Onda VX878 Portable Media Player: Throwback Review (2008)
In the late 2000s, the market was saturated with portable media players from hundreds of different vendors, ranging from unbranded iPhone clones to high-quality Windows Mobile devices. The Onda VX878 occupied the "middle class" of that equation by offering 2GB of storage, a 2.4" QVGA touchscreen, and YouTube video playback capabilities, all for a cost of around $85 ($110 today, adjusted for inflation).
In 2008, I finally got around to filming a short review of the device, but it was never published... until now. Instead of just playing the raw video without context, I thought that this would represent an excellent opportunity to engage in a retrospective discussion about the market, which, while radically different today, carries a number of interesting parallels.
List of portable devices shown in the video: (in order of ownership)
IBM WorkPad C500 (rebranded Palm m500)
Nikon Coolpix S1 Camera
Onda VX878 portable media player
HP iPAQ 4150
HTC Diamond
Samsung Epic
Samsung Galaxy Note 2
Motorola Moto X Pure Edition (XT1575)
Interesting postscript: I had to completely re-render this entire video because apparently it is no longer acceptable to have even 20 seconds of "Gold on the Ceiling" playing. Sigh.