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With touch-centric smartphones being as popular as they are, it's not easy for a manufacturer to introduce a device that'll make people sit up and take notice. And yet that is exactly what Asus has done with the announcement of its latest model, the P565.

This business-orientated, Windows Mobile 6.1 handset is not only chock full of features, it sports one of the most powerful processors every used in a smartphone, a 800MHz Marvell chip. It doesn't seem all that long ago that PCs were using Pentium 3 CPUs from Intel at that clock speed.

Asus asserts the 800MHz chip enables the P565 to graphics and system performance, in the way of Vsbenchmark scores, nearly twice that of competing products in its class.

In addition to the eye-opening processor - and all the power it entails - the P565 sports a proprietary touch interface it calls Glide. This interface, which sits on top of Windows Mobile, enables users to perform a variety of navigational actions—such as selecting, zooming, scrolling and flipping—through simple flicks of their fingers.

Glide also incorporates applications—Multi-Home, Anytime Launcher, EziPhoto, and EziMusic.—to look up the latest news, check the weather forecast, view photo slideshows and listen to music within a few finger taps. The P565 also comes with a suite of business-oriented software, including push mail, business card recognition and Microsoft Office Mobile.

The smartphone's hi-res 480 x 650 pixel (VGA) resolution touch screen measures 2.8 inches diagonally.

It also has 128MB of RAM, 256MB Flash ROM, a microSD slot for additional storage, a 3 megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with support for stereo wireless headsets.

As a tri-band GSM smartphone with support for UMTS/HSDPA (2100MHz) 3G wireless broadband, the P565 is, unfortunately, not a great candidate for U.S. release. Folks in Europe and Asia can get the most out of it, however.

See here for more info on the P565.