Hands-on with the Creative Zii Egg

John Chan | Jul 30, 2009

(Credit: John Chan/CNET Asia)

We were invited to the Creative office today to learn more about the recently announced Zii Egg. Though all its features point to it being a consumer-oriented media player like the Apple iPod touch, the difference is that Creative isn't selling it as such. While anyone can place a preorder at the Zii Web site, the Egg is clearly positioned as a product for developers to work on and create applications for Creative's new Plaszma platform. To that end, it will ship together with an SDK (software development kit).

Google Android will also be available for the Zii Egg, but according to a Creative spokesperson, this will not be preinstalled. The company is working on refining Android's performance on the device and will provide the OS as a download after the product ships. The Zii Egg preorders will be fulfilled from the second half of August. Click for more pictures and a video.

Though the company has clearly positioned the Zii Egg as an OEM product for other companies to adopt, Willie Png, vice president of Strategic Business, said there will be future Creative-branded products that will make use of the platform. He did not reveal any details, but said such a move will allow the company to showcase what the Zii platform can do in consumer products.

Because the units we handled were all prototypes, features enabled were at a bare minimum. There was no application to try out its multitouch capabilities and not everything worked perfectly in Android. What we did get to see was its HD video output. A 720p video clip was fed to an HDTV and played smoothly, as showcased in Creative's own demo video.

On the hardware side of things, the Egg looked lighter than we imagined it to be. It didn't appear to be as solidly built as an iPhone or iPod touch, but the soft-touch finish felt good in the hands. Once again, our experience was with a pre-production sample, so things may change before developers get their hands on it. Watch our hands-on video for more details.

Connectors (L to R): 3.5mm audio, proprietary 40-pin, mini-USB (Credit: Kelvin Low/CNET Asia)

A few hours ago, Ideaworks3D, the developer of an SDK called Airplay, announced its support for the Zii Plaszma platform. Developers that build games based on Airplay are able to deploy it on all supported operating systems and devices. Titles like Resident Evil: Degeneration and Metal Gear Solid Mobile made use of it and some other platforms supported included the iPhone, Symbian and Windows Mobile. This endorsement from a videogame company looks like a good first step and we'll be keeping our ears peeled for more partner announcements in the coming months.

Click for more images