Parrot Android-packing designer photo frame announced

Grande Specchio debuts 17 November

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11 November 2009 15:46 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Parrot has followed up on last year's launch of the designer Parrot Specchio by contemporary French artist Martin Szekely with an even bigger version called, you guessed it, the Grande Specchio.

Packing Google's Android operating system, the 10.4-inch, 26 x 26cm photo frame, like the original, doubles as a mirror when not it use and can be rested on a surface or hung on the wall.

Costing $650 dollars when it goes on sale next week (it will also be hitting the UK although no price confirmed yet), the frame will come with not only the ability to view your favourite images, but stream content from Flickr, and browse the Web with its built in web browser.

Taking the idea of what photos you display on the frame one step further, Parrot is opting to let you embrace the generic photo frame picture to the max by selecting a "People" mode that will automatically search the Internet for a "never-ending slide show of faces of the world". Those not fussed with random people can opt instead for "Holidays", whereby you choose a place on Google Maps and it will then grab a selection of images associated to that place (Slough anyone?).

Beyond photos the frame will come with an email address so you can send it photos to display, Picasa and Flickr support, the ability to stream RSS feeds and Windows Live FrameIT and FrameChannel feeds to the digital photo frame.

A spokesman for the company has confirmed to Pocket-lint that it will be developing further apps for the frame, although doesn't expect popularity to be massive as there is no easy way to get them installed on the hardware.

Connectivity comes in the guise of USB, SD, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, meaning you shouldn't have any problems getting your images on the device's 200MB memory.

Expect an official announcement on 17 November.