Apperance
At first glance, it reminds me of TI-84 Plus: rounded case, misaligned numpad and function keys, battery compartment design, etc.
It roughly shares the same dimension with TI-84 Plus, but it's a little bit thiner & lighter than TI-84 Plus.
There's a 2.5mm link port on the left side of its top, that we're all familiar with on TI-83/84 Plus, but I didn't see mini USB port there.
Their keyboard look so similar - actually, the only differences are around D-pad row.
Sharp EZ-8000 has 56 keys, while TI-83 Plus has only 50 keys. That's because EZ-8000 added 5 keys below
[Y=] row, and an additional
[ENTER] on the center of D-pads.
- [ESC] is similar to a mixture of [2nd] [MODE](QUIT) and [CLEAR]
- [a b/c] is for mixed fractions
- [a/b] is for (improper) fractions
- [CHANGE] changes the format of answers (decimal/improper/mixed)
- [<--] is backspace key
The look is already worrying enough to TI guys, I believe
But how far could Sharp push it to?
User Interface
Pressing
[ON] affirmed my concerns further - I'm greeted with a solid black cursor, blinking on the top left corner:
The
similarity didn't stop there. After messing around with it, I find out that most of the UIs are suspiciously similar.
MODE screen tells us EZ-8000 supports complex math, lacks Sequential/Simul and horizontal splitting. Their fonts are a bit different - EZ-8000 didn't copy TI's font, instead using Sharp's own one. Sharp's LCD looks way more comfortable than that of TI's though, to their credit.
There are some
differences though, either because Sharp wanted to be creative, or it required fundamental rewriting of their code:
Features
Common Features
Most features on EZ-8000 look & work in the same way as TI-83 Plus. To list a few:
- Real and Complex calculations
- Matrix calculations
- Lists, Statistics & Probabilities
- Graphing & Stat. Plots
- tracing, drawing and calculating on functions
- Storing & Recalling variables
- Catalog
- Numeric solver
- Finance App
Additional Features
Sharp has gotten "creative" and "ported" some features from their EL-series graphing calculators, mainly in the form of APPs
(Note: TI-82 Plus doesn't ship with DoorsCS7):
- WriteView
- NBASE
- SYSTEM
- POLY
"WriteView" is Sharp's own technology for textbook display (TI: MathPrint, CASIO: Natural V.P.A.M.), and it's printed on the upper right corner of its case. Despite different names, it is pretty intuitive & works the same way you'd expect other textbook display technologies would do.
Sharp didn't integrate it into MODE, but made it a separate application. My guess is WriteView was already a separate mode on EL-series calculators, and Sharp didn't bother to integrate it further.
"NBASE" does simple base conversions; "SYSTEM" solves systems of equations, up to 6 unknowns; "POLY" solves polynomial equations, sadly it only supports quadratic/cubic equations.
"Solver" is basically the same as Solver on TI-83 Plus, but the UI is a bit different, and EZ-8000 allows you to save/recall/rename equations within Solver. It's also accessible in
[MATH] menu.
Aside from those applications, there are 5 user-defined actions as the second function of those new keys. You can assign functions to it by pressing
[STO] [2nd] (D1-D5). Most keys & operations could be assigned to them, but I don't know how to un-assign it yet...
[assign prompt & success message.jpg]
Programming & Performance
At the beginning, the PRGM menu on both calculators look the same. But once you run/edit a program on EZ-8000, the fancy UI modification thing falls apart, revealing a typical Sharp-style program UI. Here I keyed in a simple speed tester (from DoOmnimaga):
When testing its programming capabilities, I also noticed some of the commands take different parameters/syntaxes.
For example,
getKey requires a variable name on EZ-8000, which it will put key values in;
seq( will use variable
X implicitly, and the syntax is
seq(expr, begin, end)...
And the output destination is also different - EZ-8000 outputs to a dedicated output area (like TI-68k's "Output" tab), while TI-83 Plus directly outputs to homescreen.
In terms of
speed, Sharp EZ-8000 won the match easily - It finishes that empty loop in around
3 seconds, significantly faster than TI-83 Plus's
27+ seconds, around 9 times faster!
To sum it up, EZ-8000
lacks some
programming features that TI users are familiar with:
- IS>(, DS<( and Menu(
- Prompt( and Output(
- Real key-reading function (getKey is a blocking call on EZ-8000, and it only returns number & D-pad keys *facepalms*)
- prgm
- Calling other programs (There's GoSub/Return instead, to call subroutines within a program variable)
- Deleting variables with commands
- String type, variables and operations
- Easily-accessible settings (options in menus like MODE and FORMAT), only available in CATALOG
- Quick-scrolling with [ALPHA] [up/down]
, which are a little bit frustrating, but also not surprising - EZ-8000 and EL-9900 (both made by Sharp) share many programming commands (but in different names) and similar user interface, so my guess is Sharp probably didn't bother to rewrite the whole programming function from scratch. Sadly, my EL-9900 refused to turn on at the time of writing, so I can't compare them side-by-side.
System & Internals
Welp, enough casual plays, it's time to dive deeper into it and see what it really is! Let's take a look at
MEM menu first:
Looks like Sharp really "borrowed" a lot of details there, and the
Archive/UnArchive options tells us it has archive memory. (I don't want to test it though, since it messes with the FLASH and it may brick the calculator)
The
About page is interesting too - "0.00A" doesn't look like a finished OS version, does it?
Here are some more details (click to open/enlarge):
To sum it up, here are some informations from these menus:
- OS version 0.00A
- ~39.5KiB of RAM, ~492 KiB of archive memory, close to a TI-84 Plus
- It supports APPs, probably also installed in FLASH
- There're SendOS and Back Up... options in LINK menu, meaning the OS is upgradable?
- Forensic test returns 8.999999977, subtracting with 9 returns -2.28292e-8, which is the same as recent Sharp EL's result (Thanks critor for checking!)
I guess, it uses the same technology from Sharp's EL-series graphing calculators, which utilizes Toshiba TLCS-900/L1 16-bit processor.
(TBD: disassembly & PCB pictures)
Conclusion
Sharp EZ-8000 is indeed a successiful immitation of TI-83 Plus, if that was Sharp's intention. It reproduced 90% of user experience of TI-83 Plus, in both software and hardware. It also operates noticeablly faster than TI-83 Plus, making it a competitive choice.
However, it seems that Sharp haven't release this calculator yet, leaving lots of myths there:
Is it because it's still in early development? Was it Sharp's attempt at dividing TI's market? Or is it a collaborative project of them? Has Sharp/TI suspended the project? What is the planned target market of it? ... I guess we'll never know, if Sharp/TI chose to keep these as secrets...
