These phones enabled with Global Positioning System, GPS help you find your exact location anywhere you are travelling.

GPS works on satellite imaging, some GPS-enabled handsets can even guide you to the easiest route to reach your destination.

Asus P527

Asus, a company perhaps best known for making motherboards for personal computers, has its eyes firmly on the smartphone market. The P527 is a Windows Mobile Professional smartphone that comes equipped with high-end features like an auto-focus camera and GPS navigation.

A practical feature, which the company has included, is an alphanumeric phone keypad that is a rarity in a touchscreen-based Windows Mobile device. The only design problem with Asus P527 lies with the joystick which is a nuisance while navigating options menus, since an unintentional left or right movement can exit the menu. This can be very irritating while navigating maps.

The good thing is that Asus has built a GPS Catcher application that downloads hints for the GPS system. There is another application called the Travellog that lets users track where they travel easily, and the LocationCourier programme, which sends the phone's position to a contact via SMS. P527 also adds another punch with the Asus GO navigation software.

This application offers very flexible navigation. For example, the device can be configured for portrait or landscape display modes, automatically switching to night mode, and has a large points of interest (POI) database.

GO also has a pedestrian mode for walkers, producing amazingly clear voice prompts when running/walking. Since GO is far too large for the P527's 128MB of internal storage, the system ships with an included 2GB microSD card, 1.7GB of which is used for the mapping data and application itself.

A price of Rs 17,900 looks like a steal for this one. It is worth a thought as to why Asus has not upgraded the P527's 200MHz TI OMAP850 processor and 64MB RAM combination.

Next

Powered by