Creative unveils touchscreen Zii Egg player
updated 10:10 am EDT, Tue July 28, 2009
Creative Zii Egg
Arriving late to touchscreen players, Creative today unveiled the Zii Egg. The device is in its stock form a competitor to the iPod touch with a 3.5-inch 480x320 multi-touch display that supports music, photo and video playback as well as web browsing. Creative however sees the device as a development platform. The built-in Plaszma operating system is Linux-based and therefore open-source, letting companies or end users add software, change features or even replace the OS; the device is ready to use Google's Android almost out of the box.
It also promises certain technical edges over the iPod through a graphics processor that can not only render 42 million pixels per second but output video at 720p or 1080p through HDMI. The general-purpose design gives it not only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi but both an HD-capable outward camera for taking photos and a front VGA camera for self-portraits or video conferencing. A GPS receiver is built-in for location-based apps even when the Zii Egg is beyond Wi-Fi, and Creative's X-Fi audio processing is standard.
Unusually for most of its players, Creative hasn't specified plans to ship the Zii Egg as its own, pre-packaged device. It should cost as little as $199 US, however, and the company is inviting other firms to treat it as a blank slate which could have no built-in storage whatsoever or as much as 32GB of internal memory plus SDHC cards of similar size.
Zii Egg
07/28, 11:40am reply
It's like they tried to come up with a way to combine the product names of the Wii and the iPod.
njfuzzy
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Apr 2001
nice
07/28, 11:43am (1 reply) reply
It's great to see more general-purpose pocket computing devices come out like this, particularly one that's completely open to modification by the user and owner. This is the direction Apple needs to be going if they don't want to be outmaneuvered by competitors. Even if Apple never lets you wipe your iTouch and install Linux on it, at least have a portion of the filesystem the user can modify, and allow them to install any software they want.
WiseWeasel
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Joined: Apr 1999
Interesting product
07/28, 12:47pm reply
With all those bells and whistles, 199 seems like a bargain. The devil is in the details, of course. Will it be iPod Touch intuitive?
I expect to see more of these type devices come to market quickly. Some with cellular built-in.
Rezzz
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Joined: Jan 2006
the casing
07/28, 12:54pm reply
What's interesting is the body casing...the slit on the left side (speaker?) makes it look like those spied iPhone 3GS casings that were speculated before its launch.
Perhaps those spy shots were actually of this product? LOL.
snork
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Joined: Feb 2008
flash support
07/28, 01:01pm reply
if this provides full flash support then I would be interested. My iPod touch lacks this support and therefore I am unable to use many websites unless I pull out my laptop.
lamewing
Forum Regular
Joined: Aug 2004
re: flash support
07/28, 01:13pm reply
iPhone is not ready for Flash yet. Most of the Flash sites today are processor intensive. I have a G3 at home that run 1.25GHz can't render Flash fast enough..... I mean it's very sloooooooooooooow. iPhone's processor is still below 1GHz.
coffeetime
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2006
Zii Egg naming
07/28, 01:22pm reply
They need to hire a marketing person to come up with a cooler name. How about Zii Tofu.... anyone?
coffeetime
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Joined: Nov 2006
glossy
07/28, 05:45pm reply
I love it when companies add the exact same fake glossy effects to every product shot!!
c4rlob
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Joined: May 2009