» Mio A701 GPS Phone Review

The word convergence summarizes the focus of many handheld mobile device manufacturers. How many mobile cell phones don’t come with a digital camera as standard now?
The miniaturization of electronic components is what makes convergence possible and it is the miniscule size of the recently reviewed breakthrough technology SiRF Star III GPS Chipset which makes the Mio A701 GPS Phone possible. Promoted as a GPS Phone, the Mio A701 is a smartphone with a wider range of capabilities including; Microsoft Office Mobile, audio (mp3) player, video player, camera, picture viewer, calculator, calendar and voice recorder.

The Form

The Mio A701 has an attractive form with large radius rounded corners and smart shiny black and silver coloring. The front is dominated by a 2.7 inch, 65K color LCD touch screen display which has LED backlighting (for long life and low power consumption). The display has a usefully large 320 x 240 resolution. The remaining portion of the Mio A701’s front is occupied by four software navigation buttons - two of which are preset to launch Windows Media Player and GPS Navigation. The A701 doesn’t have a keyboard - only a touch screen operated virtual one.

On the smartphone’s left side is a volume control and on the bottom edge is a mini USB port, mains power female socket and docking connector. An SD memory expansion slot is on the right hand side. The camera and a speaker are located on the back.

The Mio A701 ships with a mains power adapter, USB cable, stereo headset, a belt clip-on carrying case, cigarette lighter power cable, and a swan-neck-style windshield mount.

Under the Hood

The Mio A701 has a more than adequate Intel PXA-270 520MHz processor for running the included Windows Mobile 5.0 and other software including more notably; Microsoft Office Mobile, Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Mio Map v2.

The A701 has 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM however, there is fair amount of software to be loaded and with the storage requirements for pictures, mp3 and videos a memory upgrade right from purchase using an SD MMC card is advisable.

The Mio A701 is equipped with Bluetooth 1.2 allowing useful functionalities such as; the ability to drive safely using a Bluetooth headset, transfer files to and from other Bluetooth equipped devices and synchronize using Microsoft’s ActiveSync. If you happen to be using the Mio mounted in its windshield mount while driving and receive a phone call then the Mio A701 will automatically switch from navigation to phone mode then back again when you hang up.

The camera built into the back of the A701 is certainly useful however, at a modest 1.3-megapixel it is probably below what most purchasers would expect..

Battery life is listed as a reasonable 200 hours for standby time and four hours of talk time.

Powerful GPS Capabilities

The Mio A701 smartphone is capable of Assisted GPS (A-GPS) meaning it can utilize connected cell phone network services to boost GPS performance.

The SiRF Star III chipset powering the Mio A107 provides powerful and reliable Global Positioning System (GPS) functionalities. The chipset is considered a breakthrough for mobile GPS devices because of it’s:

1. Faster fix times

The SiRF Star III family chipsets have over 200,000 correlators allowing it to mathematically crunch through the GPS satellite matching process for many satellite signals at once. This dramatically reduces the time to establish a position fix.

2. Higher signal locking and tracking sensitivity

Because of its high speed position fixing, the SiRF chip is able to fix and maintain a lock on satellites in signal blocking built-up environments other GPS devices have difficulty with.

3. Much lower power requirements

The SiRF chipset family have all been designed for very low power consumption.

Useful GPS Functionalities

An important GPS-phone personal safety functionality is the emergency Location Call which can be set up to send an emergency text message to pre-defined recipients including your all important latitude and longitude coordinates. No special navigation software need be installed and it is easily triggered by pressing the volume-down button for six seconds. It is easy to imagine many life threatening situations where this would be useful.

Using the recommended Mio Map v2, the A701 can give you the phone numbers of local Points of Interest (POI) such as restaurants so that you can call ahead and book a table. You are not restricted to Mio Map v2 - while running the Windows Mobile 5 operating platform you can utilize the compatible GPS software of your choice.

As mentioned the Mio A701 can be placed in an included windshield mount in your car and used as a car navigation device capable of giving turn by turn directions. The A701 can also be used for other activities which can benefit from GPS positioning technology such as hiking, cycling or sailing. Specialist GPS software for these activities can be simply loaded.

A nice product of the convergence of having an application such as Outlook integrated with GPS navigation software is that you can look up contacts and a well as options to call, email or text them you can also choose to launch the navigation software to direct you to them.

Wrap Up

One of the hopes most mobile handheld utility devices shoppers have is for a device with the best of everything (at an outrageously low price of course). The Mio A701 GSP Phone is yet another that cannot claim that crown but, it does have excellent GPS and other all round capabilities and would make an excellent contribution to any caped wonder’s utility belt.

Custom Search

Further Reading

GPS Technology Reviews has recently reviewed PDA based GPS phone - the HP iPAQ hw6515a Pocket PC.

GPS For Dummies

Outdoor Navigation with GPS

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 with GPS Locator [DVD]