RIP Dopod 900, Hello Asus 525

The search for the elusive ideal PDA phone continues...As most of you guys know, I migrated to the Dopod 900 about a year ago. It was pretty much everything I needed out of a phone at that time.Everything but the kitchen sink. I loved that I could hammer out professional-looking emails on the road without needing to boot up my PC.There were only a few caveats that I didn't like:a. I missed a physical numeric keypad like a regular phone.b. It was big and heavySo I switched to a Sony Ericsson m600 for my Blackberry client/phone for a while and it was a decent compromise. But two things made me switch back to the Dopod 900.Firstly, my company was switching to MS Push Mail for more functionality (>60KB downloads!! FINALLY!) and our authentication certificates only worked with Windows Mobile phones. And the other was that one of my commonly-used buttons on the m600 (Return/Back key) was no longer working.I began to enjoy using the brick again. Like rediscovering an old girlfriend, I guess.But alas, tragedy struck yesterday!Someone/something must have bumped into me. And despite closing the screen in clamshell mode, my LCD screen cracked. *sigh* I could see a small dent on the back cover behind the LCD.To be honest, I was trying to hold out for this baby, the HTC Wings, and use the 900 until this new phone arrives later this year with WM6.IMHO, this is almost the ideal form factor. Regular numeric keypad that you could use as a normal phone (T9 SMS, speed dial or *ahem* when you need to use the keys without looking directly at the phone).And when the need to hammer out an email arises, slide out the keypad and voila. Full keyboard capability (well almost, the 900 has an extra row for numbers which I find very useful).But the cracked screen hastened my migration. Initially, I thought of using a more conventional phone until WM6 and Wings arrived. I was moving to a new job which didn't use Push Mail nor Blackberry. So I looked at the SE k800i, the w880, the Nokia N73 Music Edition etc, but I just couldn't bring myself to buy them. After all, I liked how I had arranged my contacts and Address Book in Outlook and SE used to muck around with the order and grouping I used.When I headed to Sim Lim Square later, I was surprised to see this: the successor to my Dopod 900.This thing is pretty beautiful. The screen is huge and very readable. Very very readable. But it was even pricier than the 900. In fact, it was almost the price I paid for my new Pavillion tx1000 TabletPC!! And I believed it was pretty clunky as a phone. As a portable system to capitalize on the growing WirelessSG network, I feel the tx1000 is a MUCH better system with a better more usable screen. Also, with M1's wireless 3G service, I could get the phone/cellular functionality of the U1000!.The deal breaker IMHO was the keyboard. The keyboard was on a thin piece of plastic that was not fully integrated with the rest of the unit, but was attached magnetically. I didn't think the travel and key response was very good. It felt even worse than the clip on keyboard of the old Compaq tablet.A part of me secretly wanted the Dopod 838Pro but at S$1299, it was too expensive an interim solution until the HTC WingsI popped over to AAAS.com and started looking at the O2 Zinc, which looked like the 838Pro but was about 100 bucks cheaper. One major difference though was the lack of a scroller wheel that the 838Pro had.Then I chanced upon this older model.I first saw it in Hong Kong about 2 months back, and it was already a pretty old model then. And I almost bought it then (less than S$800 after conversion) but it was a Chinese language model and I wasn't sure about warranty.The major compromises for the Asus p525 were
no QWERTY keyboard (I won't have Push Mail in my new job so I guess it's not an issue)
no 3G/UMTS or HSPDA, which may be handy if I transit in Japan or KoreaAt S$899, it wasn't too bad a deal. They bundled a screen protector, a 1GB mini-SD and a Bluetooth USB 2.0 dongle. It isn't too big actually, and the screen is a usable 2.8". The other alternative was the O2 Stealth, but that keyboard was nigh unusable. The Asus p525 keyboard is surprisingly responsive and feels as good as any from Sony Ericsson or Nokia.Am going to configure it for Push Mail access on Monday, but in the interim, battery life looks pretty good and I am getting re-acquainted with the T9 input again. So far, it has been a breeze. Wireless LAN access seems stronger than with the Dopod 900, and the machine feels pretty responsive. Camera with auto-focus and decent powered flash is above average.The only niggling downsides are the lower resolution screen for Internet browsing. Solitaire looked particularly bad, after I have been used to the 640x480 version in the Dopod 900. Also, enabling ClearType seemed to cause some rainbow effect around the edges of text. But I am perfectly fine with disabling ClearType anyway.Will update this page when I get more usage out of it.