ASUS recently unveiled their new P552w, a smartphone that does what most smartphones do today - you know, WiFi, Bluetooth, some sort of PIM functionality, and oh yes they have their own gesture control technology called “Glide.” Really, it’s about “gliding” your fingers through the screen to see the different modes …. yeah. The Windows Moblie 6.1 enabled phone comes with a 2.0MP camera and HSDPA, alongside WiFi capabilities. Pretty much standard.

I’d have to say that this phone would sell well if the proprietary user interface they implemented isn’t laggy. These Windows Mobile phones — sigh. I haven’t seen a really seamless integration of a proprietary launcher screen on any of these phones, save for the first HTC Touch I guess. But still, nothing as seamless as it should be. I’m not sure if this is Windows Mobile’s fault or the 3rd party developers.

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Depending on where you’re from you may or may not have heard of ASUSTEK’s P527. Although ASUS doesn’t come out with phones as often as the big players do, they seem to have some sort of cult following, not as zealous as Mac users pray tell, but zealous nonetheless. The P527 is jam packed with features — although it doesn’t have next gen HSDPA technology built in, it still makes up with 802.11g wireless Internet, 2MP camera, MP3 and multimedia functions, and an office suite solution for only USD $420.00.

A complete set of specs can be found on ASUS’ product page.

Resembling much of the Palm Tungsten W of old, the ASUS M530w is a thumb board navigation smartphone that seems to make sense, just from looking at the real estate. It comes with a nfastastic array of connectivity options including Bluetooth and WiFi 802.11b/g which is really a staple in today’s market for enterprise phones.

The main selling point of the ASUS M530w is its suggested retail price which of late has not yet been announced. However, it is easily surmised that the phone will be very affordable as it is the staple of ASUS to release good products at very affordble prices. Stay tuned for this phone - it’s a good buy in spite of its lack of HSDPA.

Photo courtesy of CNET.

You know, this kinda reminds me of the BenQ-Siemens P50. Interestingly enough, the ASUS P750 looks like an all around solid smartphone. Running on Windows Mobile 6 (with handwriting recognition), the P750 comes with a fast HSDPA connectivity feature as well as wireless 802.11g. Selling points include a 3MP camera, all around connectivity with push email and GPS.

Announced two months ago, the ASUS P750 will be available soon. For more specs, proceed here. The holidays are just around the corner — this is definitely a good buy!

Windows Vista has a little brother in Windows Mobile. At least that is where it seems to be going. The SideShow application turns your mobile device into a small “Tempest Junior” for the huge desktop “Thunder Sub.”

Here are a few things up for the testing grounds according to the devs:

* New Portrait QVGA UI designed for remote controls
* New Universal driver for Windows SideShow that supports USB and Bluetooth communication
* New Simulator that uses the Universal driver
* New user switching UI for devices operating in the assigned user mode
* New Bluetooth menu commands
* Support for Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian languages

Gee. Although SideShow works with mobile devices with two screens, there has to be a way to link it up to your mobile phone to view pertinent information. Since SideShow uses gadgets, I guess an upgrade to the WM OS would allow support for these.

ASUS has recently released the Z802, one of their higher-end 3G phones. The Z802 has the following features:

• 3G clamshell design
• high quality 260K external display
• 2MP camera with built in flash and a secondary 0.3MP camera for video
• support for microSD memory expansion
• chrome design and compact

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The ASUS Z810 promises competent specs as well as a built in karaoke feature. As an emerging player in the phone market, ASUS has made sure that this clamshell phone looks and feels sexy. The phone doesn’t support EDGE nr 3G though and this may be a bummer for those people who make use of these functions often.

Some features include:

• 2MP camera at 1600 x 1200 quality with zoom and flash
• 64MB internal memory with microSD expansion
• GPRS connectivity
• USB charging and connectivity
• Bluetooth

More specs here.

I’ve been playing with ASUS’ new Windows Mobile 5 device for about a week and I think I’ve finally gotten past the learning curve. It’s been a while since I last used the Windows Mobile platform. Familiarity breeds contempt they say.

The new Windows Mobile 5 platform isn’t much of a killer OS for phones. With the advent of simplified everything, a lot of phone functions that may have been intuitive. The main downers of the phone are twofold - the first is a weak battery life, something that has been the sickness of almost all devices running Windows Mobile. Second is the hardware design of the keypad. Plus points to ASUS for creating a smart phone with a numerical keypad adorning the real estate. This gives consumers the feeling that they are buying a phone, and not a computer.

Sadly though the middle joystick is a bit lost. It goes out of place being positioned right below the number 2 key. People with big AND small hands will accidentally push both buttons the first few days they try to get used to it. I learned that pressing buttons close to the joystick from an angle lessens this impediment.

There are two highlights I am loving: first is the integration of Bluetooth and WiFi 802.11G connectivity on this device. So you have GSM, GPRS and the other two aforementioned connectivity options. Neat! The second highlight is the T9 input which Sony Ericsson users wil have no problem getting used to because button combinations are exactly the same.

I’ve been having problems with the screen alignment on a daily basis. For some reason, locking the phone through a hardware button and putting it in my pocket starts some warp field that misaligns the device’s screen on the right side (a bummer since this is where the Close App button and scroll bars are located).

I’ll be posting some pictures soon.

ASUS has been surprising us with phones that are not only deliciously appealing to the eye, but breed a lot of functionality as well. The J208 for instance provides a good mix of multimedia and connectivity options packed in a slider form factor.

On the connectivity side, the J208 comes with Bluetooth, allowing you to connect via Skype to other computers.

On the multimedia side, it comes with a 2.0MP camera, FM radion, MP3 player and video recorder at 15fps. It comes with a miniSD expansion slot with a 64MB card bundled in.