Holy crap … here’s something I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently, ASUS has been quietly working on their very first smartphone model, the P505 (pictured on the left) since early last year, and the word is that they’ll be debuting it soon in the States, which probably means we’re not too far away as well.
What I love about this is that I’ve been buying ASUS hardware for my PC since I first started assembling my own rigs and I’ve never been disappointed by the level of quality of their products. (Granted, I never got around to trying the ASUS Pocket PC –the rival iPAQ line at the time was just too good to ignore.)
The P505 uses a P900-style half-clam form factor to partially hide the screen when in “phone mode.” The reverse side of the lid (the bottom half of the picture) contains the numeric keypad. It’s a lot smaller than the P900 though … this photo shows that it’s just a tad wider than a closed S700.
ASUS manages to pack in a lot of goodies though, despite the small size: it’s got a 416MHz processor, 128mb of internal memory, an SD/MMC card slot, a 1.3MP Camera with Flash, and Bluetooth, Infrared and USB 1.1 connectivity. I’m not sure whether it’ll be packing the Windows Mobile Magneto though (the spec sheet says Windows Mobile 2003, so probably not), which is the only not-so-good thing about this little wonder. Oh, and no WIFI yet. Drats.