Creative Zii touchscreen player leaked

By Donald Bell on 08 July 2009, 10:56am

A filing with the US Federal Communications Commission, spotted by Creative fan blog epiZENter, offers some evidence that the Singaporean company has a new touchscreen portable media player in the works. Named after the system-on-a-chip processor Creative showed off at CES 2009, the Zii (and the developer-only Zii EGG, pictured right) include music and video playback capabilities, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and an HD camera on the back.

The FCC is the body that has to approve all gadgets capable of mobile communication in the US and has been fertile ground for gadget hunters. Little else about the player is revealed in the filing, but it's pretty easy to connect the dots and see Creative is playing catchup with Apple's iPod touch. Creative is no stranger to playing second fiddle to Apple, but the company has no precedent when it comes to working with developers to create mobile applications (as the developer-edition Zii EGG model suggests).

Some speculate that the Zii will run on Google's Android OS, taking advantage of an established developer community. If so, Android seems to be iPod-killer OS of choice these days, as Sony has also announced plans to use Android in future versions of its Walkman line.