Cellphones, portable media, sharp, windows mobile

Sharp's W-ZERO3 PDA Phone

This sweet-looking black beauty is Sharp's latest PDA phone, dubbed the "W-ZERO3." It's a slider with a huge 3.7 inch VGA touchscreen LCD with 65,536 colors that almost dwarfs the QWERTY keypad underneath. Other features include 128 MB of built-in memory, a 1.3 megapixel camera, an Intel PXA270 416Mhz processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a miniSD card slot, and USB. It'll run Windows Mobile 5.0 Japanese edition, and will have full POP3 and SMTP compatibility and will be bundled along with Windows Media Player 10. An interesting note about the device is that it'll be using W-Sim (Willcom Sim) cards which hold a lot more data than regular SIM — about 600Kb of data as well as voice-based data. Measuring 70x130x36 mm and weighing in at 220 grams, the W-ZERO3 does sound a little hefty, but I'm definitely liking the form factor so far (plus the specs don't sound too bad either). It'll be out in Japan soon, and here's hoping us over here in the states will get our hands on it too. More pics after the jump.

Microsoft and Sharp to announce PDA "W-ZERO3" with Windows Mobile 5.0 Jap edition (W-Sim Compatible) [Phoneyworld]

2:05 PM on Thu Oct 20 2005
By gizmogo
3,853 views
6 comments

Comments

Permanent4 at 02:06 PM on 10/20/05
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Looks like an HTC Wizard/Apache clone. It might be cool to get one of those in black, though, since black is the new black and all...
TheZodiac at 04:45 PM on 10/20/05
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Holy AfroBeehives!Ã¢Â„Â¢ Yep, Perma, it does look like the Wiz... which isnt a pad thing - I think this is the form factor to beat.. even though the Universal is bigger swively'er and all that.. I think its to large. These are a good size, I think. next up.. HTC MERLIN! Or something...
VinceDee at 02:51 PM on 10/21/05
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mmm, *drool*, now this is a device I could like. I know many people think that PDAs are a dying breed, but I don't agree. I have a HP 4700 ipaq (which I consider to be the pinnacle of PDAs, so far) and there are many programs that I use on it that would be miserable or impossible to even try to use on a cellphone. The Sharp W-ZERO3 appears to have everything the ipaq has, but adds a qwerty keyboard and camera...nice.
Hadrian at 04:17 PM on 10/21/05
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I wonder if this will have any effect on Sharp's Zaurus line. A Sharp Zaurus SL-C3100 with built-in phone would be a Jasjar killer for sure.
dream_catcher at 11:01 PM on 09/08/06
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Everyone wants this new model but most of us want English OS. Nice to have but useless if can't read Japanese to take advantage of all the features and benefits. Secondly, I believe it runs on PHS frequency and you can use it only in 3 location. Two of them being Taiwan and Japan... I forgot the other one.

I'd wait for English OS to come out.
Tensor at 12:36 AM on 11/29/06
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dream_catcher: it uses Windows Mobile 5, so it could, in theory, be reflashed to english. Maybe even WM 6.0 ("Crossbow") as it is close to its release AFAIK.

The REAL problem, as you said, is PHS. The article fails to mention any GSM bands it supports, so my guess is we're screwed.

Otherwise i want one now, USD 450 for this is SOO cheap.