Cowon's stealing a march on the imminent IFA show by teasing with some info on its new S9 PMP ahead of time: and you know, it's an attractive beastie. The S9 Curve looks to take its name quite literally, having sleek metallic-looking curved edges, and possibly even a curved rear-end if that photo's anything to go by. Inside the case we know there's a 3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen, capable of 16 million colours, a powerful-seeming 500 MHz CPU, T-DMB, Bluetooth connectivity, media player functions and an electronic dictionary app. It'll also run for 40 hours from just one charge, and has an accelerometer. But there's no info on price or release dates or its storage capacity, as yet. It just looks fab. [PMPToday]

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Archos just revealed what that curtain tease was all about: the 6th Gen Archos 5, 5G and 7 series PMPs. The 4.8" flagship 5G ditches the tired interface and buttons of the Gen-5 device for a slick UI and touchscreen-only operation. It's got Wi-Fi, HD video support, web browsing, email, a huge HDD (up to 250GB), and built-in HSPDA 3G connectivity. It's also got dock connectors, GPS, DVR, video/audio recording and more. In short, it's everything that the iPod touch isn't, and I got to touch it.

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Sony's latest range of NW-E MP3 players appeared on the company's New Zealand site today in a range of colours. The line features the NWZ-E435, NWZ-E436 and NWZ-E438, which will come in 2GB, 4GB and 8GB, respectively. All models include a 2" QVGA TFT LCD display, FM tuner, and support MP3 (obviously), WMA, AAC, and linear PCM codec support. No pricing just yet, but they're rumoured to be hitting the channel within the next month or so. [Sony Insider]

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Archos used to (and to some extent still does) represent the biggest, baddest personal media players on the block. I mean, they weren't just PMPs. They were DVRs, too, and featured massive screens. In a way, Archos never let us down. We just realised that if we were carrying around that much extra gear, it needed to do more than be another device to watch a movie on (even with add-ons like GPS). In any case, we're pretty intrigued over this new banner on Archos' site with the simple tease "Coming up soon..." If we're reading the hint correctly, we can expect a new product any day now. And we're looking forward to it. [archos via DAPreview]

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The second version of the Slacker portable personalised radio player has appeared on the FCC site. Called the Slacker G2, it can store 4GB of music, and has 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, and FM receiver capabilities. You can check its back after the jump.

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Toshiba has announced it's beefing-up its line of NAND flash storage chips to 32GB sizes. The new package combines eight 4GB 43-nanometer chips into one—double the previous generation's capacity—and is specifically aimed at the portable device market. Since it can be dropped into existing slots, manufacturers have to make no specific changes to accommodate the new chips. Toshiba, of course, doesn't name its clients, but suffice it to say Apple is on the list. The new chips will be available as samples in September, with bulk production starting soon after. [Electronista]

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The guys over at Crave UK got their hands on the new iRiver Spinn PMP, and although they have not conducted a full review yet, their initial impressions were positive. They love the 3.2-inch AMOLED screen saying that "Images are stunning; videos are smooth and sharp." They also found the sound quality to be superb and the menus to be effective--although it may be a little too touch sensitive and the scroll wheel can be awkward at times. As far as PMPs go, the Spinn is pretty feature rich (and it is pretty damn good looking to boot). Let's hope that the love-in continues when the final verdict is handed down . [Crave]

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Screw the Journey-themed PMP, this custom Zvue player has real music aboard: from Mr Presley himself. Ten video clips to be precise, and Elvis's signature and photo engraved on the back shell. Part of Zvue's Premier Artists Series, it's got 1GB (expandable to 5GB with microSD,) a 2.4-inch colour TFT screen, FM tuner, voice recorder and will cost about US$50 when it's out August 12th in Wal-mart. Uh huh huh. [TFTS]

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Sony's PMX-M80 is a cute white touchscreen PMP that stuffs some impressive specs in a 4.3-inch frame, a decent size for watching video without killing your eyes. The player has 16GB onboard memory, expandable via Memory Stick, a microphone, Google Maps-like browser with points of interest and your basic (MP4/AVI/WMA/MP3/AAC) codec support. Sadly, you won't see the PMX-M80 stateside: It's China-only and a little pricey at US$330 (2,260 yuan). [Akihabara News]

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Cowon's upcoming P5 will improve on their A3 and Q5W portable media players (which we've both reviewed) with the addition of a haptics touch-feedback feature. The rest is fairly similar: a 800x480 screen, FM radio, stereo Bluetooth, TV-out, stereo speakers, USB, extreme codec support and 40GB-80GB sizes. There will still be Wi-Fi, but you'll have to get it tacked on after the fact with a dongle. The Korean price is US$430ish by the end of the month. No US info yet as far as we know. Maybe we can trade them an early sneak peek at Starcraft 3 for this? [Cowon via CNET]