The ASUS MyPal A696 GPS enabled PDA has the premium look that ASUS have sought to bring to the market. The A696 has a very smart looking stainless steel casing and at (157 mm) is the thinnest of ASUS’s GPS enabled PDA range. ASUS have achieved the slimming down by having the GPS antenna embedded in the casing as opposed to a protruding swivel patch antenna of other Asus GPS PDA models such as the MyPal A639 and MyPalA636N.

The front face of the ASUS MyPal A696 has a 3.5in, 240 x 320, 65k colour LCD positioned above a horizontal row of three circles containing a speaker, five-way navigation control and a cluster of four application launch buttons. The screen is the same size as many dedicated car GPS units and is anti-glare for improved visibility when dash mounted for car navigation. . The A696 has a pedestrian mode so that once you’ve parked the car you can take it along for those final directions to your destination. It’s an excellent platform for interacting with the rapidly growing range of location based services being offered. The A969 comes with the bundled car kit.

ASUS MyPal A696 GPS Capabilities

The ASUS MyPal A696 has a SiRF Star III chipset receiver which has the advantages of: faster fix times (acquiring its location), higher signal locking and tracking sensitivity and low power requirements. They are good characteristics for a GPS device which will most probably be used often on battery power and in built-up areas with low or intermittent GPS signal strengths.

The GPS navigation software used is Destinator which has the following features:

• Easy access to millions of pre-loaded points of interest like restaurants and hotels
• Address retrieval from History, Favorites, POIs or Microsoft Outlook contacts
• Route (re)calculation
• Large touch screen menu buttons and full-size keyboard address input
• High quality 2D/3D maps with display of street names
• Enabled for access to real time information like traffic, weather, and more
• Day and night views with turn-by turn voice and visual guidance
• Voice guidance in 20 languages
• Maps by NAVTEQ or TeleAtlas

ASUS MyPal A696 PDA Capabilities

The A696 runs the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 (Pocket PC) operating system. Having Bluetooth version 2.0 means it has enhanced data rate speeds with a huge range of digital peripherals (phones, printers, etc) up to two to three times over conventional Bluetooth. Wireless capability - Wi-Fi (802.11 b+g) - enables the user to operate email application, access the Internet and connect to wireless networks. The Wi-Fi Manager utility can be used to scan for hotspots and connect to them.

ASUS´s Remote Presenter, allows the mobile warrior to link and control presentations on a computer or projector via Bluetooth. For data security, all data are stored in Flash memory so that it is not lost in the case of a complete draining of battery power. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 provides the platform for multimedia playback including both video and audio formats (.WMV, .WMA, .MP3..etc) and Pocket PC compatible game playing.

Competing GPS Enabled PDAs

Competing GPS enabled PDA that would be worth considering also are the Mio P550 GPS PDA and HP iPAQ hw6515a Pocket PC. If phone capability is required in addition to PDA functionality, there is the ASUS P526 PDA Phone otherwise there is the higher specification Asus MyPal A696.

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ASUS MyPal A696 Specification

Technorati Tags: ASUS MyPal A696, GPS enabled PDA, GPS antenna embedded, SiRF Star III chipset receiver, Destinator, Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 (Pocket PC), Bluetooth version 2.0, Wi-Fi (802.11 b+g), Remote Presenter