Product Listing

First Looks: ASUS P750 (3.5G)

By Seow Tein Hee - 22 Jan 2008

A Light Touch

A Light Touch

 

The HTC TyTN II has seen its fair share of action in recent months, fulfilling the hype that came with it. Many would have thought that the TyTN II would be the undisputed pack rat for the smartphones of 2007, but the ASUS P750 could prove to be a worthy contender.

Featherweight Design, Heavyweight Performance

ASUS stays true to its simple, candybar form factor design, packing impressive specifications into a light weight 130g body. What truly shines with the P750 is its array of specifications that includes a high speed Marvell PXA270M 520MHz CPU, one of the highest speed processors we've seen in current smartphones. However, while it outshines the TyTN II in the CPU department, the P750 takes a beating with its lower 64MB RAM capacity, half the size of what the TyTN II offers. So what we get is a compromise of slower application speeds due to its heavily discounted memory size, which impacts its ability to handle multiple open applications with more efficiency.

Functions Galore

Building upon its predecessor, the P735's success as a smartphone that offers top of the line functionality, the P750 comes with a galore of functions that adds HSDPA and GPS (utilizing a SiRF Star III chip) to more common functions such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 that you see on most smartphones.

Additional bells and whistles for the P750 include applications such as a business card scanner and a 3-megapixel camera with auto-focus capable of pretty good image quality. However, the lack of built-in flash makes night shots impossible. Users also need to be careful of battery life. With everything enabled, we've got the phone down flat with less than a day of average cellular activity.

Audio options are available through 2.5mm jack or Bluetooth stereo with A2DP profile support. To the right, you've got the power button, soft reset and oddly enough, a microSD expansion slot that comes without a protective cover, leaving the slot exposed to the elements.

A Keypad Less Traveled

Nonetheless, the P750 does hold its weight well (pun intended), running on Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which in layman terms mean touch screen input. This moves us to another of the P750's strong points. The phone has a score of navigation option available, from its regular keypad to a 5-way directional block, a jog dial and finally its 2.6-inch touch screen display.

The keypad on the P750 is not exactly a full fledged QWERTY keyboard, but is well implemented for ease of use with an evenly spread weight balance so you don't get the top-heavy feeling while texting like you do from the HTC Touch Dual. Of special note however, is the touch screen itself, which was surprisingly lacking in sensitivity, requiring an ample amount of force to register proper input when using the stylus. This makes navigation quite a clunky affair, and you'd probably attract a fair number of stares from bystanders thinking you're stabbing your phone.

Final Verdict

The ASUS P750 sets itself up as a lightweight smartphone that is heavy on network features such as HSDPA and GPS. ASUS has the formula right on paper, but there are still a number of usability quirks that need to be worked on. Its S$1188 (~US$820) price tag makes it quite an exclusive phone as well. Nevertheless, the ASUS P750 offers much for the consumers, and is a smartphone that holds itself well against strong contenders of its category.
 

 

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