Windows Phone Thoughts: A Strong Competitor - Asus MyPal A730 Reviewed

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Monday, December 13, 2004

A Strong Competitor - Asus MyPal A730 Reviewed

Posted by Zack Mahdavi in "HARDWARE" @ 10:00 AM


Camera & Sound
The MyPal A730 has a built-in 1.3MP camera, making it one of only a few of the currently available VGA resolution Pocket PCs to offer such a feature. However, the pictures are murky in scenes that are lit with artificial light. Even with the flash on, I couldn't get the pictures to look quite right. It's nice, however, to see a Pocket PC manufacturer include a flash with the camera. A flash can make all the difference in a dark scene. Another thing to note is that it takes the "Asus Camera" application several seconds to start up, which pretty much eliminates the possibility of using this camera to take quick shots. I think that this slowness problem can be fixed with a ROM update. In general, however, the 1.3MP pictures turn out very nice when taking pictures of scenes illuminated with natural light.


Figure 8: This is a picture of my room taken with a very bright fluorescent light.

On the other hand, the ASUS Camera application has some cool features including a picture organizer and a slide show program. It can also access photos stores anywhere on the Pocket PC.


Figure 9: The included ASUS Camera program is loaded.

Sound plays well on this device. The built in speaker is loud, and mp3s play well through the headphone jack. The model that I tested includes the new Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition "Adaptation Kit Update 2" (aka AKU2), which basically includes the new Windows Media Player 10. Since this program is still in its debug stages, I did not thoroughly test it out. However, I will include a screenshot for your drooling pleasure. As you can see, Windows Media Player 10 is a massive update to the previous player. I especially like the new look of the program.


Figure 10: A preview of Windows Media Player 10.

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