Yay, more product knock-offs! This time around, we see the "i-Pocket," which is clearly a phony version of the iPod mini. But instead of having a hard drive, it has...drum roll please...a memory card slot.

Now why didn't Apple think of this?

Continuing after the iPod shuffle knock-offs, this time a knock-off of the iPod mini has appeared in Akihabara. It is called the "i-Pocket," and while the color and shape are exactly the same, it has an additional 4 buttons. Furthermore, the storage is, rather than a hard drive, a memory card of some sort. We found it at "Creperie Internet Building" for the actual retail price of 13,618 yen.

Just looking at the package or manual gives you no indication of the maker, but when you follow the stories that appeared o­n the internet earlier about this sort of thing, it's almost as though this product is from Taiwan's CASA Corporation, under their ABOSS brand. The device consists of using a memory card such as a Memory Stick, SD card, or Memory Stick Duo instead of a hard drive. Supported formats, according to the manual, are "MPEG-1/2/2.5 Layer3, WMA, WMV." It also features a voice-recording function, and o­n the body, has "MENU," "A-B," "REC," and "POWER" buttons. It weighs 01.Kg.

The product lineup varies o­nly in coloring, offering silver, gold, pink, blue, green, and grey. For some reason, o­nly grey and gold were available at the time of this writing.

Translator's note: Click the image below for larger pics, since Akiba PC Hotline got their hands o­n some nice o­nes.

Inspired by:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20050625/etc_ipocket.html