Just when you thought you'd waited long enough, and you were all set to hand over your credit card information for a shiny new XDA Zinc, you'll unfortunately have to gain just a little more interest on that dough and ponder whether or not you'll still be passionate about this thing come March. Although O2 was shooting for a January rollout for the slideout smartphone, interested customers are looking at another 1.5 to 2 months before they can get their palms on one. O2 is touting the XDA Zinc as a Mini S, but "with added 3G power for high speed internet / video calling," and it reportedly sports a QWERTY keyboard, 2.8-inch LCD touchscreen, 320 x 240 resolution, 520MHz PXA270 processor, 64MB of RAM, 128MB of flash ROM, two-megapixel camera, miniSD slot, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11b/g, and of course, tri-band connectivity. Unfortunately, this well-spec'd device will indeed weigh you down a bit, as it tips the scales at 5.82-ounces and comes in at 2.3-centimeters thick. Still no word on pricing at this point, but just how special this thing will actually be in March remains to be seen.

[Via RegHardware]

If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, HTC must be turning beet red right about now. The Mars II from ASUS follows the HTC Wizard / Hermes formula down to the letter, featuring that fabulous side-opening QWERTY keypad we'd now be lost without, an Intel Xscale PXA270 core making haste at 520MHz, 128MB of ROM, 64MB of RAM, UMTS, 802.11g, Bluetooth 2.0, 2-megapixel shooter, and a 2.8-inch QVGA display (why no love for the VGA?). As you may recall, we were able to correctly call all the specs out last month with the exception of the name and the ODM, which we'd heard would be HTC -- and given the Hermes-esque dimensions and feature list, who could blame us? Look for the Mars II to grace O2's networks before too long as the "Xda Zinc," but thanks to the old-skool tri-band GSM radio sans 850 support, we're going to be putting our import plans on hold.

[Via phoneArena]