IT MAY have just recently arrived on our shores, but the BenQ P50 is a Pocket PC-based phone that was announced almost a year ago and for one reason or another has been delayed until now. A year ago when it was announced, the specifications were top notch as it ran the latest Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003SE operating system and came with Bluetooth and WiFi in addition to GSM functionality. Now that it’s here, how does it stack up against the competition that�s out there right now? Read on to find out.
Build and looks
Even in photos, the P50 s a very nice-looking device � it’s finished in a kind of gunmetal colour and looks like an elongated O2 XDA II mini, with a thumb-keyboard added. Just like the XDA II mini, the P50 runs on Windows Mobile for Pocket PC 2003SE Phone Edition, which means that unlike the Windows Mobile for Smartphone operating system, the P50 has a touch-sensitive screen and an interface that�s exactly like Pocket PC handhelds.
Size-wise, the P50 is a lot thicker than the XDA II Mini, though it’s still comfortable to hold. In fact, its slightly longer body compared to the XDA II mini means that the P50 feels a bit more natural as a phone when you put it up to your ear.
Of course, the most interesting feature of the P50 is the little Qwerty thumb-keyboard that covers most of the bottom of the device.
At first glance, the keys seem a little small and too closely spaced together to be of any use, but try typing on it and you’ll find it surprisingly usable � the keys are shaped in such a way that even large fingers will be able to type on it without pressing the wrong keys.
In fact, I�ve shown the keyboard to quite a few people with small to extremely large hands, and although almost all of them doubted they could type reliably with the thumb keyboard of the P50, all of them could do it.
The only real problem with the keyboard is that not everyone is really familiar with a Qwerty keyboard � if you’re a hunt-and-peck typist, tapping out an SMS could take you longer than with the alphanumeric keypad of a phone (whether using T9 or not) as you have more keys to look through to find the letter you want.
The small fonts on each key don�t help either. The only other buttons on the front of the P50 are the usual Pocket PC buttons � the navigation pad in the centre flanked by a Call button and the Contacts button on the left and a Hang-up button and Calendar button on the right.
Rounding off the buttons list are the volume buttons as well as a shortcut button for the Notes application on the left, and a shortcut button to launch the digital camera on the right. The P50 comes with an SD card slot, located on the bottom of the handheld instead of the more common placement on the top. The slot supports SD Input/Output, which means you can also plug in expansion cards such as a GPS (Global Positioning System) card or FM radio card.
However, the placement of the card slot at the bottom means that sometimes peripherals that plug into the slot will stick out quite uncomfortably from the bottom. Incidentally, the synchronisation port is located on the right side of the device next to the charging port, and it is a standard USB 2.0 miniport.
Software and performance
As far as the Pocket PC side of things go, the P50 is pretty well equipped with software applications. Apart from the usual Pocket PC applications (MSN Messenger, Word, Excel and Windows Media Player 10) you also get a bunch of other applications such as Universal Remocon (an application for controlling consumer electronics) and most interestingly, Speech Commander, which is a voice recognition application that allows you to navigate the device using your voice.
Universal Remocon is a pretty good remote control application, but you’ll probably have to use the learning function a lot since the remote controller codes built into the device are pretty limited. On the other hand, Speech Commander works fabulously well � the application allows you to verbally call out a name and ask the P50 to dial that contact, plus launch other applications.
In actual use, it worked like a charm and required no training at all � I successfully managed to launch apps and dial numbers by just using voice commands. The only times that it would not work was when I called out Asian names, where the application would sometimes incorrectly guess what I was saying. The built-in 1.3-megapixel camera produced only okay results, which is about the same in quality as most handhelds out there.
However, the camera seems to have a real problem shooting in low light, producing rather dark pictures most of the time, and there are very few controls beyond contrast and brightness for adjusting exposure.
Cutting the wires
On the wireless side, the P50 supports quad-band GSM (900/1800/850/1900) so you’re pretty much covered anywhere in the world that supports the GSM standard. Unfortunately, the P50 supports only supports GPRS for data transfer and not EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) nor 3G (third generation) networks, which shows that this device has arrived pretty late in a local market that is now moving on to these faster data speeds.
In this regard, the 3G or EDGE connectivity would really have been important for the P50 since the operating system and hardware virtually cry out for multimedia content. Nevertheless, if you just connect to the Net occasionally to check your e-mail or to chat on MSN Messenger, then the 30kbps plus speeds available using GPRS is quite adequate.
However, the P50�s trump card is that it’s one of the few Pocket PC phones that come with WiFi connectivity, which allows you to connect to one of the many free and not-so-free wireless networks available out there. There’s also Bluetooth, but as far as I can see, the P50 does not support the modem profile which allows you to use the device as a modem when connected to a notebook PC.
All these wireless hardware really takes a toll on the battery, however, and with WiFi on, the P50 won’t even last you a day, so if you value your talk time, make sure you have WiFi off when you don�t intend to use it. With all wireless options off except for the phone, you can expect about a day’s worth of juice before you have to recharge � not great for a phone, but pretty normal for a Pocket PC.
Bugs
There are some really strange bugs on the P50 � in fact, so strange that I had to double check on the Net if other people were experiencing them as well before I write about it. For example, the first time I got the device, I found that I could not launch the messaging application, even when I hard reset the P50 and restored it to its original state.
Strangely enough, after a bit of consultation, I found out that it worked after I hard reset the device a couple more times with my SIM card inside. Another weird bug I encountered was that the handheld would sometimes spontaneously turn on, even when it was not receiving SMS or calls, or doing anything in particular for that matter.
This is potentially a serious flaw since having it turn on in your pocket means that its likely to stay turned on when the screen is touched by stuff in your pocket, or even worse, accidentally dial somebody in your contacts list.
Conclusion
So is the P50 any good? The answer isn�t that simple. On one hand, the device is very well specified, giving you all the wireless options you could possibly want, together with a very usable thumb-keyboard. Plus it�s a Pocket PC device with all the applications and versatility that comes with that.
However, there’re a couple of �gotchas� � for one thing, the P50 does not support 3G, which means that the handheld’s high-speed data connection to the Net will be limited to WiFi hotspots. Also, though I have not been able to confirm this, the P50 is probably not upgradeable to the latest Windows Mobile 5 operating system, which, amongst other things, brings with it a new persistent storage system that ensures all your data is safe even when the battery runs completely flat.
This may not be a big thing for handhelds in general, but persistent storage is very, very important when you are using a phone. One can�t help but think that the P50 would have been an incredible device if it came out in the middle of last year. All said, the P50 is still a very well featured and solid device to use, even taking into consideration the few bugs, which will hopefully be fixed in a future firmware update.
Pros: WiFi Bluetooth quad-band GSM nice form factor.
Cons: Some strange bugs operating system a little outdated.
