MWg Zinc II

The Zinc II has a traditional PDA form factor. The front is dominated by the QVGA (320 by 240 pixel) screen. Below this is a directional pad flanked by the green and red call buttons. Unlike many other Windows Mobile devices, the Zinc II does not have additional application buttons on the front facade, nor does it have hard buttons that duplicated the function of the soft buttons which appear on screen.

On the left side you'll find the up/down volume buttons and a third button which can be mapped to any program (it launches voice notes by default). This is also where the microSD card slot is located. MWg says this is able to take microSD and microSDHC cards up to 8 GB in capacity, but that's just the biggest cards that are available now. The slot will probably support larger cards when they are released.

The right side of the device has the power and camera buttons. The camera button functions to both launch the camera application and take photos.

The bottom of the Zinc II simply has a reset hole, the mini-USB port, and the stylus or stylus holder. The stylus is not very fancy, and at first glance seems nothing more than a toothpick.

Pulling it out of the silo will extend it to a more comfortable length, but it's still just a piece of plastic without much other feel to it. The back of this smart phone is simply designed, showing only the 2.0 megapixel camera and battery cover.

Compared to some other devices that have a large back cover battery panel, the one on the Zinc II is relatively easy to remove because of the soft touch paint used on the device.

MWg Zinc IIThis iteration of the paint doesn't hold fingerprints easily, and gives a nice matte finish to the back side of the device. Everything seems pretty simple and normal until you notice the slight gap between the top and middle panels. That's when the slide out keyboard emerges, which takes the device from being barely OK to a livable proposition. It has a three row keyboard QWERTY layout with some additional buttons to enable soft key functions. The keyboard takes much longer in getting used to than might appear.

The keys are quite flush with the rest of the panel, and it feels as if some of the letters are not in the same place as they would be on a normal keyboard. A Function key provides access to numbers, symbols, and accented characters, but the backlighting might not be sufficient enough for you to even find it in half decent lighting.