Conventional wisdom suggests that stand-alone PDAs are increasingly yielding market share to smartphones, but that doesn't mean that today's conventional handhelds are devoid of innovation or cool features.

Take Asus and its MyPal A620bt for example.

Although Asus is best known for its contribution to motherboards and other system component technologies, the MyPal A620bt is as sleek and stylish a Pocket PC as you can find. It lists for $349, but is available on the street for about $320.

The Asus A620bt runs the Windows Mobile 2003 operating system. The brain of the A620bt is a 400 MHz version of the Intel PXA255 CPU, supported by 64 MB of RAM and 64 MB of ROM. The unit sports a 3.5-inch TFT display capable of 65K colors.

The A620bt positions itself as being exceptionally thin and light. While there are equally thin and light PDAs available from several other vendors, the A620bt does measure up favorably against devices in its own performance and price class.

It measures 3.02 x 4.92 x .52 inches, which makes it a few tenths of an ounce thinner than most Pocket PC devices with similar specs (like the Dell Axim X5). The A620bt also tips the scales at just under 5 ounces, which puts it a couple of ounces lighter than many comparable handhelds.


The thin MyPal A620bt is only about a half-inch thick.

Built-in connectivity options consist of IrDA certified infrared port that's capable of 4 Mbps transfer rates. Unfortunately, built-in Wi-Fi is not offered, but as the 'bt" in the product name denotes, the Asus also includes built-in Bluetooth. (A version without Bluetooth is also available).

For expansion, only a Type II CompactFlash (CF) slot is provided. It seems somewhat incongruous for a PDA that prides itself on its thinness to forgo support for diminutive Secure Digital (SD) cards in favor of the relatively bulky CF format. Asus says they chose CF over SD cards because of the formers much greater memory capacity and much wider selection of non-memory devices like multimedia and communications peripherals.


The CompactFlash Slot is located on top of the Pocket PC.

This seems reasonable, but buyers may lament the A620bt's lack of SD capabilities down the road as peripherals for Pocket PC have show up in SD format. We'd have preferred an SD slot in addition to CF. (As a side note, the next generation MyPalm 730A, due in late September, will integrate both CF and SD slots.)

Included with the A620bt are the obligatory USB docking cradle and an inexpensive but functional protective carrying case.

The MyPal presents a slick silver exterior and offers the standard Pocket PC compliment of four application buttons and D-pad. It also provides a button on top edge of the unit to activate the voice recorder. In my opinion the button is a bit too close to the microphone, requiring you hold the A620bt awkwardly to avoid blocking the mike.

Like all Pocket PC-based PDAs, the A620bt includes a collection of miniaturized Windows applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, as well as Pocket Outlook with its e-mail, calendar, contact list, and so forth.

Asus also provides a companion CD with a number applications I found useful, including IA Zip, a file compression utility, IA Presenter, which can display PowerPoint files, and IA Album, which organizes image files. Also included is a quartet of less useful yet entertaining games along with a couple of dozen attractive desktop background images. Thankfully, none of the aforementioned software is crippleware, though you do also get the opportunity to sample a number of trail applications.

The A620bt's battery is unfortunately not user-replaceable, thus requiring you to travel with the AC adapter if you think you might run out of juice on the road. Asus claims the 1300 mAh Li-Ion unit is rated to power the unit for 18-19 hours with power management features enabled. It may very well achieve that, but count on considerably less battery life with Bluetooth use, expansion cards, or when the unit is set to deliver maximum performance.


A top view of the MyPal A620bt.

To help get the most life out of the battery, the A620bt offers four separate modes to balance performance and power management. Three of them-Turbo, Standard, and Power Saving, operate the CPU at fixed speeds of 400, 300, or 200 MHz respectively. A fourth mode, Automatic, is supposed to throttle the processor to provide performance appropriate to the application you're running. Another useful and power-saving feature is the ability to select a screen brightness level from 1-255, and define a separate brightness setting when the unit is powered by AC.

The A620t also features a nice utility called Smart Keeper that will protect it from losing programs and data should the battery drain completely. Smart Keeper will automatically back up system contents to an installed CF card (at least 64MB in size) just before the unit quits. It also backs up system state, (equivalent to the hibernate mode on a notebook PC) so that open applications that have not been saved will also be retained. Smart Keeper will activate even if the unit is turned off when the battery reaches a low threshold. The utility worked quite well.

The Asus MyPal A620bt is a competent all-around package that compares well against the Dell Axim X5 and similar PDAs from HP and Toshiba. On the other hand, the A620 has got stiff new competition in the form of the recently released Dell Axim X30 series. This is because some versions of the new X30 offer a faster and more advanced processor along with additional features like built-in Wi-Fi and the ability to run the display in landscape mode at a price and in a package roughly equivalent to the A620bt.