Sharp's new Zaurus improves on its predecessor in several areas; but leaves some others that could have used some improvement as well.
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The darling of GNU/Linux and other Free Software users everywhere, the Sharp Zaurus SL line is so far the most widely used Linux-based handheld line. Its latest installment, the SL-5600, is an evolutionary change from the company's debut Linux-based handhelds, the SL-5000d and SL-5500. It addresses several of the issues we (and many other users) had with those models, but at the same time leaves several of the old limitations.
 | The Zaurus SL-5600 looks like the 5500, but has a beefed up spec sheet
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Design
The basic design of the 5600 is the same as the 5500. It still sports the same portrait display, four application buttons, Home button, OK and Cancel, and well-designed D-Pad as its predecessor, and behind the sliding front panel is still one of the nicest thumbboards on the market. The layout is the same as on the 5500, but there is now a slightly larger gap at the top and bottom of the keyboard area to allow for larger fingers. The device itself is almost exactly the same size, save for a hump in the lower back to support the new, larger battery, making it one of but not the larger handhelds on the market.
The screen is the same 240x320 16-bit color display as on its predecessor. While not as eye-popping as the new screens from Palm, it's still a very nice display. The audio system, however, has been heavily revamped. In place of the paltry piezo-electric buzzer of the 5500, the 5600 sports a very nice polyphonic speaker in back, with system sounds designed to take advantage of the better powered speaker. There is also a built-in microphone on the left side, near the still short-range Infrared port. The stereo audio jack on the top of the device is still present.
The frosted flip cover of the 5500 has also been replaced with a completely clear plastic flip cover that makes it very easy to use the device with the cover closed. With most applications usable almost completely from the D-Pad, that is a very nice design. Unfortunately, the plastic itself is a bit scratch prone. The only two LEDs on the device are the Mail and AC/charging LEDs, just as on the 5500. The stylus silo on top of the device still holds the same short plastic jobby of its predecessor. That a handheld in this price bracket still has a plastic stylus boggles the mind.
Connectivity
The nice dual-card Compact Flash / Secure Digital support is still present, with the CF slot on top and SD slot on the left side. The SD slot is still not SDIO-capable, however, due to issues with the closed-source SDIO drivers. Unfortunately, the CF slot still has no cover save for an easy-to-lose plastic slug. The serial port and AC port are still present, although the serial port has been redesigned, and no longer has the flip-over protective cover.
As mentioned, the 5600 keeps its predecessor's bi-directional audio jack and short range IR port. Sadly, there is no built-in wireless support, although many different models of 802.11b CF card work out-of-the-box.
Specifications
While on the outside the 5600 seems like a near clone of the 5500, it's what's inside that counts. The internal architecture of the Zaurus has been completely revamped. To start off, the Zaurus now uses a 400 Mhz Intel XScale processor.
More importantly, the RAM system is completely new. The SL-5600 carries 32 MB of RAM, but rather than use the RAM for storage like most handhelds all of the RAM is used as "active memory", just as on a desktop. It then packs 64 MB of rewritable Flash ROM, about half of which is taken by the OS. The rest, about 36 MB, is available to the user to install applications and data files. Because ROM is non-volatile, user data is now impervious to battery loss, although there is a slight lag time to loading programs to RAM. Commonly used programs can be pre-cached in RAM for instant-run access.
The 5600 also carries a massive 1700 mAh Lithium Ion battery, the largest of any handheld we've seen. To test it, we left several mp3 files playing off the CF card until the battery ran down, after 8 hours, 23 minutes. That's a very good time, although we should note that the mp3 player on the 5600 shuts the screen off when not in use to conserve power. Still, that's almost a 100% increase from its predecessor, while powering a faster CPU. Recharge time was impossible to calculate, since our test unit seemed to not want to keep a connection in the cradle and we had to jiggle it periodically.
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