Zaurus SL-5600/SL-5500 Comparison Whitepaper

Bill Kendrick writes "A cool as the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Linux-based PDA is, there are definitely some quibbles about battery life, software and syncing. Fortunately, it seems the folks at Sharp and TrollTech have been working on it for the new 5600 model. Sharp just posted a whitepaper (PDF) comparing the two models. (Newer kernel, no more root-privs-for-everything, JFFS2, dropping slow XML for PIM stuff, and USB-IO syncing, to name a few.)"

Comments

5500 firmware upgrade?

[caraiman]

When is Sharp going to provide a firmware upgrade for the 5500? The latest firmware still has bugs. Here are a couple of examples:

• Although you can configure multiple SMTP accounts, the mail client only uses the one configured first
• Every now and then the soft eject for a CF card doesn't work and you have to physically take it out

In addition, since Sharp has already worked on a new kernel, PIM, etc., it would be great if existing 5500 owners could benefit from what their software group has done since the latest firmware upgrade came out.
The hardware changes on the 5600 are not a radical shift from the 5500 (unless, of course, you buy into the MHz hype). I bet that not many people will ditch their 5500s and invest in 5600s primarily to fix problems that could be resolved through a firmware upgrade.

Re:5500 firmware upgrade?

[dybvandal]

they are actually quite radical .. for example the mmc/sd chip is now integrated btw: the opensource community is trying to get 2.4.19 to run on the 5500 but the old mmc/sd module needs an update ... which is impossible because the community does not have a license from sd.org and sharp doesn't have the "resources" to take care of it for us nor is it offering any assistance in getting one of the community the rights to do it himself .. this is where i am pissed