By This story has been unraveling over the past few days but granted the somewhat suspicious nature of the leak, I decided to hold off until more of a story was built. Now it seems there is mounting proof that pictures of an unidentified Android MID circulating could indeed be real. Lets recap the dilly:
Last week, Pocketables posted pictures of a mystery Android MID that appeared in a forum… but they couldn’t even pinpoint what forum the pictures came from which seems pretty bizarre. The article concludes with this weird note:
The anonymous tipster who sent the pics and info to me via email says the unit is currently making its rounds on a handful of Chinese tech sites, none of which link to or name the forum they all mention as the source, so I can’t direct you to anything more concrete either.
Sounds fishy, but the pictures were certainly intriguing:
It also struck me as odd that the webpage the user chose to display on the screen for the pictures was the iPhone 3G S. Nevertheless, a few days later more pictures of the unidentified mobile object popped up on Pocketables, making the whole thing seem a bit more likely especially seeing the Android OS screen running. Nothing a little photoshop couldn’t handle though:
Still just unsourced images from an anonymous tipster, right? Song Jiang, a writer at Shanzai.com, did some digging and thinks he may have found a match to the mystery device. He unearthed a device called the Android MID-560 from a Chinese company called SMiT (translated to English) that looks a lot like the MID seen in the previously leaked images. Of course its a simple, minimalistic touch device with no buttons so ANYthing could probably qualify:
The authors of the original leaked images thinks that these are two completely different devices, noting a few subtle differences:
The rendered image looks very similar to yesterday’s unknown Android MID, though the thicker silver trim, LED near the bottom right corner, and more evenly placed screen suggest that they’re not the same device.
Either way, the SMiT MID-560 came with a rather impressive list of specs:
- 5-inch Touchscreen
- 800 x 480 pixels, TFT
- Android 1.5 OS
- USB 2.0
- GPS
- Wi-Fi
- Mobile TV (CMMB support, search, playback, record shows, program guide)
- Mobile Internet: Chrome Lite, GMail, GTalk, Push Email, RSS news, Real-time weather, etc.. (all Android Stuff)
- Audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG
- Video: H.264-WVGA, H.263-WVGA, DivX4/5-WVGA, Xvid and more
- E-Books, games, e-album, other tools
- Google Android Market
- 533MHz/667MHz Samsung ARM11 SC3640 CPU
I’m not sure how firm/soft all of these rumors are given the flip-flopping nature of what we’re hearing and the unreliability of the image sources, although SMiT certainly seems to play the role of a legit manufacturer, we won’t know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth until one of these things sees the light of day directly.
As eagle-eyed commenter Ricky points out, that last rendered picture isn’t running Android at all – you can clearly see it is the Android theme for BlackBerry devices as the BlackBerry logo sits on the pull-up app tray:
In that last picture, that’s the Android theme for Blackberry phones. There’s the BB logo on the app tray.
DAMN Ricky! Good eyes! You couldn’t be more right…
The BB logo can be accomplished as easy as hell… just a few things here and there… pfft… :P
Interesting how the specs mention divx/xvid playback.This is the best news i ve heard in a while.How is this possible though ? I thought the decoders come with the os and 1.5 doesnt support it.
Does anyone know anything about this ?
Does anyone know why the hero and the galaxy support wmv and the G1 and magic dont ?
I just cant buy a device that doesnt play my video files without conversion.My library is just too big ! This is what i ve been waiting for !
Haha yeah you can also see that the clock widget doesn’t match the time at all. That’s because BBs don’t have widgets, and the clock is only part of the wallpaper/theme. Not an actual clock at all.
I wanted to point this out at the other sites/blogs but I knew only you would listen Rob. ^^
I don’t know whether this is intentional or not, but the design is almost a complete rip of the iPod Touch. Glass screen with black edge, chrome bezel and back, similar tapered profile.
That last picture is looks pretty ridiculous, though. Almost certainly a fake.
The last 2 pictures are definitely photoshopped image of the iPhone using simple technique to stretch the phone. Screen looks like it was enlarged too. The others could be spottings of the Apple 6″ and 10″ tablet in the wild. See article: Apple to release six inch iPod/tablet at September event? http://9to5mac.com/apple-6-inch-tablet. Just my 2 cents to the rumor mill.
Hey, i am doing trading business in china and just ordered a lot of 500 pieces of the Smit 560. The thing is real and i can show off real pictures. I will get a sample in about 15 days. Is anybody interested in a reseller opportunity ? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=290398454158&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT