Samsung's lineup of Galaxy Players have so far failed to prove itself as any threat to Apple iPod Touch. But the company just announced two new music devices to extend its Galaxy Player lineup. Galaxy Player 4.2 looks like a serious competitor to iPod Touch, while the another new music player - Galaxy Player 3.6 is a smaller version of the former.

Galaxy Player 4.2 sports a 4.2-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 480 X 800 pixels (resolution same as Galaxy S2). The device has single-core 1 GHz processor. It runs Android OS v2.3 Gingerbread. And we do not want to bet on ICS update for it because most of phones in the market are not getting it. And those that have been confirmed by manufacturers to update have not received any update yet, though ICS was released several months ago.

Galaxy Player 4.2 features a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera. There is also a secondary VGA camera in the device for video chatting. It has 8GB of internal storage with microSD card support up to 32GB. Connectivity features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v3.0, microUSB v2.0, assisted GPS and FM Radio.

Galaxy Player 3.6 is a smaller version of Player 4.2 with 3.6-inch display. It has a resolution of 320 X 480 pixels. Other specs are same as the former.

Both the players are perfect for music listening. More than 400,000 apps can be downloaded from Google Play store. Samsung Galaxy Player 3.6 is available at a price of $149. Galaxy Player 4.2, priced at $199, will hit stores on May 13. The pre-orders for Player 4.2 will start from May 4.

Last year the Korean tech giant released Galaxy Player 4.0, which remained covered behind black curtains (no advertisements/special campaigns) and Samsung didn't sell much units of it. It looks like that Galaxy Player 4.0 was just a rehearsal device in order to bake a top-notch cake that consumers could love more than iPod Touch. Galaxy Player 4.2 is being released by Samsung to take on Apple's bet. Galaxy Player 3.6, on the other hand, is aimed at entry-level users.

(reported Johnny Wills, edited by Dave Clark)