History, pack

Asus is an old-timer on the market of PDAs, but recently they cannot produce the quality level that fans would expect. While P535 (launched almost a year ago) and its 3G brother, P735, were outstanding devices, P526 is just not what it has to be. And, furthermore, with this portfolio of products they are far from covering all segments of the market, as a real high-end gadget is missing.

The manufacturer has figured this out, and this resulted in the subject of our current review, P750. You can see from the model number that this is the flagship of the company, but not a direct descendant of P735. I would rather call it a mix, as its design is clearly from P526, while its features could best be described with “let’s give it all”. Thanks to the silliness of the press (that is a foreign review that appeared too early), many people think of the machine as a rival to HTC Kaiser, but poor Asus has so much to do with the mentioned QWERTY keypad machine, as a good jeep has with BMW M3 – both are pleasant, but different. And this is not even the tip of the iceberg, as it turned out, that manufacturer packed a VGA display in the machine, in spite of Windows running only in QVGA resolution.

The sample device came from the national representative of Asus in a large box, the packaging of Pharos would fit at least two times in it. There is no lack of accessories: there is a sync cable, a wall- and a car charger, support attachable to the windshield, artificial leather case, two CDs and a headset, which was unfortunately missing from the sample’s pack.

Hirdetés

Externals

At first glance, P750 makes the impression of an elegant, high quality Pocket PC. The use of black and silver at the same time, the brushed metal surface around the display and the shiny Asus logo all look esthetic, but unfortunately our opinion changes a bit, when taking the device in our hand. The rubber back is of standard quality, the silver parts only appear to be made of metal, the keypad’s buttons and the stylus wobble a bit and shaking the machine results in an inexplicable sound being made, it’s really like in X-Files, as theoretically there should be no moving parts inside. Don’t misunderstand us: the handset is very well assembled; it just seems of even higher quality at first glance. Its size is average; it weighs 130 grams and fits in a pocket too.

On top of the front cover we have the camera (used for video calls) near the phone speaker covered with a metal grating, beneath which the status LEDs light up discretely. Below these the 2.6” display is placed and I intentionally don’t write anything about it here, as the next part is completely about it. The lower third contains the keypad, which has the same layout as the already mentioned P526, but the keys have a more proportional size. The 5-joystick is rubberized and comfortable to use. There were no problems with any other key either, they do their “job” fine.

The most decorative part of the back is the metal(-looking) frame, which surrounds the 3 megapixel camera and the loudspeaker. Its corners are a bit raised, so when we put the phone on a table, or flat surface, it lays on these and the rubber pad in the bottom.

There is nothing on top, but there is quite a lot of stuff on the right. In the upper part we can see the external antenna connector of the GPS receiver, which is covered with a lid. We can observe a 2-way slide in the center part, this is used for both turning on the handset and locking the keypad – it’s a smart thing. A bit lower we can see the reset slide, and the exposure button of the camera, which has two positions because of the autofocus. In the bottom the unprotected microSD slot is placed – personally I don’t like such solutions, but the card will probably stay in its place.

The 2.5 mm jack output is on the bottom, near the standard miniUSB port. On the left of these two we can find the microphone and the attachment place for the wristband, while the stylus can be found in the opposite direction.

The left side of the handset is a great example of low-keyed, high-quality and exigent design. Input controls are only in the top (sound recorder hotkey and jog-dial), but the empty space is not left on its own, but it’s decorated with an engraved label. Basically I don’t like these kind of things either, but somehow it was pleasant on P750 – probably because it’s discrete, but it’s still there (although it’s not visible on the photo below).

Tale about the display...

In spite of the current page title, our tale won’t be only about the display, but about the mentality of Asus too. This is because news that have been treated as rumor earlier, are now confirmed: P750 has a 2.6” VGA resolution display, which is used by the OS only in QVGA mode. This is done by pixel quadrupling, so it uses the 640 x 480 pixel large display and creates 320 x 240 pieces of squares made up of 2 x 2 pixels, the colors of the pixels being the same. The resulting picture quality is catastrophic, it is much worse than a native QVGA PDA. Diagonal lines/edges are very jagged; someone with more experience spots the error immediately.

