“Creative today unveiled the Zii Egg. The device is in its stock form a competitor to the iPod touch with a 3.5-inch 480×320 multi-touch display that supports music, photo and video playback as well as web browsing,” Electronista reports.
“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,” Electronista reports.
“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,” Electronista reports. “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.”
“Creative hasn’t specified plans to ship the Zii Egg as its own, pre-packaged device. [Rather, they are] is inviting other firms to treat it as a blank slate,” Electronista reports.
Direct link via YouTube here.
Full article here.
View the press release here.
A 32GB Zii Eg along with the Zii Plaszma Starter Kit (SDK) can be had for US$399. More info here.
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t know — can’t quite place it — but, for some reason, that Zii EGG looks very familiar.
Convincing accent. I think I might buy OxyClean from him.
Wow, that is amazingly lame. This is like the Pre all over again: a cheap copy with nothing innovative or different, and only some gimmicky hardware features that make it sound better than a touch.
Like the HD out: who would use that? HD is useless on the device itself (small screen), so I would load SD video on it. Then the HD out is useless. If I load HD video on it, I’m wasting gigabytes of space for nothing! Lame.
And I love that Creative doesn’t even believe in this enough to sell it themselves: they’re just going to license it to others. Yeah, it’ll appeal to a few geeks out there, and maybe a handful of companies will produce vertical market versions for their own needs, but this will never catch on globally. And it’s twice as expensive as a touch! Ouch.
Enjoy the dumb name while you can; it’ll be forgotten in six months.
Maybe it’s because I just woke up, but this looks kinda phony, don’tcha think?
The Zii Egg (who names these things?) sounds nice in theory. It may even be nice in practice. But I am willing to be that the most recent iPod touch will more than match it whenever the Zii actually becomes available.
Many of us anticipate that the next generation iPod touch will include GPS, a camera, and the faster processor used in the iPhone 3GS.
We desire longer battery life, even if that would add a couple of mm to its thickness. We have also repeated discussed in this forum the desire for HD video out capability (DVI/HDMI). This would enable the iPod touch to plug into modern LCD projectors and HDTVs.
Apple already has the necessary distribution and software infrastructure in place (iTunes, iTunes Store, iMovie, iPhoto, etc.). But the same factors (DRM, royalty approach, etc.) that are hobbling the development of AppleTV will likely dog the concept of iPod video out.
Palm has the OS and the touch patents but shitty hardware.
Creative has the hardware, lots of Apple Dollars™ but no touch patents or OS.
I hear wedding bells already.
What the fuck is a “zii”? And what’s with the “egg” part?
It’s not even remotely egg shaped.
Wait a minute. I get it. Egg. An egg is similar to a pod. Zii. An embellishment on the letter z, a letter they pulled at random from the alphabet as a simulacrum for the “i” in iPod.
It’s Creative’s sort of funny, almost clever pun/ripoff on the name iPod. They probably wanted to name it zEgg, but then they realized people would just pronounce it Zeg. So they called it Zii Egg to force everybody to pronounce it right, but now that makes the whole pun really obtuse.
And see, that’s why uncreative people should never ever try to be creative. It just ends up being uncormfortable for everybody.
*Zii Egg*.
Good lord.
So what is the point of outputing to HDMI to HD tv, when the device does nto have the storage capacity to store even one HD movie in full HD res??
Doesn’t Apple have patents on all that stuff? Will they enforce them? Are they enforcable in the orient? What a world.
Gosh it’s ugly.
That’s the case from the supposed iPhone 3GS “Next Gen iPhone Case Revealed” articles a few months back…
I like that it has some “wow features” that missing from iTouch/iPhone.
Competition is good for everyone, and perhaps this will put a spur in Apple’s side to add more features as well.
wow, really living up to the company name there.
“Or you could buy a real iPod touch and download all the taylor made Apps you want for a few bucks extra”
Taylor-Made?
Hahaha
Garbage in, garbage out. They can build in 1080p recording capability, but a device this small can’t capture video worth viewing at such a large size.
I just love how these morons-with-a-grudge praise unreleased products to high heaven in their zeal to put down Apple products. iPod touch killer? Let’s see what it’s got!
Please don’t call it a “killer”. Who knows, it may have peaceful intentions….
Did someone just lay an Egg?
well shoot, Creative is trying to go against the iPod Touch and the Zune HD. tough luck with that.
Hardware specs are impressive and dual camera WITH SD card. Apple beware, this is what we want!
hmmmm, hd camera + video conference cam, massive storage, open gl, 1080p output, wifi, gps, and runs android, which means I dont have to worry about craptunes or paying for media. And when consumer version comes out its $199. While you guys are stoked on taking crappy pictures on your crappytouch’s, Ill be on skype and taking and watching videos in hd.
This is the beginning of the end for Apple. This will be such a superior product when it finally comes out. I can’t wait to ditch my iPod Touche for this nice thing. It has everything I wanted that is missing in the iPods. Bye Apple.
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Clone Wars
I am really surprised that some of you really think that may be competition for Apple. This is just a concept. As someone already said anyone can put together such a piece of hardware. I’ll bet Apple has prototypes already that beat the cr*p out of this thing.
How much time do you think it will take to develop an OS with a good UI? Well, you may say they will just rip it off of Palm. How much time it will take to develop a store or negotiate partnership. Than we need several Apps in the store to sweeten the deal etc.
Once we have that we need to sell a lot of this thing to make up for development costs, production, marketing, sales, commisions etc. Apple thanks to large volume has economies of scale and well established partnerships plus iTunes that took some time to develop and tens of thousands of apps.
Creative just needed some media attention, but with this thing they may get not the sort of attention they are looking for.
In other news, Apple said that they are fearful of Creative’s announcement of Zii and they are also pissed that could not come up with a shape better than what Zii had come up with… Zii just has the best production here.
Zii is by far a better product and I think every person in any age range will have to have at least 5 of them.
There is also rumor that Zii is also anti-cancer, anti-flu, anti-virus…etc.
The only thing that Zii is not is Anti-Dumb!
Hahahah.
You can tell Creative is scared shitless of Apple steamrolling the Zii Egg by the way they’re already sending out astroturfers like sc to run damage control and create phony hype.
I always find it funny how unlike other companies such as Palm, Creative, Microsoft etc., Apple doesn’t hire astroturfers and paid flaks. It’s almost like they have confidence in their products so they don’t need to inundate the media with viral marketing. Damn, imagine that!
And the products that fail horribly – Zune, Pre, and shortly the Zii Egg – are the ones backed by epic viral marketing campaigns because even the companies that make them realize they’re turkeys that can’t sell on merit.
sorry but I dig this. Android aint no joke.