Creative Zii EGG Gets Hands-On; Company Hope To Harness Knock-Off Developers

We're indecently curious about Creative's imminent Zii EGG developer design, what with its iPhone-like looks, 10-point multitouch display and potent ZMD 05 "Plaszma" module, so it's interesting to see the first of the hands-on reports from over in Asia.  HardwareZone and CNET both stopped by the Creative offices to take a look.

The pre-release versions on hand lacked multitouch support and had only patchy Android support; in fact, Android won't be loaded onto the initial Zii EGG units, which are expected to begin shipping by the end of August 2009, with the devices instead running the company's own Plaszma OS.  Android will be released shortly after, as soon as Creative have ironed out the bugs. 

Interestingly, the company is hoping to muster some of the "Shanzhai" developers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to work with their new platform.  "Shanzhai" is the name given to the proliferation of derivative or copied devices that follow big-name product launches; however Creative believe that enthusiasm and expertise – as well as their speed of development – could be used to drive Plaszma.  For the Shanzhai developers themselves, they'd get the support of a single OEM providing the relevant hardware parts.

Whether or not that pans out remains to be seen, but we're still curious to see the commercial derivatives of the Zii EGG prototype.  Check out CNET's video here.