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ASUS wowed the folks at CeBIT 2004 in Hannover Germany with its upcoming MyPal A730 Pocket PC, which is perhaps the most powerful Pocket PC to date.

Significantly, the MyPal A730 will be the second Pocket PC to include a VGA display. The first is the Toshiba e805. A VGA display delivers a resolution of 640x480 pixels compared with the current Pocket PC standard of 240x320. The next major update of Windows Mobile, due later this year, will support this resolution as well as portrait and landscape viewing.

A 640x480 resolution allows users, for example, to view whole Web pages on a PDA without scrolling. Reports place the release of the MyPal A730 in the May/June time-frame, so we expect it to run the new version of Windows Mobile with VGA support. Significantly, the unit's screen will measure 3.7 inches and will be run at 18-bit for 262,144 colors, surpassing all current Pocket PC models.

Another major feature of the MyPal A730 will be a Intel 520MHz XScale CPU, which is 120MHz more powerful than the fastest XScale's found in current handhelds. This must mean that the processor found in the MyPal A730 will be part of a new series of XScale processors.

Other features include 128 MB of RAM, aCompactFlash Type II slots and an SDIO slot for peripheral and memory expansion.

Other known features of the Pocket PC include a 1.3 million-pixel camera for up to 1280x960 resolution size pictures, as well as both integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Reports place the price of the MyPal A730 Pocket PC at more than $500, which is in line with the cost of current high-end Pocket PC models.