The Vodafone Blackberry Storm is now on sale but we have yet to see a great unboxing video until now. Check out this video after the break showing Blackberry’s answer to the iPhone given the full unboxing treatment. We love the way they have obviously spent a lot of time working on the script and could learn a lot after the bad comments we received for our Touch HD unboxing.
With 16 exclusive mobile phones including the new BlackBerry Storm for contract customers, Text Unlimited for all pay as you talk customers, and the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 ‘netbook’ with built-in mobile broadband, Vodafone UK will have something for everyone this Christmas. From the great value £30 pay as you talk Vodafone 527 Rainbow with its range of colours for the fashion conscious, to the latest Sony Ericsson C905 with its 8.1 mega pixel camera, all Vodafone’s Yuletide offerings will make the most of its fast and reliable network.
ASUS today introduced the ASUS P565, a business PDA phone that boasts an 800 MHz processor – the fastest in the world at the time of this announcement. Featuring ASUS’ latest touch-driven user interface—Glide—the stylish, leather-accented P565 delivers graphics and system performance beyond anything else on the market at present, posting Vsbenchmark scores almost two times that of competing products in its class. This enables the P565 to glide through resource-intensive tasks effortlessly and to handle heavy multitasking exceptionally well—making it ideal for businesspeople who demand uncompromising performance and maximum speed from their productivity tools. Rounding off its impressive feature set is a 2.8" touchscreen running at a high resolution of 480 x 640 pixels, delivering an unprecedented degree of clarity that does wonders for both personal photographs and spreadsheets.
Gliding to New Heights of Productivity
The ASUS P565 is geared toward the business community. The coupling of an 800 MHz processor and Glide—an innovative touch-responsive user interface exclusive to select ASUS PDA phones—makes for a powerful, productivity-boosting combination. The fast processor renders the P565 particularly amenable to multitasking, while Glide enables users to switch between tasks rapidly with their fingertips. The P565 also comes with a potent suite of business-oriented features and software, including push mail, business card recognition and Microsoft Office Mobile. Other useful applications such as Anytime Launcher and Multi-Home enable users to view their calendars, the times of local and visiting cities, weather reports, online news and much more—all with an intuitive tap, slide or flick of their fingers.
Unprecedented Clarity with High-resolution Touchscreen
The ASUS P565 is equipped with a 2.8" VGA (480 by 640 pixels) high-resolution touchscreen that delivers unprecedented clarity and brilliance. Photographs look crisper and more true-to-life, while minute details in business documents, such as the individual cells in spreadsheets, are reproduced much more clearly—reducing eye fatigue over periods of prolonged use.
Air of Bespoke Exclusivity
The ASUS P565 is designed to leave a deep and lasting impression. Its battery lid is lined with black synthetic leather, commanding instant respect and attention. The leather contrasts nicely with the P565’s modern, high-gloss face, and lends the phone a natural tactility and evocative appeal that elevates it far above other phones on the market.
About Glide
Glide is a revolutionary touch-responsive user interface that enables users to perform a variety of navigational actions—such as selecting, zooming, scrolling and flipping—easily through simple flicks of their fingers. Incorporated into Glide are also applications that enable users to access a wide range of functions such as looking up the latest news, checking the weather forecast, viewing photo slideshows and listening to music within a few finger taps. These applications, dubbed Multi-Home, Anytime Launcher, EziPhoto, and EziMusic, give the expression "the world at your fingertips" a whole new meaning. For more information on Glide, visit http://event.asus.com/mobile/glide/.
Specifications
| Networks |
HSDPA 3.6Mbps, UMTS 2100, EDGE/GPRS/GSM 900/1800/1900, Class 10 |
|
Operating System |
Microsoft Windows® Mobile 6.1™ Professional |
|
Color |
Black |
|
Form factor |
Bar type |
|
Dimensions |
102 mm x 60.5 mm x 16 mm |
|
Weight |
120 g (with battery) |
|
Standby Time |
250-300 hrs with 3G and 200-250 hrs with 2G** |
|
Talk Time |
3 hrs with 3G and 4 hrs with 2G** |
|
Display |
2.8" TFT, 65K-color Touchscreen, VGA (480 x 640 pixels) |
|
Processor |
Marvell TavorP 800 MHz |
|
Memory |
256 MB Flash + 128 MB DDR SDRAM |
|
Expansion Slot |
MicroSD with SDHC support |
|
Connectivity |
WLAN 802.11b+g , USB v1.1(FS), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR |
|
WAP Browser |
HTTP / WAP 1.2.1/2.0 |
|
Messaging |
SMS / MMS / Email / MSN / Push E-mail |
|
Battery |
1300 mAh Li-Ion |
|
GPS |
SiRF Star III with InstantFix |
|
Business Applications |
|
|
PIM |
Word (editor), Excel (editor), PowerPoint (viewer), Windows® Live, MSN, Voice Commander* and Push Email (Exchange Server). |
|
Other Features |
Anytime Launcher, ASUS Today, EziMusic, EziPhoto, Business Card Recognition and PDF viewer*. |
|
Multimedia and Entertainment |
|
|
Camera |
3 M Pixel Auto Focus (Main) |
|
Video |
Record:MPEG4@QVGA 24fps / H.263@QCIF 24fps |
|
Picture Format |
JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP |
|
Audio Format |
MP3, WMA, 3GP, AAC, and AAC+ |
|
Ringtone |
MP3 / MIDI |
|
JAVA |
J2ME (CLDC 1.1 + MIDP2.0) |
Posted by: John
Since the official launch 3 days ago on YOTA various videos have appeared online and if you speak the lingo then this will be right up your street.
