Grab your life preservers, personal flotation devices and bail out because this boat is sinking! Well, it may not be fully sinking, but let’s just say that the ZiiEgg platform has been a horrible travesty from the start. Slow firmware updates, lack of developer assistances, lockouts, no Android market support… The only benefit to the ZiiEgg is it’s hardware, which is quickly becoming less than stellar compared to newer mobile devices. My personal opinion is that they should have proceeded to work on this device using the Android OS as it’s base as it has had a much more proven track record instead of focusing on their own Plazsma OS.

But hey, I’m no professional when it comes to these things, they could have the right process and I’m just wrong. But needless to say, this has been a disappointing experience in my mind. So if anyone is looking for a nearly brand new ZiiEgg, I’ll be selling mine for $300, included are 2 chargers, at least one set of headphones, HDMI connection cable. The ZiiEgg itself is in excellent condition and shows no signs of physical wear at all. Let’s face it… It’s been sitting around for months since there hasn’t been anything really exciting to do with it for that long.

So I’m back in business with a working ZiiEgg, after RMAing it yet another time. The new features and firmware are great to see. Some of which I’ve been out of the loop on for months as I’ve been busy with life. But now I get to explore and play with new features. However I fear I will end up having to RMA again for some unknown reason. Hopefully, future firmware updates will not brick my device.

Zii Shipping

And as always, I try to keep the changelog updated with the best possible information. If anyone has anything they think should be changed, feel free to comment in this post regarding those changes.

Thank you.

Plaszma firmware version 1.00.06 was released on Feb. 24th. Some slight fix to the printf but enough to be post worthy am I right?… Right?… Hello?…

Anyway, here are the features touted with the release. I haven’t RMA’d my ZiiEgg back yet so I’ll give it a whirl. I’m a little behind on getting this thing shipped out. I guess it’s dreading not being able to use it for another 2 weeks. That or I’m just really busy.

Enhancements:

• Supports Bluetooth® 2.1 +EDR, GAP and A2DP.
• Supports composite video output. Requires accessories (sold separately).

Fixes:

• This download fixes a regression where printf’s output is not flushed to the telnet port for debug-application.

Zii Shipping

Well, for those of you that has followed ZiiNews, you’ll know that I’ve had to RMA my ZiiEgg quite a few times now for various different reasons. None of which has been from abuse, damage, or anything else. Each time has been from functionality of features completely stopping. The first ZiiEgg I had for 48 hours before having to RMA it due to the Wireless not being enabled. Another time for the display just stopping. This time will be very similar to the first time. A firmware update has flat out KILLED my communications devices on my ZiiEgg. No Wifi, No Bluetooth. So where does this leave me? Without a ZiiEgg again for a couple weeks while someone somewhere scratches their head and wonders why (if that) the device just does not want to work properly. Odds are, there will be some form of low level formatting of the device and a 30 minute reinstall of the core components and OS rendering the device useable again.

But what causes this anomaly with the device and firmware updates? I haven’t witnessed others  having this issue with the latest firmware. In fact, many have reported that their bluetooth is working great.

I’d like to think there was some reason for this event happening, but my ZiiEgg stays pretty much like a stock device. It’s rare it gets an application installed, I don’t root the devices, nor do I abuse them in any way.  So it brings up the question. Will updating the firmware to our devices from ZiiLabs official released firmware versions cause our ZiiEggs to have problems? The answer is quite possibly… Yes. So what are we to do? What about our warranty? Well, I’m saying this. Until I get some official word from ZiiLabs about the issue, I’m planning to have a fully working device by Sept. 10th, 2010 (The day my warranty runs out) with the latest firmware and NEVER installing any of the released firmware again, unless there’s some proven fix. I don’t want to be stuck with a bricked device because their released firmware killed it.

