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.
Asus is probably best know for its laptop offerings, but the Taiwanese giant is nothing if not prolific and has its fingers in about as many technology industry pies as you can think of, from motherboards to servers. It has also been active in the highly competitive mobile devices space and now we have its latest smartphone, the P526, in for review.
It runs on the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile platform - Windows Mobile 6 Professional - and as smartphones go, it’s a bit of a looker. There’s no glossy black plastic, candy red backlit keys, heat-sensitive keys or funky, ‘innovative’ design. It is, however, one of the slimmer smartphones around at just 16mm, it’s very light at 115g, its grey plastic chassis is chrome-trimmed and it even comes with a smart grey leatherette case to protect the screen, and the overall effect is very pleasing on the eye. It’s smart but unassuming, a bit like a well-tailored suit.
It’s hardly surprising to find that there’s no QWERTY keyboard here given how slim the P526 is. Instead there’s a number pad under the screen, and the one here is an excellent example. The buttons have a slightly curved profile and are separated from each other making it exceptionally easy to dial numbers manually, and there are a few other nice touches to the control system too. Apart from the usual Windows soft keys and pick-up/hang-up combination there are also short cut buttons for the Windows Start menu and one to activate the Voice Commander software. Below the pick-up key is a button that is initially designated as a quick application launch key, but can be reassigned as a task switch button, allowing you to cycle quickly through open applications.
The good news continues. Along the right hand edge, alongside a memory expansion slot for microSD cards and the trigger button for the two megapixel digital camera, is a dedicated lock switch. It has long been a pet hate of mine with Windows Mobile that in order to lock and unlock the keys and touchscreen on most devices, you have to prod a couple of tiny on-screen buttons. It’s not my idea of sensible user interface design. With the P526, however, that’s a thing of the past. Just flick the switch and it’s locked; flick it again and it’s unlocked. I wish more phones would do something similar.
At the GPS navigation fair organized by Navtek, Asus has presented its first GPS PDA mobile phone, the GSM and GPRS tri-band P535, with SIRF III GPS chip and integrated receiver and antenna. Unlike the Asus P525, the device doesn’t have a keypad, but compensates with a 2.8 inch TFT LCD screen with 65k colors and a 320×240 resolution.
The P535 has a Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, and thus, will be able to run all the applications compatible with it. The OS runs on an Intel Xscale 520 Mhz processor, with the help of 256 MB ROM and 64 MB RAM memory, expandable through the miniSD memory card slot. The mobile has Bluetooth 2.0, EDR and Wi-Fi 802.11g connectivity, but the absence of the EDGE technology makes it an almost sure victim for the HTC P3300, its direct competitor. It also has a 2 megapixel camera, a 1300 mAh lithium battery, helping it to be as portable as it can be, with its 150 grams weight, and a Destinator 6 navigation software.
