XSPF
  • Play playlist files.
  • Create a playlist from a folder.
  • Possibility to remove a song from a playlist
  • Possibility to add a song to a playlist
  • Possibility to move the position of a song in a playlist
• Act as a simple USB stick when connected to a computer. No special file system should be necessary.

It would be nice if the MP3 player supported USB 3, but I don't think that is necessary.