We might have lots of questions regarding the display. The first – and probably the most important – is, that why did the manufacturer put a VGA display in the device if they don’t intend to use it? It’s sure that they didn’t have a surplus, as no earlier Asus device a display with such physical parameters. The only imaginable reason is that they have originally intended them to have VGA resolution, but they changed their minds during the development process. Unfortunately it seems that the decision is final, as a representative of Asus Hungary has told us, that the company will surely not release a VGA resolution ROM for P750, and that’s it. I have received two answers for the question: why? Engineers think that this would make the device unstable and standby time would become evanescent.

Display of HTC Pharos on left, Asus P750 on right. Although the latter is physically smaller, the lines are at least as jagged as on the competitor.

To tell the truth, I have never heard anything like that; I am really amazed at how can company leaders make their workers tell things like this. First, what do they mean by “the machine becomes unstable”? Non-optimized software is unstable, so it’s clear that they should only write a good piece of software and that’s all. The second statement has a drop of truth in it, but it’s way too exaggerated: yes, using VGA resolution does increase power consumption, but not because of the display, but of the CPU. A display panel doesn’t consume less because it draws 640 x 480 pixels using pixel-quadrupling, as they are lit in the same way, it simply doesn’t matter what color they are. The CPU, however, would surely be more heavily used, as it would have to count four times as many pixels, but please: this is no reason for standby time to decrease to its half/third, as Asus says. It’s just mumbo-jumbo.

Fortunately owners are helped out by a couple of Russian software developers, who have made an unofficial ROM update, which utilizes the potential of the display. Installing this of course results in immediate loss of the warranty, so Asus doesn’t recommend anyone to do so, we don’t encourage anyone either, but those interested get additional information by clicking here. I would personally have installed the firmware, but we didn’t have the chance.

Hardware, system, software

The device runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which uses a 520 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 CPU. The size of the ROM is 256 MB, while RAM is only 64 MB large; we have 130 MB for storing data and 26 MB for running programs. There are no problems with speed, after running Pocket PC Mark, I had to wake myself up from the shock, so have a look:

We have never ever met such high results at any device, so congratulations. We have to add, that the CPU had to be set manually to Turbo mode, as the autoconfig algorithm thought that for such an easy test it’s enough to keep the chip running with a low multiplier. This of course resulted in weak results.

There is a great deal of extra software. One of the most welcome is that there is a task manager that can configure the X button, so that automatically closes programs – it’s interesting that we can create a list of exceptions to which we might add the media player for example, so that will only be minimized with X, not closed. Another nice feature is the row of icons on the “taskbar”: pushing the red A, the CPU/USB settings pop up, and we can also see the amount of free memory and battery charge. It’s nothing new, but still useful, that P750 can function as a card reader (USB Mass Storage device), which eases the copy of large files.

We can find a few delicacies in the menu too. Asus Launcher is a cool looking quick launch menu, which contains the shortcuts of all programs by default, but we can add our own apps later, without any hesitation. I think there’s no need to discuss the functions of Backup in detail, but GPS Catcher is worth mentioning, as this can speed up positioning with the help of data downloaded from the internet. Location Courier sends our current position in a message to someone, while Meeting Time Planner is a calendar add-on, that eases the entry of meetings that take place in a city from a different time zone.

We are not even close to the end of the list. Newstation is an RSS reader, Remote Desktop Mobile and Remote Presenter are again apps that need no presentation. There is a Streaming Player, a clock software called Ur Time which has alarm clock and world clock too (we can add times of different cities to the Today screen), Voice Commander, the calling card digitizer called WorldCard Mobile, which is featured on Asus PDAs since a long time ago, My Secrets is a file encrypter and there is a travel software under the name Travelog - I didn’t really examine this very much, it’s some kind of route planner.

