It may be the first Windows Mobile device small enough to take on palmOne's line of Treos: Michael Oryl gets a sneak peek at the minute and powerful BenQ P50 at CES.
Yesterday, BenQ launched their highly anticipated P50 communicator at CES 2005 in Las Vegas. The P50 is a very compact, Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Phone Edition-based device that tries hard to maintain a slim phone-like profile while still offering full PDA functionality and a QWERTY keyboard.
The P50 offers a reasonably large feature set for those that can handle its anticipated street price of $800 USD. Naturally there is Bluetooth support, but in addition to that, the P50 offers Wi-Fi 802.11b support. When you add that to the quad-band GSM data capabilities that come with being a phone, you end up with a very connected Pocket PC device that is fully on par with recent competitors such as the T-Mobile MDA III, O2 XDA IIs and others. There is even a consumer-grade IR port that will allow you to use the P50 as a remote control for your home entertainment devices.
 | | BenQ P50 |
One of the other major draws of the device beyond connectivity is its QWERTY keyboard. While a bit cramped, the backlit keys have a decent action to them that I think most people will be able to adapt to - especially those coming from devices such as palmOne's Treo line.
Under the hood, 64 MB of RAM matches 64 MB of ROM, and the built-in storage can also be augmented with SD flash cards that can be inserted into a slot on the very bottom of the device. This is a good thing since the P50 is also equipped with a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that could otherwise easily fill the P50's internal storage.
The device comes close to maintaining a normal phone profile, but still manages to be both a bit wide and long. But when you consider the fact that it has both a 2.8" diagonal 262k color display and a QWERTY keyboard, you can forgive the little bit of extra bulk. Overall, the P50 seems like a device that the other manufacturers should take note of, as it looks well poised to be a success and should be available as soon as in February of 2005.
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