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Asus P750 PocketPC Phone Review

Posted By: Hardware Tech Review Published in Mobile Phones

Feb

The Asus P750 has the makings of a great Pocket PC phone device – while not small it comes with GPS and most importantly, has a real alphanumeric keypad, something which we’ve always found important as I message a lot.

Those features alone would make it worth a serious look, but there are numerous small enhancements that make the P750 a worthy smartphone for the frequent traveller. More…

As far as looks go, the Asus P750 is not a bad-looking device at all – it has a nice black rubberised finish which not only resists scratches but also helps to prevent it slipping out of sweaty hands.

The front has the usual complement of Windows Mobile phone buttons like an alphanumeric keypad, buttons mapped to the on-screen software functions, and Call and Hang-up keys.

What we didn’t like is that instead of a directional pad, the P750 comes with a little joystick.

We know the joystick takes up less space than a directional pad, but a joystick’s main drawback is that we often find ourself pressing Enter (an inwards push) when we really intending to push up or down to navigate the menus.

In fact, on our review sample at least, this happened quite often, forcing us to be extra careful when using the joystick.

On the upside, we really like that the P750 comes with a jog dial on the left side of the device, and, even better, has a little slider switch for turning on the device and also doubles as a Hold switch to lock your keypad when you slide it downwards.

A sliding hold switch, to us, is a lot more convenient than some strange key combination to lock the screen, or having to hold down the Hang-up button for two seconds like on most Windows Mobile smartphones.

Strangely enough, the P750’s microSD slot is actually exposed, without a door – we’re a little concerned that dust might get inside the microSD slot, or worse, somehow something pokes in there and accidentally pops the microSD card out.

To be fair, though, the microSD card never accidentally popped out in the time we used it.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the P750 has a 2.5mm stereo jack on the bottom, next to the mini-USB sync port – while this isn’t as ideal as having a more common 3.5m stereo jack port, at least you can easily find adapters to convert it to a 3.5mm port.

Turning on the P750 reveals a very nice screen indeed – it’s bright and is viewable even from extreme angles. Very nice!

There’s nothing new in the interface and you get the usual Windows Mobile Today screen interface with your appointments, messages and tasks visible at a glance.

The only other enhancement to the interface is the Asus Launcher, which gives you a customisable menu for quick access to your programs and various settings.

Unfortunately, while this helps simplify the programs and settings menus, it doesn’t really do anything to improve the Today screen.

After being spoilt by the nice replacement Today screen and custom menus of the HTC Touch Dual, we found that going back to the regular Windows Mobile Today screen a bit boring and not as convenient for getting into the SMS interface.

However, Asus has added quite a few programs in ROM – Streaming Player, Travelog, Ur Time, WorldCard Mobile, Remote Presenter, NewsStation RSS Reader, Backup and Location Courier.

Most of the applications are self-explanatory but worth mentioning is the Streaming Player, which allows you to visit sites that stream audio or video content and play it right on the device.

WorldCard Mobile is also another notable application as it allows you to take a snapshot of a business card and automatically recognises the text and converts it into an entry for your Contact list.

Asus does not provide GPS mapping software so you have to look around for a third party solution like the excellent Garmin Mobile XT or the clunky but usable MapKing software.

We tested it with Google Maps for the Pocket PC, which supports the built-in GPS of the P750 and it worked very well – time to first fix was actually fast, as long as you configure the device to automatically download GPS satellite information periodically over the Internet.

Although there isn’t a proper mapping application provided with the P750, Asus has included two applications that takes advantage of the built-in GPS, namely Location Courier and Travelog.

Travelog allows you to tag photos taken with the P750 with GPS coordinates and notes and then sync it up with the Google Earth software on your PC while Location Courier is an emergency application which will have the P750 SMS your coordinates to up to five specified numbers when you get lost, either automatically or at specified intervals.

As far as the phone features go, there’s nothing extra that Asus has added to the standard Windows Mobile interface.

Overall, call quality was good, and from our tests, the HSDPA support (and WiFi when you can connect to an access point) meant that surfing on Internet Explorer Mobile was actually quite fast.

Battery life was pretty much standard as well – about one day under heavy use but you can just stretch that out to about 1.5 days if you’re not a heavy user.

Generally, the Asus P750 was quite a usable mobile with some pretty solid hardware specifications – with HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS, it’s got all your wireless options covered.

Couple that with the all-important alphanumeric keypad and you have a very usable Windows Mobile phone.

The only problem really, is the Windows Mobile interface – after the iPhone’s excellent interface and what I’ve seen of the upcoming Windows Mobile-based Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, the pedestrian and clunky standard Today screen on Windows Mobile 6 just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Nevertheless, if you’re in the market for a Windows Mobile Pocket PC phone right now, then the Asus P750 is worth considering.

Pros: Fast; good specs with WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Cons: GPS navigation software not included; expensive.

ASUS P750

Tri-band Pocket PC phone with HSDPA

Operating System: Windows Mobile 6 Professional

Camera: 3-megapixels

Display: 2.6in 240 x 320pixel touchscreen

Messaging: MMS, SMS, e-mail

Connectivity: Bluetooth, WiFi, HSDPA

Phone memory: 256MB ROM, 64MB RAM

Expansion slot: MicroSD