



shipping in a month

The device was a pre-production model, and Steve had to boot it up -- which can be seen in the shots below.

Hardware was surprisingly thin.

There's what appears to be a solitary hard button below the screen.

Interface was basically the same Zune UI with touch navigation, but very colorful and pretty snappy.

The OLED screen looked great.

We'll obviously be badgering Microsoft in the coming months for a longer, closer look at the device, but at least it's not just a render anymore.

That's right kids -- Ballmer himself whipped out the newly minted Zune HD for us during D7 and showed off a few of its finer features... including its ability to play a Pixar movie on its gorgeous OLED screen. Also of note, Steve off-handedly mentioned that the device would be, though we can't confirm that that's accurate. Anyhow, these pictures say far more than a thousand words, so just hit the gallery.Microsoft just pinged to let us know that the Zune HD is still set for a Fall release, not next month.A few quick impressions we took away: