IT168 Review Recently we got Sharp's newest PDA product, the Zaurus SL-C700, which is indeed a fascinating machine, with enough features to compete with the current popular ordinary laptop computers, and only Sony's high-end PDA products are available on the market. The Clie NZ90 is currently the only Sony high-end PDA on the market that can compete with it. They both feature the popular flip-top design and are similar in many ways, with built-in "hard" keyboards and high-resolution color screens. But Sony's NZ90 also offers a 2-megapixel digital camera and Bluetooth support, while Sharp doesn't offer any of those add-ons, and at a similar price point, it's clear that Sharp needs to do more to improve its price/performance ratio.
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===Parts in detail====
OK, let's start with the all-important packaging. I really like the size of the box, it's a bit bigger than a normal Pocket PC box and it's quite comfortable to hold in your hand. Inside the box is very compactly placed the PDA, power supply, connecting cable, CD-ROM and a manual.
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Sharp adopted the same flip-top design as Sony, and equipped it with a "hard" keyboard with independent key input.
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However, to differentiate it from Sony, Sharp opened the screen horizontally, and the arrangement of the display was automatically adjusted depending on the position of the screen and the angle of rotation.
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When you rotate the screen, the display automatically changes orientation, so all you have to do is wait.
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Of course, the way the display looks can be adjusted from the program menu, so the user can do it whenever they want.
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I'm very pleased with the overall design of the Sharp, and all of the details seem to be just right. whereas Sony's NZ-90 looks a bit bulky to my eyes, the Sharp's form factor is very compact, and gives the impression of being a much more reliable unit. The Sharp is compact and gives a much more reliable impression.
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The machine fits comfortably in your hand, and doesn't feel unsteady when you rotate the screen. The connection between the screen and the body is very strong, so even if you're a novice, you won't damage the machine with improper force. There are also two small pictures on the side of the screen to guide the operation of the screen rotation, the careful design can be seen.
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The Sharp SL-C700 feels more like an ultra-small portable computer, and perhaps you'd like to see the familiar Windows interface on it.
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At the top of the unit is the CF card slot and external cable port
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From the From the looks of it, perhaps the difference between it and a portable computer is the missing mouse device.The SL-C700's body is made of silver plastic, which is very smooth to the touch and feels good in the hand, but sometimes feels like it can easily slip out of your hand. It's not lightweight at 225 grams, which is probably why it doesn't have a metal body, as that would make it too heavy, and lightness is a design priority for this type of handheld device.
The keyboard is indeed good, but there are still a few minor issues that make me complain twice. It is the keys are spread out over a large plastic layout and painted in different colors in the numeric key area, plus there are protrusions on the keys so that the user can type blindly, which are nice and user-friendly. However, the size of the keyboard is just too small, and although I don't consider my fingers to be too big, I still have a hard time typing and maneuvering, and I guess that's because the keyboard is designed to fit the typical Japanese hand size. It's also too soft, with almost no vertical movement when pressed, and still a far cry from the keyboards we're usually familiar with, Sony's keyboards on the new NZ-90 and TG-50 are a bit better, but still too small.
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In addition to the keyboard on the front, there's also a scroll wheel on the side of the unit and two buttons for "OK" (confirm) and "Cancel". "Cancel
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These buttons are important for this type of handheld, because when the screen is turned on and rotated, it covers the front keyboard. These three buttons can only be accessed when the screen is turned on and rotated, and they are located underneath the index finger, making them easy to press. The most important button, power, is located next to the admin button.
The machine has two expansion slots for CF and SD cards, a design that balances functionality and popularity. Wireless communication is only provided with an infrared interface, but because of the abundance of expansion slots, additional wireless functions can be realized with the corresponding expansion cards.
There are two LEDs on the body that display information about new mail arrivals and battery charging progress, respectively.
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The screen is a particularly noteworthy addition to this machine, with a resolution of 640x480 and a size of 3.7 inches. The display is fantastic, both in terms of brightness and refinement, and looks crisp and clear from any angle, thanks to Sharp's first-ever use of Continuous Grain Silicon (CG-Silicon) technology on it, which sandwiches a layer of circuitry into the glass to provide outstanding brightness performance, although this does come with a few problems. Like regular LCDs, it doesn't perform well in natural light, such as on the street, where you can barely see anything on the screen if the light is strong and direct. And the maximum brightness is a bit harsh, so you'll have to work at normal brightness on a regular basis, but that's just enough to save power too.
Underneath (or on the side, depending on the viewing direction), there's a small panel with a couple of touch buttons that, when pressed, enable you to run the appropriate program directly or return to the application manager. These buttons can be utilized either horizontally or vertically, but if the screen is too bright and the surrounding light is not good, then it can be difficult to see them clearly, which is kind of a minor flaw.
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Additionally, because of the high resolution, it's a shame that all of the magnifying glass tools aren't included in the standard package. While the screen looks comfortable in large fonts, most of the time the screen displays very small fonts, so you have to squint and hold the PDA at eye level to see it clearly.
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While this isn't too difficult to read indoors, it's not at all difficult to see what's on the screen if you're in a fast-moving car or some other kind of transportation, since everything is bouncing around. Of course, the developers of this PDA took this problem into account and designed the hardware with a graphic zoom function, but strangely enough, this zoom works on everything on the screen, i.e. everything is magnified, not just the text, whereas a normal similar program would zoom in on the text part only. If the text is no more than 1mm high, reading it is almost impossible. For Chinese or Japanese fonts, downloading from the Internet can still work, but not for Russian, which can't help but be a shame, since screen resolution can be a major factor in purchasing this type of handheld device.
