At its heart, the Zen Touch 2 is a PMP, capable of playing both music and video, which should be reasonably easy on the eye thanks to its 3.2″ touchscreen.

But when you look more closely at the features of the Zen Touch 2, you start to wonder why it’s a PMP and not a mobile phone.

Let me explain…

Features of the Creative Zen Touch 2

The Creative Zen Touch 2 comes with the following features:

• 3.2″ touchscreen
• 2 megapixel camera
• Bluetooth
• Wi-Fi
• Web browser
• GPS
• Compass
• Accelerometer
• FM Radio
• composite video-out
• microSD slot
• 8GB – 16GB of internal storage
• Android 2.1 (soon to be upgraded to 2.2)

Does that sound like a PMP player to you or a mobile phone?!

The fact that the Zen Touch 2 uses Android is the reason why it’s so overloaded with features. Out of the box, Android comes with a Web browser and supports all the other hardware features of the Zen Touch 2, such as GPS, compass, etc/, so once Creative had decided to use Android, it took very little work to include all the other btis and bobs.

Great features, or overkill?

But as an overall user experience, I can’t help but feel that it’s overkill. I already have all of those features on my mobile phone. The camera, in particular, is unlikely to be of much use, as it’s only 2 megapixels. Equally, I’m not sure I’d ever GPS from my PMP player when I have it on my phone (and maybe Creative thought of this, too, as you can buy a cheaper version of the Zen Touch 2 without GPS).

Even more bizarre is the fact that you can’t use Google Maps (which the Android-based Zen Touch 2 comes with) without a data connection, but because it’s not a phone, that data connection will only come from Wi-Fi. So unless you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot such as coffee shop, the only time you can use GPS is when you’re home or at work!!

It’s not cheap, either. There’s an 8GB version without GPS for £149.99, an 8GB version with GPS for £159.99, and a 16GB version without GPS, also for £159.99.

Those prices are very similar to a low-end Android mobile phone, which provides all of the same features, but also throws in the ability to make phone calls. Indeed, you can buy the HTC Wildfire for just £6.67 a month, and that comes wirth a 5 megapixel camera and HTC’s glorious Sense user interface.

So, although at fglance the Zen Touch 2 seems like a super-featured PMP, in reality the features aren’t needed and all they do is increase the price to make it less competitive than a more feature-rich mobile phone. Sure, the sound quality will be better than the phone’s but if all you want is good sound quality, it’s proably better to buy a good quality MP3 player with limited features and leave all the whizzy stuff to your phone.

[Source: Pocket Lint]

The new Creative ZEN Mozaic portable media player for video, music and photos has just been released. Its design is based on the awe inspiring mosaic art of ancient Greece, but somehow Creative has missed the point. The new ZEN Mozaic, with its 1.8-inch LCD colour screen, weighs only 43g but comes in 79.5mm x 40mm x 12.8mm of ugly. Whether the strange mosaic keypad comes in alarming pink, boring grey or simple black, as you might be able to tell, it doesn’t push any of my buttons.

The new Creative ZEN Mozaic will last for 32 hours of audio playback and supports the usual contenders for audio formats: MP3, WMA, and WMA-DRM 10. There is nothing really about this portable media player which makes it stand out from the crowd apart from its looks. The ZEN Mozaic is billed to be for those who have a sense of fashion and individual style, so it would appear like many fashion models this little ZEN is relying on its looks to get by in the world.

If you do have a sense of fashion and want a device which will match your pink handbag with the little dog in it you can pick up the 2GB model for S$99 or the 4GB model for S$129. Although there will 8GB and 16GB models available later I would save my money and buy a Creative ZEN X-Fi instead.

Creative ZEN Mozaic will be available in Singapore in August; there are no release dates for other places yet.

[Source: Creative Press Release, Creative Product Page]

Nothing But Creative managed to get their hands on a test unit of the Creative Zen X-Fi. They have put together a very nice review, which is well worth a read. I will not spoil anything but the Zen X-Fi looks very nice!

[Source: Nothing But Creative]

I can’t wait to try out the Creative ZEN X-Fi, a series of portable media players with all the usual features but it is the built in Wi-Fi and sound manipulation features which have sparked the biggest interest. The Wi-fi in particular will open up the way into the future of potable media player. Read on to find out more.

X-Fi settings

OK, so I am slightly geeky, but I like the idea of being able to change sound in such a way that it appears to be coming from different locations, that’s why the X-Fi Expand particularly appeals to me. But I am not completely ignoring the other X-Fi setting, the X-Fi Crystalizer.

Starting with X-Fi Expand, this makes the sound seem to move away from your ears so it is no longer coming from the headphones but is in fact coming from in front of you. The official line is “X-Fi Expand gives audio a realistic and natural feel”, but it just sounds like a gimmick to me, a very neat gimmick that I like, but not sure how much it will be used after the novelty dies away. X-Fi Crystalizer on the other hand appears to be slightly more useful. Depending on the compression methods used details in the audio files can be lost, X-Fi Crystalizer tries to combat this by “intelligently” restoring those details, it claims to deliver sound closer to the original quality.

Creative Centrale

Now this is a nice piece of software and is tied in with an online application called Public Home Server. Creative Central will enable you to handle all your multi media, so your music, movies and photos, then you can publish them to Public Home Server that will give you remote access to your media files from any where you can get a connection! This is definitly the trend at the moment, access your media where ever and when ever you like, if you get the right software it won’t even limit you on what device you use to access that media. It is becoming less and less a matter of how big is your hard drive in your device but how fast is your contection to your home PC.

No release date or price or anything particularly useful right now. That would be expecting far too much.

[Source: episenter]