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If you don't like it black, or white, or brightly coloured, and you want more than just a communicator, the O2 family has two new kids on the block, the Graphite and the Zinc. In keeping with their names, the pair sport sleek, brushed silver casings and that is as close to being alike they will get...at least in looks.
The Xda Zinc is a PDA-phone that has a slide-out keyboard and if it weren't for the logo on the front and squarish navigation pad, it could be very easily mistaken for Dopod's C800 or 838.
The Zinc is one for the road warriors, packing in everything you'd want and need from the office, except the big desk and receptionist out front.
Sitting in a meeting room, you can easily put notes into Microsoft Word by scribbling on the touch screen or typing on the slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It isn't advisable however, to type with the device placed on the tabletop as the keyboard keys are a little too small to type quickly or comfortably.
The keyboard is sensitive enough though, requiring just a light touch if you don't want extra letters when typing.
You can easily type with the device cradled in your palm and with the keyboard extended to send a quick message, except there is one glitch, the send and menu buttons sit tightly above the keyboard, which means you run the risk of sending half-written messages if you are not too careful . If it's any consolation, this is a design problem shared with similarly designed PDA phones.
O2 has designed a message centre for the Zinc where users can check at a glance if there is IM, Email, SMS, MMS or RSS waiting to be read, and jump straight to the document waiting to be reviewed.
With a 2.8" screen that switches to landscape mode when the keyboard is extended, viewing a document, spreadsheet or even photos won't be a challenge as fonts can be enlarged and made more crisp in appearance, although the 65K-colour TFT-LCD display already provides extremely sharp resolution.
Communication also travels faster on the Zinc thanks to the 3G capabilities. The Xda Zinc is equipped with an Intel Xscale PXA 270 processor running at 520MHz and the Intel Hermon chip allows speedy data transfer. The device also offers Wireless LAN 802.11b+g so users can work or play anytime, anywhere and make video calls as well, with a second VGA camera.
Picture quality is of course much better when the 2 Megapixels CMOS Fixed-focus camera lens is used. Photos which can be modified into black and white or sepia also benefit from the strobe flash to fill in the shadows.
Also bundled into the device is a PDF Viewer, SMS Backup, Voice Commander and a GPRS Monitor. All these and more run seamlessly on the device with 128MB of onboard memory which can be expanded through a Mini SD card.
The smaller and slimmer brother to the Zinc is the O2 Graphite, a candybar phone that also comes with 128MB onboard memory and is powered by an Intel Xscale PXA 270 Processor at 416MHz and Intel Hermon chip for 3G data processing.
You could say this is the light version of the Zinc and will appeal to those who prefer to carry something different on the weekend but still have back-up if there is an office document that needs to be checked.
The phone is set up to synchronise with the PC to download Microsoft's Outlook and comes also with a viewer for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
While you may wish that you could create or edit documents on this phone, you'd think twice once you realise that you must contend with the standard phone panel that would make writing a note with more than 40-50 characters, a chore. In addition, the letters and numbers turn near invisible due to the backlight on the phone pad.
Sharing space on the front panel, just above the phone pad is a tiny joy stick that can be best navigated with the thumb. To choose a programme it's advisable not give in to reflex and thumb the knob, you'll find more joy if you hit the menu key since the joy stick tends to slip and you end up opening a different programme.
Fortunately, there is a voice commander so you can just tell the phone to do the work for you.
The Graphite's 2.2 inch TFT LCD display is bright and clear and there's a pair of cameras, one of which is set up for video calls.
As for picture taking, the 2megapixel camera with flash is easily activated with a side button, but to zoom in to objects will require using the on-screen menu options.
Being truly light, (it weighs just 105g) this is a device you'd want to carry with you if you want a device that comes very close to being a smartphone.
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