The battery of this PDA is a 950 mAh Li-ion battery, which can be easily removed. This battery capacity is considered appropriate for a mainstream Pocket PC and provides a decent amount of standby operation time. Although there is no backup battery provided, when the main battery is removed, some of the user's settings can be retained, so the battery can be re-installed to continue operation, which is a rather considerate design. The display of battery information is a bit strange though, for example, the LED light can only indicate a charging status, you can't tell from the color of the light how much it's currently charging, you have to check for fullness yourself. As soon as it's plugged in, the color of the light changes to orange, and you don't know how much charge is left in the battery at that point. If you unplug it and it happens that the battery is dead, after giving a few unobtrusive hints, the system automatically shuts down the machine without giving a final warning. At that point you can only start the machine again by plugging it in, and the operating system has to be reloaded. Also the battery power display uses simple text such as: Battery Status - Good, instead of visual numbers or graphs, which is indeed a design that should not have been overlooked.
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This machine uses the Linux operating system, presumably for two reasons. One is that Linux is completely free, so you don't have to pay for additional licenses, which reduces the cost; and the other is that there are already too many Palm and Pocket PC machine, and Linux PDA is undoubtedly more innovative, but also to avoid fierce head-on competition. However, because it is, after all, a "new" product, so in some areas have not reached the maturity of Palm and Pocket PC, such as the lack of magnifying glass function mentioned above leads to difficulties in reading, and I hope that these shortcomings in the future of the new product can be continuously improved.
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The OS takes a long time to load, about 2 minutes, regardless of whether it's a "hard" shutdown or a "soft" shutdown. It's the same whether it's a "hard" or "soft" shutdown. The screen is milky white at startup, with the Zaurus logo and other logos displayed to ease the wait and to remind the user that it's a Zaurus product :-) There's nothing you can do while you're waiting for the OS to load, except marvel at the high-brightness screen.
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The Zaurus C700 has a full suite of apps that the average user will need for their day-to-day work, with Calendar, Address Book, Event Reminders, and more as standard.
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All of the apps perform well, but only satisfactorily. The menu contains only the most frequently used functions, the 3 most important in the eyes of the developers, designed as 3 small icons placed in the upper right corner of the screen: create a new table, edit with the pencil tool, and the trash. The text and image editors, on the other hand, can only draw standard lines and rectangles, which seems too simple.
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The Internet functionality is quite good, with NetFront for the browser, and a powerful mail client that works a lot like Outlook, with even the icons being almost identical.
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Zaurus also has a calculator, a recording program, and a clock with a stopwatch, but for some reason there is no alarm clock and no world time cross-reference tool.
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The included media player plays audio and video files, and the Zaurus automatically searches its memory for these types of files, which is still handy.
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While playing MP3s is not a problem, opening video files is a bit of a challenge, and it takes almost a minute even to open a very small video file, and the playback is not very smooth, with skipping frames. Video playback still needs to be improved. In addition, two office programs are provided in the standard package: HancomWord for word processing and HancomSheet for spreadsheets.
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The latter's interface is very much like that of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and the way it opens and operates is similar. The latter has a similar interface to Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and opens and manipulates files in a similar way, while the former is less so, almost a simple text editor, although the ability to open Word files is probably its only redeeming feature. We tested both programs carefully, and when opening a standard Excel file without formulas, it took a few tens of seconds, while when opening a larger Word file, HancomWord crashed and you had to restart the machine.
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The overall user interface is designed to be very user-friendly and easy to use, with every element in its proper place, and using it feels as if it has been used before in something else that is very familiar (except for the font of course). At the top of the screen, a list of bookmarks is placed, which is divided into different folders according to different topics. At the bottom of the screen, the control menu looks a lot like Windows, with text on the right showing the time, the input language, icons for battery level, volume control and the memory card inserted in the expansion slot, an icon in the middle indicating the programs that have already been started, and a "Start" button in the bottom left corner. Windows users are obviously familiar with this layout, which is very similar to the typical Windows taskbar.
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A bookmark at the top of the screen opens the standard Control Panel.
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All of the machine's settings, from brightness adjustments to the way it connects to the PC, can be found here. If another software comes with the appropriate setup program, the relevant program icon will be placed here as well. There is also the option of selecting the local language, which is not very interesting since it is currently only available in English and Russian. There is also the option to change the interface "skin", but we think the default one is the best, but of course, as with Windows, you can customize the skin yourself.
The task manager is also placed in a bookmark at the top, and works a lot like Windows Explorer, with folders and icons to organize what's relevant. If you don't have an additional memory expansion card installed, then it will only show what's in its own memory. If you have a memory card installed, the appropriate icons are displayed so that you can open and browse the contents of the files in it. It's quite interesting that different types of files are represented by different icons, for example a video file is represented by a movie film, or if it's an audio file, a note and CD icon is displayed. If the file is of an unrecognizable type, it will be displayed as a white rectangle icon.
As mentioned, everything on the screen is well organized, and if you've ever used a traditional desktop or laptop computer, you won't be at all uncomfortable with the user interface designed for this PDA. And if you are a professional Linux user, you will feel more at home because one of the applications on the system will provide them with the classic command line environment.
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It is impossible to describe in detail how things work in the command line state, but it is certain that various tasks are much faster at the command line than in the graphical interface, which is of course quite understandable.
===Conclusion===
From a design point of view, the Shape Zaurus C700 is an interesting machine, not perfect, but a few small imperfections can't overshadow its overall excellence, and from this From this point of view, we think it is the product that PDA enthusiasts have been waiting for. The software part of the performance is poor, although some of the vision is very good, but the realization of the general effect, ordinary users may not feel very convenient, and for software developers or Linux veterans, they blame will certainly like this product to bring the feeling of freedom. We will continue to wait for Sharp to come up with a more perfect product as they have taken a delightful step in this direction.