Asus MyPal A636 PDA Review
Asus has come up with the new Asus MyPal A636 which has an elegant GPS receiver and foldout antenna added to this PDA. Whether it is worth the payment is yet to be seen but it has impressed us with accurate location fix and good directions. Though heavy and thick than other PDAs, you would love the 9hrs battery life. When it comes to making this device a gadget you can take anywhere throughout it does a fairly good job. This model is first and foremost devices to have a GPS receiver and antenna grafted together. This unit can grab up to 24 GPS satellites that are constantly orbiting about earth for accurate mapping and directions. Though the cost is quite similar to other PDAs the performance and the screen are slight let downs. Read further to know more about Asus MyPal 636 .

Design:
Rugged Body:
The PDA’s design is a bit retro. Most Pocket PCs these days have a more hidden speaker, yet on the Asus A636, you have got a big circular speaker grill that echoes back to the boom boxes of the 80′s. This is intended to emphasis the high quality speaker that was used here. In the center you see the directional pad along with the action button.The body measures 4.8 x 2.8 inches with a thickness of 0.7 inch and weighing 6.5 ounces. The body is grey and dark silver in colour. The antenna is about 1.75 square inch and can rotate 90 degrees. Antenna is quite strong and grabs the signals when swilled at 90 degrees.
Display:
The screen size and display quality are the most rated when it comes to devices like these. While viewing maps the screen size should not be disappointing. Our A636 does not disappoint either. Asus MyPal A636 GPS PDA has a 3.5″ transflective colour display which has a very strong contrast, excellent colour saturation and brightness. It looks better in the indoors compared to the outside, and it comes with a resolution is around 240 x 320 pixels.
Control pads:
Two circular control pads are located just adjacent to the speakers. The keys are well marked and have the advantage that we can use them single handily. In addition to the volume controllers, the device has separate buttons for voice notes, calendar, and contacts as well as options to switch between modes like the landscape or portrait. Mapping applications are not launched instantly but you have options to reprogram any of the shortcut buttons for this. The front scroll up and down buttons do a good job, the jog-dial button would have been a better option to browse the web pages quickly.
Sound:
The speakers are typically good, and the sound through the front facing speakers is pretty loud. This is a mandatory feature required for the GPS feature for the sake of hearing voice guidance in the car. The stereo headphones are good for listening to MP3 and movies. This ASUS product comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, mic, and a voice recorder application.
Feature:
Software:
Software package included in the Asus A636 MyPal Handheld PDA include operating system, mobile office suite including Outlook Mobile, and desktop Outlook, Terminal Services, Mobile 10, File explorer, Hand writing recognition, games like Solitaire, Bubble breaker, calculator, VPN connections. In all, this PDA is comprised of calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, message applications. Also inclusive are several utilities, like ASUS Status program which resides on the task bar. Click on this task bar to see the CPU speed setting, available memory, storage, battery and of course, the backlighting. There is a screen rotation utility, along with shortcuts to Bluetooth and WiFi. Additionally, these icons can turn radios on and off. Customisations for balance, volume, treble, bass and 3D effect are provided along with mic gain settings and Automatic Gain control.
Wifi and Bluetooth:
Connectivity in the Asus A636 PDA is quite good, especially being offered with Bluetooth 1.2 and WiFi 802.11b. The blue tooth software is especially user friendly and fully featured. The software used by ASUS is Broadcom stack and software which is typically nice when compared to other software. This features a wizard that settles the connectivity with variety of other devices like high quality audio gateway devices such as stereo headphones, connecting to a mobile phone for wireless internet access, ActiveSync, hands free/headset profiles, business card exchange, keyboard, mice, serial port. The ASUS application provides you with useful data about status, data rate, signal strength, IP address. The settings section allows to set the power saving, auto power off, radio power usage and the preamble. Information regarding the current connection is given in the IP info. Site survey shows all access points in range with SSID name, channel, signal strength, and MAC address of the base station.
GPS:
There is a built in receiver which you can flip open and swivel, so that the receiver plate is parallel to the sky. It is equipped with the latest SiRF III GPS chipset which provides GPS receivers high sensitivity, low power consumption and time. With this chipset our GPS receiver becomes powerful and particularly sensitive and can get excellent signal even when the signal is weak like areas of dense foliage, downtown buildings, and indoors. Hence, the device has a faster time to fix especially time to first fix speed. The device roughly takes about 35 seconds to start from the time the receiver is activated. This is a twenty channel GPS receiver that tracks nine satellites and gets strong signals from at least eight of them. The GPS interface shows the current longitude, latitude, altitude and velocity as well as graph that shows the number of satellites the receiver is tracking and their signal strength. To launch this GPS applications go to the Destinator app, tap the satellite symbol on the lower right corner or up top on the GPS Status icon in the Destinator Settings.
Map:
This software is in the SD card which also has some map data pre-loaded. To install the Destinator application, simply plug the SD card. To create your own maps install the Destinator map console on your PC from the Destinator CDs in the ASUS package. The maps can tell you about the size of the map data and also come in thirteen languages.
