We had a meeting with the folks at Asus. They had no presence on the floor, but a small booth near the CES Blogger's Lounge in the South Hall of the Convention Center. They had many of their products out on display some were that were definitely crowded were the Asus Eee PC (we couldn't even get near them - heck it was even hard to enter the booth area since it was at the entrance), but we have seen enough of them in the wild at CES to get a good look at them.
They also had their ,which contained 1TB of hard drive space and pretty impressive performance numbers as well including a nice graphics card. This was designed for the serious gamer and PC Power User who may use it for CGI work, Video editing, game or software development on the go.
In the area where we had our meeting we also got to look at their UMPC.
What we were there for were their new Windows Mobile devices...and it was well worth it too.
They had a nice WM6 Professional phone with GPS called the P527 that was being sold unlocked for around $497 retail.The GPS can log and upload your data to be mapped on places like Google Maps or used in court to fight a speeding ticket.
The outside of the body is a nice tight metal casing with no gaps or creak like you get from current models of phones made from plastic. There is also a nice rubber coating on the back that provides a nice feel in the hand and prevents sliding around when on a flat surface.
The UI on the phone was very nice and some of it was customized to work with the numerical keypad on the front like WM Standard devices aka Smartphones do. There was no included GPS software like that found the MyPal line, but we were told it would come preloaded with North American Maps for those sold to the US and we were able to find it at Amazon for $566.36 with the maps preloaded.
Cellular Radio: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
Dimensions: 113 x 58 x 15.4 mm
Weight: 125 g
Display:TFT touchscreen, 65K colors
Size:240 x 320 pixels, 2.6 inches
Ringtones:Polyphonic (128 channels), Midi, MP3, WMA, WAV
Card slot: microSD (TransFlash)
Memory: - 64 MB RAM
- 128 MB internal memory
- TI OMAP 850 processor 200 MHz
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth: v2.0
Infrared port: Yes
USB:Yes, v1.1
OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional
Camera: 2 MP, 1600x1200 pixels, autofocus, video
Other Features:
- GPS receiver with SiRF Star III chipset
- Business Card Recognition
- FM Radio
- Voice Recognition and Hand-free mode
- MP3 Player
- Java MIDP 2.0
- Scheduler
- Voice memo
- World time
- Currency converter
- Stopwatch
For more information on their products with built in navigation head here for more information on the P527 head here.
They had the WM6 Standard phone, called the Asus M530W that looked alot like the HTC Excalibur/T-Mobile Dash with a 2.54 inch landscape screen, but it had a dedicated volume buttons on the side as well as a jog dial. On the bottom are a mini-USB port and a standard 2.5mm headphone jack. It also had a 2MP camera with LED Flash/Light on the back like most phones in their ilk, but it also has a VGA quality camera for video conferencing. It is powered by a 1200 mAh battery. It also has a microSD slot under the battery cover next to the SIM. The processor is by Intel at 460Mhz with around 150MB of usable memory built-in flash RAM of the 256MB on board and 64 MB of flash ROM with around 52MB of it being used, so it moved very fast. The key pad in touch and feel was very similar to the Moto Q. We were told it could be found at various retailers for around $399 unlocked we found it on Amazon for $395.16! One cool feature that Eric found was that it included card reading software(so we know why there is a 2MP Auto-Macro camera so it can capture the details of a business card without data entry-sweet!) as well as well as ClearVue Document viewer. For more information on the M530W head to the Asus website here.
They also had the Dual screen WM6 Standard called the M930 (Vega 2) which they said would retail around $995. It packed quite a bit in a small package with a 5 line QWERTY keyboard,GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSDPA, WiFi in both b and g, Bluetooth Ver. 2.0 with EDR, USB 2.0, a 2MP camera (we are assuming it is the same Auto Macro mode as the Asus M530W and we can only hope it will come bundled with the business card scanning software as well), 1100 mAh battery and a separate VGA camera on the front of the phone in landscape mode for video conferencing. The internal landscape screen is at 400 x 240, with 256MB of flash, 64MB of ROM. More information on the M930 head to the Asus website here.
The ID design and construction of these phones are first rate. They have all metal bodies, well built no creak to them what so ever. Its nice to see an alternative from the plain Jane phones being offered from today's carriers with no contract. We believe we will see more phones like this emerging without carrier partners from other manufacturers as well giving consumers more choice as to which mobile handset fits them best for their needs. As with their motherboards, video cards, and other products Asus is committed to supporting these devices via their Asus VIP Member Area with software and firmware updates.