We have managed to acquire the recently announced Asus P552W for a short time. We have been curious about the PDA-phone for many reasons. On one hand we had the small P320 for testing recently: we didn't have any problems with its physical properties, but we have found the hardware quite weak - according to preliminary information there should be no problems with P552W as besides a similar size it has a much more robust interior. On the other hand we have been interested in the newcomer, as this is the first device to ship with the new 3D interface from Asus.
Hirdetés
First of all let's see the handset's specs:
- Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system
- Tri-band GSM-module, UMTS, HSDPA
- 60.5 x 102 x 14.5 mm, 105 grams
- 2.8-inch diagonal, QVGA resolution touchscreen
- 624 MHz Marvell PXA930 CPU
- 256 MB ROM, 128 MB RAM, microSD slot
- WiFi (802.11b/g), Bluetooth (2.0), built-in GPS
- 2 megapixel resolution camera with fix focus
- 1100 mAh battery
We can see that based on its size the newcomer is the competitor of the basic Touch, as it's quite small. We can't have any complaints about assembly quality, the materials used are also okay, the handset is made of soft plastics, pleasant to the touch. The display is also good, as the screen itself is in the same plane as other parts of the front, and this is very important for usability.
After turning the phone on I didn't see anything special, just the well-known Asus Today screen. Where's the 3D, I've been asking, but I didn't receive any answer. After looking around a bit I have seen a new icon in the top right corner of the plug-in. I've tapped it and then, lacking all kinds of animation, something with a deep space background has appeared (lightning fast) and I could choose between three screens: Original, Life, Business.
Wow, I've thought, this is really something, I have chosen Life, and a full-screen world clock appeared. Besides this it's completely like the plain Asus Today, so there's no 3D, we can only choose between the views that appear on the main screen too (messaging, weather forecast, music) and as a bonus we have an image viewer. I've quickly switched to business view, where I have seena double-world clock, there is a calendar view too and RSS, but there's no image viewer or music player. As a matter of fact the simple Asus Today has been taken apart to two full-screen views, I can't really see any importance of this, but really: why would I want to switch to the music player on the Life view, if it's already there on the default view? Oh, and I didn't even mention that the Start menu is not available on the two new views.
Life and Business views
Fortunately that's not all the manufacturer has to offer, there is a much more usable, really 3D thing, it's called: AnyTime Launcher. This is a quicklaunch application with a nice and easy to use interface, it can be accessed with the hardware key left of the d-pad. There is a touch-image-viewer too (EziPhoto), it's fast and easy to use.
AnyTime Launcher and the image viewer's help
The most positive about the new interface is that it's fast. It's very fast. It's a thousand times faster than the simple or 3D TouchFLO, and anyway, P552W is like lightning, no lags, no load times. I have installed the usual speed test programs, here are the results:
| Pocket PC Mark v1.03 | VsBenchmark 2007 | ||
| Dhrystone Benchmark (CPU) | 224.32 | Graphics | 3068 |
| Whetstone Benchmark (CPU) | 8.84 | Others | 4838 |
| Memory Benchmark | 1178.27 | JPEG | 5025 |
| File system Benchmark | 128.53 | Games | 3108 |
| Storage Cards | - | Sound | 182 |
| Graphics Benchmark | 311.93 | Final | 3244 |
Well, this is really something! Until now we have thought that nothing can have a higher memory score than Omnia, and now here's Asus: 1178 marks. The thing is that we have never seen such a results, besides the file system score of Pocket PC Mark and the musical test of VsBenchmark all tests had an incredibly good result, it's astonishing. If the final version stays the same, then P552W has great chances to win the World's fastest Pocket PC award. We can only hope that the price of the handset will also be all right.
That's all we could give you for the preview, unfortunately the handset didn't stay at us, so we can't provide you any more screenshots or benchmarks, but I would be happy to answer all your questions in the forum.
Translated by Szaszati
