18th Jan 2008
Damian Koh
So it's true. Everything that's said about the Asus M930 has turned out to be right, except that it isn't a Windows Mobile 6 Professional device. Instead, it's the Standard edition running the show. The quadband clamshell will ship with HSDPA and your usual wardrobe of connectivity options such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Blackberry support. Other features include a 400MHz TI 2431 processor, 512MB flash memory, 64MB RAM and a 2-megapixel camera.
Most of that look fine on paper, but we can't help worry for Asus that the M930 may end up looking like a second-class citizen. Its passing resemblance to a certain Nokia device aside, the 400 x 240-pixel WQVGA LCD seems like an awful waste of space. Granted that it may not be intentional and is probably a limitation of the OS, but that's no excuse for not trying to utilize the real estate.
So on the one hand, people are going to compare the M930 with the Nokia E90. On the other, some will wonder, why not go for the HTC S730 with a similar form factor, but smaller and sans the wide-aspect ratio LCD? It's not a big loss to us. I guess it's going to be a tough fight for Asus this time. More impressions when the smart phone launches in March.
