Touchscreens are in fashion - Pure Sensia

- Pure Sensia

There have been a few new touchscreen models announced over recent weeks - with the IFA event in Berlin chosen as the launch venue.
Logitech and Revo showed off their devices there. Pure launched the Siesta Flow - but strangely seemed to hold back on the new Sensia touchscreen model - now it even has its own microsite.

The device has Internet radio, DAB and FM - and is the first model to support some of the RadioDNS protocols, in particular RadioVIS. That probably explains why the first place to have the details was Absolute Radio ... who are among the first broadcasters to support this.
This means that the radio is able to collect more information about what is being broadcast by connecting back to the Internet ... in a standard way. This could include What's On, Album artwork and potentially a click-to-buy option.

Other features of note.

• A 5.7-inch 640x480 capacitive touchscreen (that is bigger than the fore-mentioned rivals are offering)
• DAB, DAB+ (via future upgrade), FM and Internet Radio
  
• 2 15W speakers
  
• Remote control
• Headphone socket
• Stereo Out
• Alarm
• UPnP connectivity for playing media from home LAN (like the Flow models)
  
• iPod connection via extra dock
• Optional battery pack
  
• Various internet apps - including Facebook (not at launch), Twitter and the weather forecast
  
• Available in 4 different colours
• Priced around 250GBP and slated for delivery in mid-October

There is also some talk of a public API coming so that 3rd-parties can develop add-ins for it.

Absolute Radio are running a contest to win some of these up until launch day - see here for more information.

So - while the radio may have the outward design of a 1960s guess at a space-age gadget ... it does have abilities that are futuristic.

There are more good looking photos over at the Pure microsite site
What Hi-Fi has a video but it looked like a fairly slowly running UI. Probably late beta code with some time left to speed things up before release.

Pure Siesta Flow

- Pure Siesta Flow
Pure used the IFA event in Berlin to officially launch their new Siesta Flow.
Word had come out a few weeks ago through a financial analyst briefing
"There will be a range of new products announced at IFA in Germany in 3 weeks - we were able to see a few in the Pure demo room but not all - we will have a new Siesta bedside radio with I-pod docker- neat- also a Siesta Flow with internet functionality".
I've been waiting for more material to arrive - and now it has ...

So - what is it?
Basically - it is a 100GBP bedside radio with internet connectivity. Using the same internet radio database as the other Flow models - Pure Lounge.

It has DAB and FM - plus can take input from external source - and can supply power out to a USB socket (e.g. to charge your phone) ... just in case you only have one power socket by the bed!


Pocket-Lint have a good photo - so I'll link to their article until Pure do their own official site update
Pocket-Lint article

Should be available soon (this year).

Logitech finally announce Touch and Radio

- Announced for IFA

In my original posting regarding the Logitech Touch (yes - it was me that found reported the FCC report for the Touch) I suggested that the launch would be at this week's IFA in Berlin.
Looks like that is the case - as the first official info arrives on the press briefing day.



Long-time Squeezebox fan, Radish, was a beta tester and has made a video showing off the Touch device. You can see it here (Windows Media file)

Official press release
Squeezebox Touch
Squeezebox Radio

Logitech Blog

Given that most of the information that was used to make the earlier postings had come from reliable sources (e.g. FCC test reports and mistaken publishing on Logitech sites) then it was unlikely to have much new information.
Couple of things I spotted - plus a confirmation from the Slimdevices forum:

For the Touch - a cut-down SqueezeCenter (new name coming) runs on the device so that the access music from the USB disk or SD card. This includes proper searching and providing album art not just browsing by folder ... and potentially even more useful ... it can act as a server to other Squeezeboxes (not the original Slimdevices but everything from SB2 onwards).

The Touch presents the contents of the USB/SD as a network attached drive - so you can copy files to it. This is still work in progress, since the device is not expected to ship until end of November, but beta testers report it as working.


For the Radio - the battery pack and remote are indeed optional (50 USD for the pair as an "Accessory Pack") and the six buttons around the screen are presets to store favourites.

New facility to post to Facebook (presumably all devices will get this since it will be a feature of the server software rather than the device) and see friend updates (presumably on the new full screen versions only).
Plus - a Flickr-based screensaver (clearly only applicable to the new devices with regular display screens)