Phone calls, data transfer

I had no problems with phone calls, sound quality was all right and the machine had no problems with changing between 2G and 3G networks either – it’s another extra feature, that we can tell the phone what network to be the preferred one.

Software regarding communication is just the usual. We can put contacts in the phonebook until there is free memory (this practically means an almost infinite capacity). Messages are handled by Outlook, which supports MMS messages; the e-mail client handles attachments and authenticated IMAP servers too. We can set any mp3 file as a ringtone. The phone can ring and vibrate at the same time, we can set environmental profiles, and there’s even voice calling, but with a questionable efficiency.

The GSM module is tri-banded (900/1800/1900 MHz), but we can use 3G networks too. For data transfer we have HSDPA, but in lack of network coverage, we can use slower technologies too, as EDGE is also supported. Bluetooth has version 2.0, it supports A2DP, WiFi supports 802.11b/g standards, there were no problems with it, and its range is average. The microSD socket is SDHC-compatible, but the USB port is unfortunately only of version 1.1 and it can’t even utilize the theoretical maximum speed – no problem, we can easily pop out the memory card, so we can use the card reader too, if this wouldn’t be enough.

Multimedia

The camera on the back is a 3 megapixel one, with autofocus. Picture quality is good for a PDA, while macro mode is exceptional. The highest possible resolution for photos is 2048 x 1536 and 176 x 144 for videos, that can be recorded in 3GP or MPEG4 format. There is no aux light, but we can select night mode or sport-photo mode from the menu, the latter forcing the camera to use the shortest possible shutter time. Pictures can only be saved in jpeg format, but we can set compression strength in three steps. There is no exposure correction, but we can find other usual stuff: delayed self-timer, image sequence (max. 9 pictures), frames, effects.

Multimedia content can only be opened with the pre-installed software of the OS, so we have to use Windows Media Player for music and video playback. Thus we are deprived of any kind of settings, there is no equalizer, no bass boost, but we can correct these by installing a couple of 3rd party software. I cannot say anything about the quality of the supplied headset, because of reasons already mentioned in the introduction, but I could test the phone on loudspeaker: it’s loud and a bit distorted, so it’s kind of average. Online content can be played with the aforementioned Streaming player and unfortunately there is no FM radio in P750.

Battery, summary

The battery hiding under the hood has a capacity of 1300 mAh and can keep the machine online for 2 days, if actively used.

Conclusion: even in spite of the hassle about the display, we can still say, that Asus P750 is an outstanding Pocket PC. It’s beautiful, high-quality, unbeatable in terms of speed, has lots of extra software, its data communication features are up-to-date and it even has a GPS receiver. A great fault is only the small size of the RAM and there have been some minor issues about the exterior. It is, however, a huge mistake, that the operating system doesn’t use the VGA display to its full potential, even though the hardware is given. It’s annoying and incomprehensible at the same time.

The price of P750 at the moment of writing this article was about 590 EUR, which is €40 more than Touch Cruise, which has a similar design, is easier to use, but has less extra software and we don’t get car accessories with it. Considering these, the Asus gets a Recommended award, and I leave the potential customers to make the decision.

Asus P750

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

The sample device was supplied by Asus Hungary, thanks.

Specifications

Asus P750
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 MHz UMTS 1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
	Size	58 x 113 x 17.4 mm
	Weight	130 grams
	CPU	520 MHz Intel XScale PXA270
	ROM/RAM	256 / 64 MB (130 / 26 MB free to use)
	Display	2.6” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixel resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen
	Expandability	microSD (SDHC-compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g standards
	Infra / Bluetooth	present / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	20 channel SiRF-Star III
	Audio	2.5 mm jack output, microphone, mono speakers
	Camera	3 megapixel, autofocus, VGA resolution front camera for video calls
	Battery	1300 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	Extra software