ZiiLabs – the combination of 3DLabs and the digital entertainment group of Creative Technology – has entered the smartphone market. Sort of, anyway.
On Tuesday, ZiiLabs announced the Zii Trinity, what the company calls a “3.5G/4G” smartphone platform that can be licensed by other OEMs. On paper, the Trinity looks quite impressive, but without an announced partner, will it ever come to market?
The Trinity seems predicated on the same business model as the Egg (pictured to the left), an iPod-touch like device that debuted mid-year, also for licensing. To date, the company has yet to announce any customers.
What sets the ZiiLabs products apart is that they use the company’s own application processor; in this case, the older ZMS-05 processor, with two ARM9 cores onboard. That, in turn, allows 720p decoding and encoding, and a 1080p encoder for televisions.
The Trinity also serves as a dual-boot phone, capable of running either an “optimized” Android OS or ZiiLabs’ native Linux-based Plaszma OS.
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