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Asus P835
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Earlier this year, Asus announced that it would be teaming up with navigation device manufacturer Garmin to create the Garmin-Asus brand. But products take months from conception before reaching the market and, understandably, the Taiwan company would have products in the pipeline before the Garmin deal was inked. That's exactly what the P835 is, the last touchscreen cellular device from Asus before every subsequent one starts to bear the Garmin-Asus name. Not only is this handheld packed with features, it has an attractive price of S$798 before subsidies. But is it worth the asking price? Let's find out.
Design
Once you pick up the P835, you can feel that it's a solid device. At 148g, it isn't light, and that's to some extent due to the metal parts used in the design. A small portion under the buttons has a faux leather finish, which supposedly gives it a professional look, and is not unlike what's found on the back of the BlackBerry Bold. With dimensions of 115 x 59 x 13.8mm, it isn't particularly compact because of the length. Overall, it doesn't feel as sleek as devices like the Apple iPhone or HTC Touch Diamond2, and probably won't turn any heads for attractiveness.
The length of the device has a lot to do with its large 3.5-inch display. For comparison's sake, the HTC Touch Diamond2 has a 3.2-inch screen while the Touch HD's measures 3.8 inches. The P835's screen is definitely big enough for most purposes and has a screen resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, similar to other high-end Windows Mobile devices on the market now.
Under the screen is a row of touch-sensitive buttons which include a Windows Start key and an OK button to get out of menus quickly. Below them is a trackball for navigating the interface, which also acts as a selector when depressed. On the right side of the device is the microSD card slot and a camera shutter. On the left are the volume controls and a hold switch. As mentioned in earlier Asus handheld reviews, the hold switch is something we really like on a smartphone. This makes it easy to turn the screen off and lock the keys at the same time.
On the base of the P835 is a reset button you can poke at with the stylus tip and a single mini-USB port. Like many of the HTC devices, that's the only connector you'll find on this smartphone, which means it's used for charging, syncing and connecting a wired headset. So if you want to use a standard pair of headphones which utilize a 3.5mm audio jack, an optional adapter will be needed.
Features
Though it may not be the nicest-looking device around, the P835 makes up for that with an impressive list of features. Its cellular connectivity options include tri-band HSDPA and quad-band GSM. Other wireless options are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS for navigation.
Memory-wise, aside from the option to increase the built-in storage using the microSD card slot, the P835 has 4GB already installed. So, right out of the box, you can start loading music and videos without worrying about space constraints. For running applications, it has 288MB of RAM, similar to what's found on HTC's high-end products like the Touch Diamond2 and Touch HD.
On the software side, Asus has included quite a number of applications with the P835. One of them is the Opera Mobile browser which renders Web pages much better than the default Internet Explorer. Others include Asus' own media management programs like EziMusic for tracks and EziPhoto for images. One of the most interesting ones is the Wi-Fi Sharing app. This connects the phone to your data plan and sends out a Wi-Fi signal so that up to 10 users can share your HSDPA connection at once. It's not a feature we think many will use often, but is useful to have.
Unfortunately, the user interface customizations performed by Asus don't seem to be as useful. The modified Home screen and Gester (finger-friendly scrolling) interface haven't been improved much from the P565 and still feel clunky compared to solutions like Spb Mobile Shell and HTC's TouchFlo. The AnyTime Launcher addon, for example, is supposed to make commonly used apps more accessible. But switching between categories of programs was not smooth and the entire experience just didn't feel like a significant improvement over the default Windows Mobile programs menu.
A 5-megapixel camera is found at the back of the P835. This comes with autofocus but not an LED for lighting up subjects. The shots taken were of reasonable quality, but as with most smartphone cameras, don't expect a miracle if you want to print them out.
Tags: Garmin Ltd., Smart Phone, Camera, High Tech Computer Corp., handheld
