"SDXC support: I’m guessing SDXC was left off owing to lack of SDXC support on the commonly available SOC’s. This is a real shame considering that SDHC maxes out at 32Gigs and cards of these size are already on sale.
Removeable battery: Still no easy way to replace the battery. When the battery goes, so does the player. More land fill. Its about time Governments legislated to force manufacturers to take steps to stop wasting our precious limited resources. Our children’s children might like to use MP3 players too." I
I have been proposing for quite some time that Sandisk make a player with a full sized SDXC card slot. One reason they don’t want to do this is that it seems that they are commited to a micro sized card slot for their players. Some time next year we might see 64 GB micro SDXC cards. They will be very expensive though.
Another reason is that a player probably needs to keep the song database in ram to be very responsive, and since many people still use 128 kbps songs averaging around 4 minutes each, a player that could hold up to 96 GB or flash memory(32 internal plus 64 on a card) would need to be able to have a database that holds up to 24,000 songs. The database on the Fuze+ hold up to only 10K songs. While many people do use higher bitrates than 128 kbps, 128 kbps is still a somewhat of a standard(at the lower end). Of course there will be some who want to cram 48,000 songs in 96 GB using 64 kbps.
As for having an easily swappable battery, I have been a long time proponent of that.
Having an easily swappable battery is more about being able to carry spare batteries and never run out of power than it is about replacing a battery just when it is worn out and doesn’t hold much of a charge.
Imo the Fuze+ would have been even better as a video player if the screen was at least 3.3", and battery life was at least 10-15 hours for video. I guess Sandisk wanted to keep the price and size small enough so that many not interested in video would still buy it. Imo this was a bad idea though. Instead of the Fuze+, a player midway in size between the Clip+ and Fuze with 40+ hour battery life that is audio only, and a second player with at least a 3.3" screen should have been made.
Now that the Fuze+ is already out, there is one thing that imo could improve usability for many. Have a firmware update that allows a few basic functions via the three tactile buttons while the touch controls are locked. Imo the most important one would be play/pause. Perhaps this could accesible through a quick press of the power button, (or perhaps a long press of the volume up button?) while the touch controls are locked? If someone is walking around listening to podcasts or audiobooks while the player is in a shirt pocket and touch controls are locked, they need some way to quickly and easily pause or restart the player without having to take it out of the pocket, and unlock it.
