Ever since Apple released their G3 “Phatty” iPod Nanos, we were wondering when Chinese copycats would release a version for the underprivileged. The wait is no more, because the new Phatty Clones are here! To be honest, and even if it’s only on the outside, this time the clones actually look quite good.

Shenzhen’s YJL announces U2-C, a MP3 player equipped with a 1.8 inch color TFT screen that also does video, voice recording and FM radio. Press the buttons hard enough and it will also display eBooks (READ: .txt files), pictures and allow you to modify the screen brightness.

No worries on availability, it’s only a matter of time before Chinese eBay sellers will stock 1GB versions of this player and sell them as 8GB. Happy bidding!

[Via Alibaba]

Meizu CEO Jack Wong today posted pictures, supposedly finalized, of the Meizu M8 Mini One GUI. Somehow it looks awfully familiar.

[Via Meizu Me]

The tale of a mini-PMP that wanted to lose weight…

French memory giant Dane-Elec, Meizu’s official european vendor, will pretty soon stop distributing the Meizu M6 in order to concentrate on the M6 SL. The now renowned M6’s younger brother should be arriving real soon, as in just a matter of weeks.
For all of you latecomers, here’s what we’re talking about : the Meizu M6 SL will bare a 2.41” QVGA LCD screen, and will be as huge as 78 x 46.5 x 7.3 mm. Real big. Almost Nano-like fat.

Soon after the M6 SL being launched, Meizu will stop producing the regular M6 to let his skinny successor take over the world.

Cost should be around $85, $105 and $145 for 2, 4 and 8GB versions. Stay tuned for more details.

Original version at Meizu Blog France

What do you get if you take the already cheaper ONDA VX858LE and reduce the price further by 100 CNY?

Easy. You get the newly announced ONDA Honey VX878. For only 399 CNY (that’s under $55 USD), you get a dwarfed down version of the VX858, featuring all the same features and specifications with three main differences; the screen, battery and GUI. The screen is now 2.4″ with 260k colors, down from 2.8″ with 1.6 million colors and although the new battery is 650mAh, down from 100mAh, it can still manage a solid 15 hours of audio playback. Finally, the GUI has been improved, and we have to say, it now looks really good.

To recap, ONDA VX878 will be a small iPhone lookalike MP3 player with a 2.4″ 260k color touchscreen supporting media formats AVI, MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, APE, TXT, LRC, JPG, BMP a FM tuner, voice recording and games. It has a built in speaker and will support microSD/Transflash memory cards of up to 4GB.

ONDA VX878 is set to hit Chinese streets early next month.

[Via ZOL Product Page]

Update: Earlier than we expected, DAPSTA has the ONDA VX878 available for $75 USD.

Several months earlier Chinese ONDA released the VX858 to their Honey line of music players, a player well received by the Chinese market. Later it was also brought to Italy by Pasen as the iTouch.

The “iPhone clone” recently saw a price drop of 100 CNY (approx. 13USD). Now labeled VX858LE (limited edition or just poor naming?), the player had its stylus, charger removed and DSP changed from a Wolfson WM8750 to a Rockchips RK2808A. Apart from the internal speakers now being a little quieter, the casual user won’t find much difference. Internal tests by The Gadget Site however also show that the touchscreen has been improved; with new and better looking finish plus more responsive controls.

ONDA VX858LE is a solid-feeling player with obvious design cues “borrowed” from Apple’s iPhone. It’s got a nice 2.8″ touchscreen featuring 1.6 million colors and supports MPEG-4 (and soon Flash Video) video at 24fps, MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC, APE, TXT, a FM tuner, voice recording and… Tetris.

The 2GB VX858LE is currently available on the Chinese market for 499 CNY, or roughly $66 USD.

RAmos is a brand relatively known in China for their digital audio players. Price wise, their products stand between the cheap Chinese clones that can be found on eBay and players from the larger manufacturers such as Meizu and Teclast. Quality wise, they also land somewhere in between.

In early February 2007, RAmos introduced a new player to their line of Q players, the Q13. At a glance, one would easily confuse the RAmos Q13 with the second generation iPod Nano as their appearances are almost identical. The Q13 is a Rockchip powered player that has a decent set of features. It plays music in MP3 and WMA, plays video in AVI, RM(VB), DAT, VOB, MPEG (conversion needed), and supports Micro SD cards with up to 2GB in storage.

Although the size, form-factor, and screen/button placements might be very similar to the 2G Nano, but the price is definitely not. Due to the nature of this player, this review will mainly compare the Q13 in regards to its differences to the 2G Nano.

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COWON is looking to release a new and juicy PMP player with WiFi, HSDPA wireless broadband connectivity, EDGE and GPRS. This is similar to Nokia’s N95 offering, without the calling and 5 MPx camera functionalities, of course. But it’s got DVR (digital video recording) functions and even a GPS with text-to-speech function with 11 million points of interests. The Q5 must be the most advanced and well-connected PMP to date with these other specs: 5-inch 800×480 pixel touchscreen, FM radio with recording capability, voice recording, and stereo speakers.

The COWON Q5 is set to be released Q2 2007 priced at $500 for the 40GB and $550 for the 60GB version. More pictures on Gizmodo.

Look what we’ve got our fat, greasy gadget lovin’ fingers on today! Two iPod Nano clones competitors, one for each generation.

The two Chinese players, RAmos q13, a cheap iPod Nano 2G inspired player and Music Card M3 by the critically acclaimed Meizu, a player that strongly reminds of the iPod Nano 1G. Are these two players mere cheap clones or do they actually put the Nano to shame? Expect a more in-depth look into these players over the next few days.

Xbox 360 vs. Playstation 3

The two new generation game consoles are now released for some time and available for purchase. Although how much different are these two consoles from each other? The PS3 promised high end technology with a sleek design offering outstanding gameplay. Although, after releasing such hype for the PS3 but taking so long to release the product, the hype has died down and Sony is now having a hard time selling the PS3’s. At the same time Xbox 360 was release quite a while before PS3 causing people to go out and buy it first and also gave developers a chance to create games for it. Now that both of them are released which one do you think is better? Continue reading »

The lucky folks over at iMP3.net have gotten their greasy hands on the Meizu Music Card before us! They have carefully photographed the unboxing and all the functions of the player. Do not miss this folks, this is gadget pr0n at its best! 13 additional photos after the break.

[iMP3 via Meizu BBS]

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