Competition...Maybe

The ipod/iphone mania never seems to subside and probably for good reason. I used the 1st Gen and 2nd Gen ipods and absolutely hated it. They were so high on fluff and so low on actual features or for that matter music quality that it was almost insulting to see tech geeks go for it! I usually try to place the geeks above the fad factor.

But seems like a lot has come off age at the ipod circle. I recently used an ipod touch which a friend got from US and also iphones which many in my office own. I was pleasantly surprised by their sound quality and the apps support on them. In my opinion, the app support alone is a HUGE factor to its continued growth. But, it still sucks w.r.t to value of money, at least in my opinion, but it is in many ways the 'only' option for folks who need a relatively complete solution.

Creative which not so long ago was doing pretty good for itself in the mp3 player market and has slipped off late has come out all guns blazing with Creative Zii Egg, their first multi touch mp3 player (and more). The SW and HW specs on this are drool material. They have mixed Andriod with the new Zii chip interface and the Plaszma reference platform to give 1080p nirvana! The rest of the feature set indicates a keenness to go over board and beat ipods out of the market. They have also priced it attractively with a purported starting price of $199, sweet! They have dual camera, one for video conferencing and one for HD recording. They have got wifi, bluetooth and some version of GPS which I didnt go into details off. They have also provided SDHC based expandability over the 32GB of internal storage and most importantly have introduced the now buzz word touch interface.

The video and the link should give you the rest of the story. Lets see how far this one goes, but on the face of it, seems like a winner...