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My perfect player would be a sansa clip + with the following changes:
Built in amplifier
Larger battery (2 - 4x capacity)
Metal case
16-32gb onboard storage, with two microsd card slots
Rockbox compatibility

Obviously it'd be about 3-4 times the size of a sansa clip +, but that's alright. Screen wouldn't need to be anything more impressive than a one or two colour oled text display.

I think adding a amp chip on any mp3 player is a must, i just wouldn't consider making one without a amp chip.

Nice ideas you have. I'm more of a MP4 guy myself, but sometimes when I have new music or an audio book, I've wanted to have an portable music player with really good sound quality. I really like the larger battery idea. When I buy phones, I usually by a larger extended batter of the net. I would take a look at a music player w/ a big 3500 mAh battery if any company actually would take a chance. However, there would always be the one's giving it bad reviews for being too big or too heavy. Sigh....

I like your idea of double microSD card slots too. There may not be a market for it, bit I'm in a unique situation where I have multiple electronics devices that I've bought over the years and could actually use that feature. So have a half dozen microSD cards floating around that I keep different types of files on. I am constantly ripping movies to watch on my commute, so try to keep them on a separate card since all that copy and delete is wearing my card out. So I could use one slot for the card that I'm regularly taking out and plugging into my computer and leaving the other slot for more permanent files like audiobooks from Audible.

I don't know how many people would want two card slots in their music player. Design wise, they could have both slots accessible from the outside of the player, just labeled something like A or B. Another idea may be to have one slot underneath the battery or battery door like a smartphone and the other on the outside of the player.

One problem may be how long it takes the music player to update with 16-32gb internal memory and two card slots. I've had some MP3 players that took a long time to turn on because it would update the media library every time. If you have two 16gb cards, I wonder what the boot time would be on a portable device like this.

I'm a major fan of separation of concerns; I want a device specifically designed to do one task as well as possible. Portable video: tablet. Portable books: kindle. Portable music: sansa clip+. Et cetera :P

The rockbox compatibility in my list of requirements would help with boot times. There's one initial database build the first time you run the software, and after that new files are added incrementally. My clip+ with rockbox and ~40gb of music goes from off to playing in about 2 seconds. Can't imagine doubling or tripling the data would do too much harm.

Design wise, I think two microsd slots mightn't be too bad. One could be internal like you say. But I think with a nice functional industrial design, the two slots could even be a bonus appearance-wise.

Oh, another thing - it'd be unscrewable. No glued together parts, awkward proprietary screw heads, breakable clips, nothing.

why not a single device that can do all task as best as possible? i think this is the future.

and when tft and ips will be replaced by oled the current req will be much lower and we can have tablets that can run for days.

After 2012 the battery technology will jump as well, maybe we'll have magnetic battery or something similar. Imagine a battery powered by some neodymium magnets and then somehow the permanent magnetic field to be converted into electric current using some coils etc.

Currently there is a company that sells Tritium battery, a battery that last for 20 years, but it is only for military use.

City Labs issued a press release in December 2010 saying that the company was awarded a million-dollar Air Force Research Labs
[AFRL] contract for the 20-year lifespan NanoTritium batteries for microelectronics .Since the NanoTritium
batteries are radioisotope powered, you can’t just go buy them at the corner market.

These batteries are currently used for low current microelectronics. So i would say that the future is bright.

Honestly there are times when you just need a device that does one function perfectly instead a all in one device that has features that you don't need (and in some cases you don't want). For example, if all you want it to listen to music or audio books, you don't need a 5" color screen that will just drain your battery faster. This is why I like the Sansa Clip+. The Clip+ is cheap and so small that it's easy to carry alongside a smartphone that you'd use for calling and web browsing.

The market has a lot of PMP devices that have good audio, but there are fewer available that offer the best sound quaility and features specifically for audio, (like gapless play, easy playlist implementation, Audible compatibility, etc.)

If there was a good audio player at a reasonable price point like the one that tpd is talking about, I'd buy it just to play my music and Audible audiobooks.

I've been reading about battery tech leaps for 10 years or more, and nothing seems to come of it. It's inevitable that the technology will progress but at the minute it's pointless planning around it. As is, we could make something ipod (classic) sized, with a low power text display and an amp, which could play music for 48+ hours continuously. That's as realistic a guess as I can make though, based on experience with amps and mp3 players.

The future definitely does lie in one device which can do everything. It's not what I'd choose though, and certainly not what I'd choose currently.

I've attached a rough sketch of the idea. For scale, imagine a clip+'s long side being the same length as this things short side.

Black aluminium body, mono colour OLED screen (white?), black buttons with backlighted icons in the same colour as the screen. Lots of battery inside :P

I wouldn't say that, maybe you haven't noticed the difference as the improvement in battery life for mobile gadgets has been gradually improving and didn't change over night. I remember back in 2000 my Yepp mp3 player that could hold less that 40 mp3 files would last less that 6 hours and it would take almost an entire day to recharge fully. Now anything remotely similar will last you 40+ hours and only takes 1 - 2 hours to fully recharge. This improvement isn't just due to better battery tech but also improved performance of hardware and the ability to consume less power.

We might not see anytime in the future a consumer device which is battery operated that will last a year on one charge but you're already seeing devices that only need to be recharged once every few days even when they are used on a regular basis. Compared to 10 years ago this is a big improvement and compared to what it was in the 90's (remember how many batteries the first gameboy needed and how not so long they lasted) theres been a huge leap.

Yeah, I've noticed small improvements to battery life over the last couple of years. I also like the way newer devices can charge up quickly. I was used to having to plug in my MP4 to charge overnight. But I've noticed some of my newer Android phones can charge up in a couple of hours now. I like a battery that can hold a charge when it's in standby for days also.