Not the greatest video in the world in regards to brightness but it does show that the phone itself really does not differ much from that of the HD which we hope to have the full review on-line for tomorrow.
You can see more videos of this phone on YouTube
Posted by: John
MID – Mobile Internet Device. Small pocket-sized computers running desktop-type applications and with a full suite of connectivity options. The M528 is a MID. Intel seems to be very keen about MIDs at the moment, and it seems that they are the next great thing. Mind you, Nokia has been quietly punting them out for a few years now in the shape of the N770, N800 and N810 internet tablets (all Linux devices). I was keen to see how the M528 compared against the venerable Nokia’s because it terms of specification it blows them away.
What’s in the box?
General
Before I delve into reviewing the M528 in any depth I think it’s important to highlight the fact that this would appear to be a pre-production release model. Why do I think this? The unit came without any manual, documentation, software CD or indeed a retail box. I will also confess to being a fan and user of Nokias internet tablet so, it was natural that I judge the M528 against them.
My first reaction upon opening the box was “It’s just like a Nokia N810”. It could easily be mistaken for one such is the close resemblance. The M528 is a bit bigger all round and a fair bit heavier, but nevertheless it screams N810. It’s an exceedingly well specified and good looking device. In terms of hardware it presses all the buttons: large, bright and sharp display; proper USB ports; fast cpu; plenty of memory; a slide-out keyboard; memory slot; a sim card slot for 3G connectivity; big battery…… Portable computing heaven – if this is the way forward then count me in.
For a flavour of what the device is like see Matt’s recent unboxing:
https://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk/blogs/index.php?blog=2&paged=2
Like the Nokia internet tablets it runs a form of Linux – in this case Midinux. Linux is eminently suitable for MIDs with its low overheads and hardware requirements. Linux is also highly customisable and has wonderful community support, so I was somewhat perturbed to discover that this particular flavour is crippled and lacking in functionality – more later.
Controls
The M528 has been thoughtfully provided with a number of connection options and some sensibly positioned controls
Top: Camera shutter release, 3.5mm headphone jack, std USB port, volume up/down switch, microSD card slot, mini USB port.
Bottom: Power jack, Power switch
Front: TFT screen, slide-out keyboard, smart key for quick access to certain applications
Back: Speaker, battery/SIM cover, camera lens, reset hole. Stylus slot (on the top right when viewed from the back)
Left & Right: Nothing to speak of on either side of the M528 apart from the stylus which sits on the left side of the device.
Gigabyte M528 Specification:
Highlights:
Lowlights:
Review
As I have already said, I do not believe the review unit to be a production or final release product, therefore my comments should be regarded in this light. The version of Linux installed does not seem to correspond with the published spec’s and the review unit carried no statutory approval stamps or markings.
The M528 is a compact unit with a dense feel to it in the hand. Although not much bigger than a Nokia N800, it is substantially heavier and trying to carry this in your trouser pocket will result in one’s trousers trying to make a break for freedom. Like the N810 I recently reviewed, the M528 has a slide out keyboard. It’s a little bit creaky when being handled and when the keyboard slides out it feels a bit loose. The keyboard itself is a membrane type which, although lacking in good tactile feedback (they’re all like that) makes entering text much easier than relying on a stylus. Therefore, it is surprising to find that the bundled software includes very little that can make use of the keyboard. There is no word processor or e-mail client.
Connecting to a wireless network proved to be very frustrating. Despite entering the correct credentials of my network it would not connect until I made my network visible. “Ah-ha!”, I thought….”now we have a connection let’s make it invisible again for security purposes”. The M528 had other ideas. As soon as I did that the M528 dropped the connection. Once the connection had been dropped then the unit promptly forgot the connection details! In order to connect again it was necessary to make my network visible and then go through the entire process of entering the connection info again. The unit would also sporadically drop connection. Now I am an exponent and a user of Linux, but I was fairly unimpressed that getting a connection was so difficult – normally it’s child’s play and my Nokian N800 is simply leagues ahead in this respect.
Once I had got a connection I fired up the Coolfox web browser. This appeared to be a cut down version of Firefox. In use it proved to be speedy and smooth – it was a delight to use and quite a revelation on the beautiful 4.8” screen. Certainly, the user experience blew my N800 away when it came to browsing – in fact it felt just like using Firefox on a good laptop. Until it crashed that is. As intimated, the suite of applications installed is very limited. There was a media player, but it would not run whilst Coolfox was running for some unfathomable reason – a pop-up dialogue appears telling you so when you try.
The battery was a 3.7v/2700mAh Li-Polymer item (the spec’ claims 3060mAh). This capacity seemed to be plentiful even with the screen backlighting set to near maximum. The battery itself is a monster. Given the discrepancy between the published specification and the actual item in use it would be unfair to draw any conclusions regarding battery life, but I can say it never actually bothered me. So that must be good and the bigger specced item must be even better, right?
Conclusion:
The M528 has a lot of promise as does the entire class of MIDs. I’ve long been an advocate of the MID form factor (or internet tablet). Unfortunately, the M528 as reviewed was highly buggy, devoid of any means of software updates, it was not possible to add extra software, configure it or indeed do very much with it. For this reason it is difficult to draw any conclusions about it. At the time of writing non of the usual retailers actually list the machine as available and in stock so, I am really hoping that devices customers purchase are much more functional and complete. For the time being though, I cannot recommend the device in its current state. Work in progress I would say.
Review by: Nigel
[ Post Tags: Gigabyte, UMPC, Laptop, tablet pc, M528, tracyandmatt.co.uk ]
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