Not all of Sharp's handhelds make it out of Japan, but importer Dynamism is helping. Larry Garfield looks at the impressive Zaurus SL-C760.
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The Sharp Zaurus line of GNU/Linux-based handhelds has to date sported some very impressive features and designs. Unfortunately, many of the most interesting are only officially released in Japan, such as the high-powered SL-C760 clamshell model. Fortunately for the rest of the world, importer Dynamism has added the SL-C760 to their line of import-and-translate products and offers an English-ified version of the SL-760. It is almost a laptop, but still handheld.
Design
The 760 is a surprisingly small 120 x 83 x 23.6 mm clamshell, although at 250 grams it is somewhat on the heavy side. The casing is a mixture of white and silver plastic with a clean finish. Overall, it is reasonably comfortable to hold in the hand for long periods. However, because the unit is an import much of the labeling and all the paper documentation is still in Japanese.
Opening up the clamshell reveals a full QWERTY thumbboard and screen, both of which are quite impressive. The keyboard is a 5-row design with dedicated number keys, and each of the large rectangular keys is made of a soft vinyl with good key travel. There are two shift keys (good), but they are not sticky (bad). There is also a Tab key for moving between fields and a purple Fn key, although many of the Fn commands serve to generate Japanese characters that no longer have any effect. The keyboard also sports OK and Cancel buttons, three hardware shortcut buttons, a Home key, Menu key, and inverted-T directional arrows for one of the most complete keyboard designs we've seen to date.
 | The SL-C760 is one of the best keyboard and screen combos on the market
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After a little practice to get used to the wider key spacing, we found the thumbboard a joy to use, enabling us to to write this review without difficulty. However, the keys are not large enough to touch type, and the C760 remains a thumbboard device.
The screen, however, is even better. The 760 sports the first true-VGA 640 x 480 screen to grace our labs, and we like what we see. Images are extremely crisp, with no graininess to speak of. The TFT screen itself is bright and clear all on its own, much more so than those found in previous Zauruses. The high resolution also allows programs to put even more information on screen at once, and the screen also sports a flip-and-rotate ability to fold down into a portrait-mode device, covering up the keyboard in the process. When in normal landscape mode, the screen shuts off automatically when closed. There is also a zoom function, supported by most included text-sensitive applications.
The top of the device includes an on/off switch as well as OK and Cancel buttons and a jog wheel for use when the device is in portrait mode. In portrait mode, those buttons are on the left as the device is held. The stylus silo in on the front right, or top right when rotated. The AC charger port is also on the top.
Connectivity
The C760, like many of its predecessors, sports both a Compact Flash slot and a Secure Digital slot. The CF slot is on the right (top when rotated), while the SD slot is on the top (left when rotated) next to the IR port. The SD slot is not SDIO compatible, unfortunately, due to problems with the closed source driver for the SDIO spec. And, annoyingly, due to the placement of the CF slot, a user will have to adjust his hand position if an oversized CF card, such as a network card, is in use.
The C760 also has a proprietary serial port to connect to a PC over USB. It does not, unfortunately, include any wireless capabilities.
Specifications
Under the hood, the unit is powered by an Intel XScale PXA255 processor running at 400 MHz. As with other recent Zauruses, the C760 has a flash ROM area for program storage that keeps it memory even if the battery runs dry and a separate RAM area strictly for running programs. The C760 squeezes in 64 MB of each, plus available space on expansion cards for a reasonably roomy device. However, that split memory architecture does mean a lag time when starting a program as it is loaded into RAM.
Much of the weight of the C760 is taken up by its hefty Lithium Ion battery; fortunately, this also provides hefty power. We left the MP3 player running continually to test it, and allowed the screen auto-dim feature to conserve power. The 760 lasted a very impressive 8 hours and 49 minutes before finally shutting off. In more real world situations, we were able to listen to several hours of music while writing this review all on the device and didn't even get as low as half power.
The 760 ships with separate power and USB sync cables, with no cradle. For reasons we cannot fathom, the power adapter is back to the brick-plug design we always hate instead of the superior multi-part cable of some earlier models. A small brick with a folding plug, but still a brick design nonetheless.
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