ASUS P750

Asus has come up trumps with the P750. It is not an inexpensive handheld device, but it crams in the features and manages to stay reasonably pocket-friendly as it does so.

The Windows Mobile 6 Professional software means a touch-screen is present and versions of Microsoft Word and Excel are built in for document reading and editing. Yet the P750 takes a phone-like approach to its looks, being tall and thin like many candybar-style mobile phones.

There is a number pad beneath the screen rather than a cramped QWERTY keyboard, and while this means you can’t tap out text at lightning fast speeds, you can use either the on-screen tappable keyboard or the number pad for text entry, the latter T9 style.

There is a scroll wheel on the left side for sweeping through menus and screens of information, and a Hold button on the right side for deactivating all the various buttons and the wheel when the P750 is in your pocket.

The P750 is a 3G device with HSDPA support, and a front-facing camera takes care of two-way video calling. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a GPS antenna are all built in, and you get a utility that can send your GPS position to up to five SMS recipients at the same time. Another utility saves your GPS route as a file you can upload to Google Maps. If you want point-to-point navigation you’ll have to add in some third party software, though.

Other bundled software includes a business card reader that uses photos of cards taken with the 3-megapixel main camera and converts their text into a contact book entry. You also get software that can show you the current time in up to three countries in the world; handy if you need to plan a phone call. Other additional software includes an RSS reader and a graphics-based replacement for the Windows Mobile Today screen.

There is even an area of memory set aside that you can password protect so you can store stuff you don’t want others to see. If you want more eulogising, then the battery life proved to be very good during testing.

The absence of a miniature keyboard might irritate those keen on mobile e-mail, and the tiny joystick that sits under the screen is not our ideal: we prefer a standard, flat navigation pad. But overall this is an extremely well featured device.