Technology, Data Recovery, Cell Phones, Latest Gadgets, Game Reviews

Asus has brought up their full line-up of PDA phones and the P525 is a PDA with a number pad, sometimes of a rarity. Its a touch screen running Windows Mobile 5 and the charcoal grey that made the P525 such a good looker makes another appearance. The P525 is a beautiful beast, all smokey gray with chrome buttons down the side panel in sharp contrast. We also liked the screen-crisp, clear and good contrast, visible even in direct sunlight.
The number keys look like sculpted buttons that have been integrated into the body. They give just the right amount of feedback when used, and never feel tacky.We don’t like the joystick though; its too small and smooth and theres insufficient tactile feedback. We also didn’t like the fact that the joysctick’s in between the number keys 2 and 5. this affects access to the number 2.
Voice commander makes another appearance, a really excellent piece of code, this-that allows you to do so much more with the voice commands. The excellent business card scanner is also preinstalled. Theres also a password protected security application called My Secrets that allows you to protect your files by encrypting them. All the usual Windows Mobile applications are present as well.
There is a dedicated button for the camera, which is surprisingly good for a PDA. The volume button is very ergonomic, as is the hold button which prevents keypad, button and screen use.
While the loud speaker offers decent volume, we lament the volume levels on the hands free kit, its just too low, be it music or a voice call. While on the topic of calls, signal quality could have been better, a parent weakness of most of the PDAs. If you need a good phone, please look elsewhere.
Where the P525 scores is in PDA functionality (even though it forgoes a QWERTY keypad), looks nobody will disagree here and, of course, the software package that improves productivity by quite an extent. At $500 the ASUS P525 is a good PDA, but a strictly avarage phone. Its flashy for sure, and will draw glances anywhere. You’ll have to decide what is more important to you - PDA features or just a Mobile Phone.