Let’s all hope that this firmware opens up a bit more of the Android features on the ZiiEgg so we can play with more features. Maybe it will fix my wifi…

Enhancements/Fixes:

• Rear camera can now be used to take still pictures and videos
• Now supports USB mass storage mode for SD card access
• Enabled GPS function
• Added support for FLAC playback
• Improved video playback performance
• OGG files are now played more optimally
• Added Aspect Ratio support in ZiiPlayer
• Added Hot-Key volume widget (press both Home and Menu buttons to activate)
• Other minor system enhancements and bug fixes

Features:

The features listed below are optimized implementations of Android 1.6 on Zii EGG.

• Wi-Fi™
• Networking
• Touchscreen interface
• OpenGL ES acceleration
• Media playback acceleration
• ZiiLABS codecs
• Integrated audio
• Accelerometer (default orientation is portrait mode)
• Power management
• HD video output
• GPS
• Rear camera support

ZiiLabs has released a new firmware this month (1.00.05), which brought about the ability to utilize Bluetooth 2.1 technology on your device. For the most part, you’re able to connect to a keyboard, or sound device such as speakers. That’s IF your update was able to enable the bluetooth at all.

In our test device, we had nearly a fully functioning ZiiEgg with the 99.04 firmware release. What wasn’t working? The SD card detection could not detect our Kingston 16GB SDHC card like the previous versions had. However, the wireless and other features worked fine. Upon installing 1.00.05, we quickly found that our Wifi had lost it’s MAC address, turning into 00:00:00:00:00:00 which is non useable, as well as would not scan for networks but rather would return a no wireless networks found error message instantly. But that’s not all! Bluetooth could not even be turned on without getting an error saying that no bluetooth device found. Of course, was our 16GB SDHC card detected once again? Absolutely not!

Foiled again!

Developers are now becoming more concerned about their warranty expiring and firmware releases like this killing features of their devices. At this time noone from ZiiLabs has commented regarding these issues.

This also means I’ll probably have to pay to ship my ZiiEgg back for yet ANOTHER RMA to get fixed and or replaced. This thing is costing me more and more everyday.

Today ZiiLabs released a new version of the firmware which enables bluetooth 2.1 support on the device! This comes as awesome news for me as I just picked up a Samsung Bluetooth Stereo headset. Other features to the release are.

Music App New Features

The “Now Playing” list will be saved when the music app quits. The list will
be restored the next time the app is run.

The app now provides different views of files from:

SD only

Internal memory only

SD & Internal memory

Video App New Features

The app now provides different views of files from:

SD only

Internal memory only

SD & Internal memory
Revision 1 (20100210)

Added a file deletion function (Note: folder deletion is not supported)

Added Video Out setting in Options to choose between HDMI and
Composite Video out

Shows appropriate background image on LCD to indicate when video
playback is routed to HDMI/TV out.

Bug Fixes
None

Desktop
The Desktop will retain the correct view and scrolling on exit from an application
when there are multiple pages of installed applications.

Audio Cell
Improved System Audio performance and robustness for WAV playback.

Note: All applications using System Audio must call SystemAudio_Open() on
application startup and call SystemAudio_Close() before the application exits.

Locator
This release resolves a problem where the Locator would hang when a connection
to the locator is maintained when the system goes into suspend and then
resumes again.

ZiiLife has opened it’s doors to more users to test their services. Check your email and give it a whirl!

If you can’t develop for the ZiiEgg and you’re an upset developer, you can come up with some pretty creative ways to put your $399 device to use.

1. A Paperweight
2. A chew toy for the dog

And last but not least, a gutting project as developer Justin Richards chose to do.

Quoted from his flickr profile with the dismantling of his ZiiEgg, you’ll see this.

Well, After it sitting in my drawer for over a month now with no decent firmware update, I decided to take apart a $400 paperweight and see what makes it tick… Now it’s even more useless as I managed to accidentally crack the digitizer glass, so it no longer registers finger taps…

Oh Well :/

If you want to see the full set, here’s the link for that.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41915467@N00/sets/72157623285898310/

We hope that this won’t be a trend with these devices as that just means that there are some more unhappy developers out there, but at least we get some great internal shots of the device where we can break down chip for chip what’s inside of it.

Thanks Justin.