Jason Dunn
10-02-2007, 06:20 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.zunescene.com/forums/index.php?topic=21030.0' target='_blank'>http://www.zunescene.com/forums/index.php?topic=21030.0</a><br /><br /></div>Over in the <a href="http://www.zunescene.com" target="_blank">Zune Scene</a> forums, the "Zune Spy" that works at a big-box retail store has <a href="http://www.zunescene.com/forums/index.php?topic=21030.0" target="_blank">posted a higher resolution image</a> of the forthcoming Zunes.<br /><br /><img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/zt/auto/1191344677.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br />Here's the <a href="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/zt/2007/zune-v2-bigphoto.jpg">high-res version of that same photo</a> if the Zune Scene forums are sluggish (seems the interest level is quite high). It seems like the more secret something is, the worse the photo ends up being. Zooming in a little on the bigger photo, here's my analysis of what we're seeing so far:<br /><ul> <li>The hard drive-based unit on the far right looks a fair bit thinner than the v1 Zune. It's hard to say for sure of course without having a side-angle view, and maybe these are just cardboard mock-ups that don't map to the same physical dimensions as the real thing, but if you look at the angle of the edge, it looks iPod-esque thin. Wouldn't that be great if the Zune wasn't as chunky?</li> <li>I've seen some people say that there's only going to be one colour for the hard-drive based player: that's possible, although it would be unfortunate for the Zune team to make so many cool colours and designs for the v1 Zune and have it all go away for just a single black Zune. If there has to be one colour, black is the best choice. I find it hard to believe, however, that the Flash-based Zunes are going to be only sold as either pink of brown. That would be...horrible. I'm not one of those brown-bashers, I think it looks quite good, but I didn't buy the brown Zune for myself, so if the only choices are brown and pink, that would be a very bad thing. I can't believe the Zune team wouldn't also have a black and/or white option in there as well.</li> <li>The "squircle" looks decent - hopefully it's not awkward to use.</li> <li>The buttons looks like they're some sort of soft-touch implementation - not quite touch-sensitive buttons, but not quite the manual clicker buttons.</li></ul>It seems like the launch is very close, so stay tuned!<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE:</strong> Kostas Tzounopoulos from <a href="http://www.zune-online.com/" target="_blank">Zune-Online</a> was kind enough (thanks man!) to drop us an email with a <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/83015218@N00/1470323028/in/set-72157602232270849/" target="_blank">link to his Flickr gallery</a> with the really-for-real high resolution (5 megapixel) images. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1470323028&size=o&context=set-72157602232270849" target="_blank">Check out this high-res image</a> to see the mock-ups in all their mock-glory. There's nothing like <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1470310118&size=o&context=set-72157602232270849" target="_blank">5 megapixels worth of blurred pink Zune</a>!