Here at TFOT we had a chance to talk to Micael Lin form ASUS and play with the beta version of the P526 on display at Cebit 2007. The immediate reaction after holding the device is the appreciation of how slim and light it is. At 115g (4 oz) the device was barely noticeable. Although ASUS went for power saving when picking the TI OMAP 850 200MHz processor from our very brief experience performance didn’t seem to suffer too much. Power and weight considerations also affected ASUS’ choice not to include a WIFI module which is somewhat regrettable given the phone superb other qualities.
The P526 comes with Quad-band GMS/GPRS/EDGE support as well as global roaming, numeric keys and a scrolling wheel for simple navigation. The OS will be the new windows mobile 6 running on the TI OMAP 850 200MHz processor mentioned earlier with 128 MB ROM and 64 MB RAM memory. The P526 has a 2M-Pixel camera, integrated SiRF Star III GPS and 2.6″ 65,536 colors at screen with 240×320 pixels resolution (ASUS mentioned something regarding 640 x 480 but we might have misunderstood with all the noise around).
The P526 belongs to a group of media oriented PPCs while some of the other PPCs from ASUS, such as the P735 are more business oriented. Another PPC from ASUS on display at CEBIT 2007 was the M530w, a blackberry-like device belonging to a group of "connectivity" oriented devices.
