Cowon Q5W Portable Media Player (60GB)

Product Specifications Display: 5-inch 16.7M colors TFT LCD (800 x 480) Touch Screen Processor: AMD Alchemy AU1250 600MHz Storage: 1.8 inch 40/60GB, FAT32 file system HDD Image Formats: JPEG, BMP, PNG, RAW Video Formats: AVI(DivX, XviD),ASF, WMV, MPG, MP4, OGM Audio Formats: MP3, WMA, OGG, WAV, AC3, FLAC, APE, MPC Connectivity: USB 2.0 High-Speed Host, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 Operating System: Windows CE 5.0 Professional Features: Adobe Flash Player; FM Radio; Voice Recorder Battery: 6500mA

More Than a PMP

Our first impression of the Cowon Q5W is the large 5-inch touch screen that dominates the facade of the device, making it at once clean and minimalistic. The unsightly buttons and ports are all concealed along the outer frame of this portable media player (PMP), including some surprising options like a wireless remote control and a retractable WiFi antenna among others.

It's Windows!

On top of the embedded Windows CE 5.0 Professional that is used on the Q5W, we found Cowon's own User Interface (UI). The layout of the UI is very easy to master and navigate around, once you get the hang of the two rows of function keys located on the left and right border of the screen. With the use of Windows CE, consumers should be greeted with a familiar interface similar to that found on their PCs, substantially reducing the learning curve.

This is crucial because while this device is meant mainly to be a multimedia device, Cowon has bolstered it with other functions. For example, consumers can view and edit documents on-the-fly with the on-screen keyboard. One can also chat with friends using a voice-enabled MSN Messenger client on the Cowon.

Supported Formats and More

On the video front, the Q5W is truly in its element. The video player can handle almost all popular formats such as DivX, XviD, MPEG4, WMV and many more others. We were primarily impressed by its bright and crisp screen. Video playback was smooth and stutter-free, even while viewing a high speed scene from Top Gear.

Moving on to audio playback, consumers would be happily surprised with the extensive support, including the popular MP3, WMA, OGG and even lossless FLAC. Quality was excellent even at maximum volume with audio remaining crisp. If you are a fussy audiophile, tinkering around with the sound enhancement settings may rock your boat. The packaged earphones are not really to our preferences but it gets the job done anyhow.

While image viewing is a necessity feature on media players, the Q5W supports the RAW format which is rather rare. Consumers are able to connect their digital cameras directly to the Q5W and transfer images, eliminating the need for a PC. As an added bonus, the Q5W allows consumers to store and view the images immediately with the choice of a slideshow or thumbnail display.

To top things off, the Cowon Q5W has an impressive list of features such as an FM tuner, WiFi capability and Bluetooth connectivity options. Battery life was tested to run for a good 6 hours in video playback mode.

Conclusion

In our opinion the only deal breakers are the weight of the Cowon Q5W and its price tag. At a hefty 380 grams and its less than portable dimensions, the Q5W may not be something you want to carry for your daily commute. Meanwhile, the S$1060 price will certainly raise the bar on pricing for such a device, deterring casual users from considering it. For those who can afford to splurge, this is one of the more powerful, full featured PMPs available now.

Embedded software security provides safe execution

Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Microsoft CE-based devices are upping the ante for security software in embedded systems, according to experts presenting at next month's Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless conference.

Embedded security software has become essential to these open-system-based mobile devices, as they grapple with traditional security in addition to new concerns, such as providing a safe execution environment for third-party applications. Once handled by in-house programmers, mobile-device makers are now turning to security software companies to provide these multilevel safety nets for personal data, digital rights management and authentication tasks.

"We are increasingly signing up mobile-device makers—and flash memory devices makers, too—who, until now, did their own security software," said Gal Salomon, CEO of Discretix Inc. "Devices like Apple's iPhone, and, to a certain extent, Microsoft's CE, have redefined the whole market, since they use an open operating system where third parties can develop applications on what used to just be a telephone with a closed, real-time operating system."

At CTIA Wireless, Discretix will be displaying its secure software environment running on Texas Instrument Inc.'s OMAP application processors. Discretix claims a 32 percent market share in embedded security software, and according to Gartner-Dataquest is in second place behind Safenet Inc. Discretix—which was founded in 2000 and is backed by Rs.118.44 crore ($30 million) in venture capital from Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital—provides embedded security solutions for device makers and chipset makers, including Infineon, Motorola, NXP, Renesas Technology, SanDisk, Sony Ericsson, Spansion and TI.

The Discretix business model includes both IP licensing of security hardware acceleration blocks to chip setmakers, as well as providing embedded security software to mobile-device manufacturers on a royalty-per-unit basis.

"We prefer to sell software to device makers, but we don't always have the opportunity, because hardware-based security is always better security, especially since most devices do not have the MIPS [million instructions per second] to provide their own security, and thus require a security coprocessor," said Salomon.

Besides security software for embedded systems that must manage copy-protected content, Discretix, Safenet and others, such as Mocana Corp., are now being asked by mobile-device makers to supply safe operating environments in addition to all the bits and pieces necessary to secure that transactions can be safely handled by open-system mobile devices.

"When a new application is written for a device like the iPhone, it has to run in a secure execution environment that does not affect the phone or other applications," said Salomon. "We are now being asked to provide these secure execution environments, as well as provide the algorithms to deal with all the different sorts of multimedia content that different applications use."

As a result, security software vendors are experiencing a transition from closed RTOS to open OS, which is driving an increasing thirst in mobile device makers to include more advanced forms of security. Security software is also penetrating the flash memory device market, according to Salomon, because flash cards are now being used as authentication devices, complete with biometric fingerprint readers, which can, for instance, securely transport a person's medical records.

At the CTIA Wireless conference, the expanding role of security software in mobile devices will be discussed in a track titled: "Addressing Network Security in the Era of Open Access & Fully Functional Mobile Multimedia Devices," which will take place April 2 in the Las Vegas Convention Center.