Asus’ latest P525 handheld has a rather unique feature. Unlike PDA-phones in the market which offer QWERTY keypads (in addition to a touchscreen display), the P525 comes with a numeric keypad. Dialing a number is just a case of punching in numbers and hitting Call. The phone’s grey exterior, which combines plastic and brushed metal finishing, blends in smoothly with the slightly indented buttons along the sides, giving the handheld a rather sleek look and feel. By having a number keypad instead of a QWERTY thumbpad, Asus was able to equip the P525 with a bright 2.8-inch QVGA LCD. Call reception is good , with no dropped calls, but the ringtones were a little too soft. The speakerphone function, however, didn’t disappoint with relatively loud and clear calls, even when used outdoors. Setting up the P525 for ActiveSync or Wi-Fi connection was a breeze. The business card recognition software is useful as a replacement for a name card scanner, but the information captured was not always accurate.

The battery life of the P525 lasted as long as two days in turbo mode (and almost three days in power-saving mode) under normal usage. Having said that, leaving Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on all day will drain the battery a lot faster. The P525 comes with most of the standard wireless features, including quadband GSM support, infrared, USB 1.1, Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi (802.11b). The P525 features a 2-megapixel camera that produced some great-looking shots both with and without using its built-in flash. The P525 runs on the latest version of the Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone edition which comes with additional support for features such as push email. A Skype installation CD is also included in the package for added VoIP call functionality. In addition to the AC adapter, the P525 comes bundled with a USB cable, waist pouch and handsfree headset. The Asus P525 is a nice-looking smartphone, and comes with enough features to satisfy most casual business users.