Hasta La Gadget!

It’s hard to know where to begin with this, but Creative has confirmed that Zii EGG handheld we saw pass through the FCC a few weeks ago, and proceeded to slap every odd marketing term the company has come up with over the past few years on it. The Zii EGG runs the new “Plaszma” platform, which has something to do with “StemCell Computing” and allows developers to simultaneously develop for Plaszma and Android. Since for now the Zii EGG is aimed at developers and OEMs, it runs fairly vanilla Android on top of Creative’s ZMS-05 chip. The hardware itself is rather impressive, with front and rear facing cameras, HD playback, 1080p video output, OpenGL ES support, X-Fi audio processing, 32GB of built-in memory and a full SD slot. Other more “run of the mill” features include WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, and a 3-axis accelerometer. The 320 x 480 screen sounds strictly ordinary, but on top is some 10-point multitouch capacitive input — Synaptics’ new ClearPad 3000 if we had to guess.

The big drawback here is the lack of cellular data, but hopefully somebody can solve that before long. The Zii EGG is a developer platform, after all, but Creative says the platform is “market-ready” for picking up by OEMs for production — hopefully they aren’t far removed from shoehorning a 3G chipset in there somewhere as well. The Zii Plaszma Starter Kit bundled with the Zii EGG can be had for $400. A video demo is after the break.

[Via DAP Review]

Continue reading Creative debuts Android-powered Zii EGG for developers and OEMs

Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Creative debuts Android-powered Zii EGG for developers and OEMs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s bakery-themed codename scheme for Android is a source of endless amusement (and hunger pangs) for bloggers, readers, and users alike, but with just a few builds actually blessed as gold, retail versions at this point, it’s not entirely clear how those codenames — Donut, Eclair, Flan, and so on — will ultimately map to version numbers. An Android team member, Romain Guy, has jumped in on the official Android Developers Google Group to say that Donut is not 2.0 — though he hasn’t specified what it actually is. Technically, Cupcake wasn’t 1.5, though 1.5 ended up being composed largely of improvements made in the Cupcake code branch, so if we had to guess, Google is simply making a similar distinction here — Donut is nothing but a line of code that’s being actively developed, and when it comes time for Android 2.0 to drop, it’ll pull much of its changelog from that line. Also interesting is Guy’s revelation that Donut doesn’t include multitouch support, despite hints from the latest repository that it’s in there. Ultimately, we won’t know what’s happening here until 1.6, 1.7, 2.0, or whatever it’s called ends up hitting devices — but for now, it looks like developers probably shouldn’t be getting their hopes up for an open and supported multitouch API just yet.

[Thanks, shootingblue]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Android team member says Donut isn’t 2.0, doesn’t have multitouch originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While speaking at Fortune’s Brainstorm: Tech event in Pasadena on Friday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse apparently got all kinds of verbal when it came to Android and his carrier. The honcho (and TV commercial star) remarked at the industry conference that he was “Glad we waited on Android,” adding “The reviews say now it’s ready for prime time. It wasn’t when it first came out.” While we knew Sprint had interest in Android phones (and potentially some forthcoming models), we hadn’t heard a peep about timeframes, and the last thing Dan had to say was that he thought Googlephones weren’t quite ready for prime-time. That’s all changed now with the appearance of Android 1.5, it seems, as Hesse stated that the carrier will ship at least one model with the OS onboard this year. We don’t want to be zany conspiracy theorists, but the timing of this seems to dovetail nicely with the very public launch of HTC’s heavily modified Hero and Sense UI… a device which has been rumored to be making its way to Sprint sometime this year. The carrier obviously has a storied history of partnering with HTC on phones, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise to see it land on Sprint (we certainly haven’t seen any other carriers pipe up). Regardless, it looks like Sprint won’t be putting all of its eggs in the Palm basket for long. It’s going to be a very interesting holiday season.

Filed under: Cellphones

Sprint’s Dan Hesse says Android coming to Sprint this year, is glad to have waited originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RadioShack has announced that it has signed an agreement with T-Mobile to sell the carrier’s phones in over 4,000 RadioShack retail outlets across the U.S. and Puerto Rico beginning later this summer.

For now, you can sign up for T-Mobile phones on RadioShack’s Web site. The new store lineups will include the T-Mobile myTouch 3G Android-powered smartphone (pictured), which is T-Mobile’s newest device and the second Android phone to hit the U.S. market.

T-Mobile said in a statement that the agreement almost doubles the number of retail partner stores selling the carrier’s handsets, and makes RadioShack T-Mobile’s largest national retail partner.

The HTC Hero has been an object of lust for some time now for gadget enthusiasts. Even from the earliest days of leaked hardware shots and blurry demo videos of its UI, smartphone fans seemed to agree that the company had finally achieved what has been missing in the world of Android. Namely, a polished and attractive device — polished enough to go head-to-head with the iPhone — that kept its open source heart. So, here we are months later with an actual, bona fide Hero in our midst. Yes the reports were true, it is a beautiful device, both inside and out (though of course opinions differ on that chin). But does being a beautiful device mean Android is about to move to a bigger stage? Is HTC’s spit-shine enough to overcome some of the hurdles that have plagued the platform? That question — and more — is answered in the text below, so read on for the full review.

Continue reading HTC Hero review

Filed under: Cellphones

HTC Hero review originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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