Navigate:
Real time navigation is something that is really striking. The destinator provides all the necessary tools to navigate the routes and customise the guidance. The tools are grouped into three: the first is the Destination group where you have options to enter the addresses for route navigation. Pick up POI s from the map database, or input a new address if the location is elsewhere. You can also pick your point in the map and set it as the destination. Tools to customise the visual guidance like directions view, map view etc are found in the Options group. The last group of icon based tools are settings for maps, GPS Status page, route options. With aid from these tools Destinator makes it easy to quickly find or input an address as destination. Overall the Asus A636 navigates routes in a very professional way in both quickest route and shortest route tests.
Ease of access:
Both visual and voice guidance are provided by the Destinator PN software. The Visual includes map view where you can spot the area where you are in and the route highlighted in easy to spot lines from your current location. There are few shortcuts in small icons on the map view to give us a quick access to zoom, check GPS satellite stats, daytime and night view and turn directions that show the street names and symbols. The visual is offered in many colour themes and also in many languages. The voice guidance is bang on target. The voice quality is perfect and the natural human voice used here is far too good compared to older versions. The voice alerts come on at 500 yards by default which seriously is good. You have a choice to select or deselect some types of voice alerts like GPS status warnings, speed warnings and likes. There are 5 languages in which the voice guidance comes: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Performance:
Powered with a 416MHZ PXA 272 Intel XScale processor, Asus has chosen a better battery life and could deliver considerably good performance. The applications run with good speeds after slight launch delay. ASUS A636 offers options to customise the CPU speed settings so you can set it to maximum, normal, power save, or auto setting. The auto setting is quite effective and maintains a decent battery life while improving the CPU performance as needed. The RAM is plenty with 64 MB installed, 58 available and 49 free with no programs running on it. The device also holds a 128 MB of flash ROM with 59 available and 25 additional MB available as flash disk. So, overall the performance is a mixed bag. Considering its navigation ability, the A636 MyPal can easily connect with satellites in 20 seconds and can plot our exact location. The routes are efficient and it quickly calculates new routes without much delay. As a PDA the A636 is a performer that offers reliable performance for daily use. The battery life of 9hours has turned to become a very attractive feature of the PDA.
Battery:
Packed with a 1,300 mAh Lithium ion battery, the A636 MyPal Pocket PC PDA gives it good runtimes, and has enough staying power to last a full length movie played using Windows media player and MP3 for over 13 hours with the screen turned off and CPU set to save power. Compared to other models our PDA, it has a hold switch on its rear so that you can use it as a portable MP3 player without the fear of battery drain which would occur while an accidental push on some buttons. Adjust the screen brightness to around 75%, your Aus MyPal PDA would just consume about 50% of its battery capacity. Overall, the battery life is satisfactory.
The Package:
Asus includes a vinyl slipcase, AC and auto power adapters, a synchronization cable, a 256MB SanDisk Secure Digital card, a car cradle, and a gooseneck windshield-mounting arm that attaches to a car’s windshield with a suction cup. We noticed that the car cradle has a tendency to shake loose of the windshield arm.
Warranty:
Asus offers the A636 a parts and labour warranty for a one year period from the date purchase.
Verdict:
By elegantly integrating a GPS receiver and a foldout antenna into a PDA, Asus turns the heads of the perpetually lost with its Asus MyPal A636. While it’s heavier and thicker than competing mapping PDAs, the A636 has excellent controls, and its well-designed maps provide an accurate location fix and reasonably good directions. There are many occasions when a GPS enabled PDA make compromises in either section. So, at times, the PDA portion might lack power, recent OS, or wireless connections. Till date the Asus A636 My Pal is one that rules both departments. The chipset and underlying hardware are simply excellent. So to sum up you have a product that could simply fetch you a machine that only lacks in looks.
Asus MyPal A636 PDA Pocket PC – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Asus |
| Model Name | Asus A636 My Pal PDA |
| Model Number | A636 |
| Product Type | Handheld |
| Dimensions (W x H x D) | 2.9 x 0.7 x 4.8″ |
| Weight | 6.6 oz |
| Display Type | 3.5 in Colour TFT active matrix (Transflective) |
| Display Resolution | 240 x 320 pixels |
| Image | 16-bit (64K colours) |
| Processor | Intel XScale PXA272 416 MHz |
| ROM | 128 MB – Flash |
| RAM Supported | 64 MB – SDRAM |
| Flash Memory Cards | Multimedia Card , SD Memory Card |
| Compatibility | SDIO |
| Audio Output | Speaker(s) |
| Supported Digital Audio Formats | MP3 |
| Audio Input | Microphone |
| Wireless Connectivity | IrDA , Bluetooth , IEEE 802.11b |
| GPS Navigation | Yes |
| Navigation Type | Stylus, Touch-screen, 5-way navigation button |
| Charging | Car cradle, Docking cradle |
| Cables Included | 1 x USB cable |
| Power Device | Power adapter |
| Voltage Required | AC 120/230 V |
| Battery | Lithium ion 1300 mAh |
| Battery life | 9 hrs |
| Warranty | 1 year |







