I'd like to see it in the hand though... I thought the 3G iPod (my first) was fugly at first before I actually saw it in the hand. Somehow I doubt we'll be seeing any 'in-hand' pictures of the player.
I can understand it if it was a watch or something which is less prone to depreciating in terms of effective technological usefulness like a plummeting rock, but a blinged-out MP3 player makes no sense. Still, even for an MP3 player I would actually pay well over the odds for something really well designed (beyond the iPod - yes, it's perfectly possible), something that becomes a design classic.
The specs of the X-Type are certainly comparable to many of the 'Nano Clones' flooding the market for small yet ultra-cheap & nasty players. I did some digging and the display area that you see on the picture above is actually a border around the actual display, which is about half the size of what may look like the screen. So they took one of those cheap Chinese clones, maybe wrote some additional firmware and put a gold case & some diamonds on it. Ultimate laziness.
Edit: The Douglas players share the same innards as this, except they put the buttons on the side. http://mp3.yesky.com/mp3news/373/2226373.shtml You can find players like this for half the price of a Nano.
Looks like the company's out of business anyway? The domain doesn't resolve anymore although it's still registered to somewhere in Kent (UK).
I can understand it if it was a watch or something which is less prone to depreciating in terms of effective technological usefulness like a plummeting rock, but a blinged-out MP3 player makes no sense. Still, even for an MP3 player I would actually pay well over the odds for something really well designed (beyond the iPod - yes, it's perfectly possible), something that becomes a design classic.
The specs of the X-Type are certainly comparable to many of the 'Nano Clones' flooding the market for small yet ultra-cheap & nasty players. I did some digging and the display area that you see on the picture above is actually a border around the actual display, which is about half the size of what may look like the screen. So they took one of those cheap Chinese clones, maybe wrote some additional firmware and put a gold case & some diamonds on it. Ultimate laziness.
Edit: The Douglas players share the same innards as this, except they put the buttons on the side. http://mp3.yesky.com/mp3news/373/2226373.shtml You can find players like this for half the price of a Nano.
Looks like the company's out of business anyway? The domain doesn't resolve anymore although it's still registered to somewhere in Kent (UK).