also @ TechSpot: Digital game purchases: do we really "own" them?

Creative unveils Android-based iPod touch rival

By

July 28, 2009, 7:08 PM EST

A filing with the FCC last month offered some evidence that Creative had a new touch screen portable media player in the works. Named after the system-on-a-chip processor the company showed off during CES 2009, the Zii Egg has been officially unearthed today and its feature set actually shows promise.

Clearly envisioned as a competitor to the iPod touch and Zune HD, the Android-based device can reportedly output 1080p video, run 3D apps written in OpenGL ES, and supports Flash Lite. The handheld features a 3.5-inch 480x320 multi-touch display, 32GB of internal memory and a full-sized SD card slot, two cameras (an HD video camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front for video chat), Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, a GPS, X-Fi audio processing, an accelerometer, a light sensor, a speaker, and a microphone.

Interestingly, though, we may never actually see the Zii Egg released to consumers as an official Creative product. At least for now the company is looking to sell it directly to other manufacturers as an OEM product so they can re-brand the device and sell it as their own – possibly even adding 3G capabilities.

Creative is currently bundling the Zii Egg with its Plaszma development kit for $399; however the device alone will eventually be available priced as low as $199 if bought in bulk. You can find a video of the device in action after the jump.

No tags on this story

User Comments (15)

Post a comment
jtickner1
on July 28, 2009
7:49 PM
That thing looks awesome. I want one. I love Creative.

Reply | Quote

hamsteyr
on July 28, 2009
8:04 PM
hmmm.... Looks quite like an iPhone clone... What i want to know now is how well it performs... Creative's software department has always had an issue. Older Creative MP3 Players were awesome, only with 1 flaw, they crashed like no tomorrow. >_>

I own a Sandisk Sansa e200 series myself and my cousin owns the Creative X-Fi, latest gen. I gotta say that i still love my Sansa more even after comparing audio quality with the X-Fi...

Creative better had something good if they plan on prying my beloved Sansa out of my hands, as only replacement i have in mind now would be the Cowon S9...

Reply | Quote

Guest
on July 28, 2009
8:04 PM
An electronic swiss army knife of sorts.

Reply | Quote

snowchick7669
on July 28, 2009
8:09 PM
Aw go Creative

Does look rather like the Touch doesn't it?

Reply | Quote

LinkedKube
on July 28, 2009
8:20 PM
I was looking forward to the zune hd, looks like this may have to be considered.

Reply | Quote

Deathstar17
on July 28, 2009
9:58 PM
Guest said:
An electronic swiss army knife of sorts.
My thoughts exactly. It'll be amazing if it all comes together and is that cheap.

Reply | Quote

Wendig0
on July 28, 2009
10:45 PM
I wonder if the SD slot accepts SDHC cards? While this looks awesome, and I do like the dual cameras, I'm still holding out for the Nvidia Tegra.

Reply | Quote

Guest
on July 29, 2009
1:39 AM
I'm actually concerned with the performance of the device. During the demo there quite a few times where things weren't smooth, I don't know if it's the hardware or the software but this is a major problem. If it feels sluggish and unresponsive then it's gonna fail and personally I wasn't impressed at all.

Reply | Quote

red1776
on July 29, 2009
1:56 AM
I have also read that this has been released to soon and that the performance has been unresponsive

Reply | Quote

Wendig0
on July 29, 2009
4:50 AM
red1776 said:
I have also read that this has been released to soon and that the performance has been unresponsive
This isn't really a major concern as it is being released with a dev kit to begin with. Problems like this are almost always resolved by firmware updates.

Reply | Quote

Guest
on July 29, 2009
11:29 AM
I'm amazed to see "after the jump" still being used. Isn't that rather gauche?

Reply | Quote

Guest
on July 29, 2009
9:04 PM
looks better than the ipod touch, but the only difference is apple makes millions apps for itouch

Reply | Quote

Guest
on July 30, 2009
3:49 AM
based on the features list it seems that this device is able to do everything.. sd/sdhc supported great! now is only to wait for a working one from the developers

Reply | Quote

kenm
on July 30, 2009
5:03 AM
What's nice about this device is it supports two separate OS's. Creative's own Plazma OS which is what the SDK supports that Creative is selling with the unit, and supports Android so there are already a bunch of apps already available for it. The 10-point multi-touch screen also looks really interesting. The full size SDHC slot is also nice, up to 64GB available memory.

Reply | Quote

Guest
on August 24, 2009
4:45 PM
If it had an oled screen and an HD Radio Tuner, I'd get it for sure. But without those things, I don't know. I looks nice and has a few better features than the Zune HD, but I wouldn't buy one without those two things.

Reply | Quote

Browse more commented news

Post a new comment

Follow TechSpot

Feeds & More Newsletter