Willcom D4 lost a lot to become DigiCube Z8 MID
Even though I've had it for over a year and don't use it daily anymore, I'm still enamored with my slide-and-tilt Willcom D4 (Sharp WS016SH) UMPC. Naturally, then, anything that looks almost identical to it will capture my attention too. This is what happened when the DigiCube MIDPhone-50 made its debut at Computex a few months ago, so it's no surprise that the renamed Digicube Z8 being shown at IDF this week would have the same effect on me.
The MIDPhone-50 was a mixed bag of specs, as it improved on some areas of the D4 (0.6" shorter, webcam, standard USB and headphone ports, 1.6GHz Atom CPU option) while also taking a few steps backward (WVGA resolution, 16GB SSD, no rear camera). The newly christened Z8, on the other hand, just seems to have gotten worse. The 5" screen that the D4 and MIDPhone-50 had is now being listed as a 4.3" display, the internal SSD is now a paltry 8GB, the CPU is only a 1.1GHz Atom, and the RAM is stuck at 512MB.
My Willcom D4 isn't perfect, but it's got a bigger display with higher resolution, more internal storage, faster CPU, and more RAM, which are hardly the kinds of things I like to give up.
