Introduction & Design
Half phone, half PDA, with some laptop functionality thrown in for good measure, the Benq P50 is the mobile executive's dream, at least on paper. Combining a quad-band GSM cell phone, Windows Mobile-powered PDA with QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen display, and Wi-Fi enabled Web and Email capabilities into a handheld unit is no easy task. Was Benq up to challenge when it designed the P50? Yes ... and No.
The P50 has been called a "Treo knockoff," and while its screen-over-keyboard layout and overall dimensions are reminiscent of the Treo 650, to me it has something of a unique look and feel. At 122 x 60 x 20 mm and weighing 5.3 oz, the P50 is no featherweight, but it is quite comfortable to use and surprisingly well-suited to one-handed operation.
Housed in dark grey plastic, the P50's looks belie its all-business attitude. A 2.8" (diagonal) screen takes up roughly the top two-thirds of the front panel, with the bottom third given over to a row of silver controls - four soft keys flanking a center joystick - and an all-grey 39-button QWERTY keyboard below that. The alphanumeric keys are labeled in silver, with dual-function buttons sporting orange numeric labels as well. All front-panel buttons are backlit for better visibility during use. Two LEDs in the top right corner of the front panel provide battery and connectivity feedback, and small slits for the speaker (top) and microphone (bottom) are visible as well.
The phone lacks the scroll wheel found on some PDA phones, but this does make it equally suited to left- or right-handed users. Instead, a stylus that serves as the key to touchscreen functionality slides away into a holder molded into the upper right corner of the phone's back panel. I found the included metal and plastic stylus to be quite comfortable to hold and use. A rather large housing for the phone's 1.3 megapixel camera sensor takes up the top portion of the rear panel, and virtually the rest of the back is alloted to the 1240 mAh Li-On battery that powers the device.
A silver rocker switch for volume and one programmable soft key are found on the left edge of the P50, as is the battery lock switch. The right edge of the phone houses a dedicated camera key as well as the USB and headphone jacks, which are concealed by a rubber cover tethered to the body of the phone for safekeeping. The top panel of the handset has a single power button and an infrared port, while the bottom panel houses the AC adapter jack and SD/MMC memory card slot.
The overall look of the phone is business, business, business. While certainly not unattractive, the P50 lacks the flash and pizzazz so common amongst today's hip new handsets. Then again, the understated grey definitely carries some class with it. As the P50 is only available in an unlocked version, no carrier symbols or other branding is present save for a silver Benq logo just below the screen.
As mentioned, while the P50 is on the larger end of the mobile phone scale, it's quite comfortable in hand during use. Somewhat narrower and longer than competing devices like the T-Mobile MDA and Treo 600/650/700, the P50 felt very balanced in one hand during calls and stylus use. The QWERTY keyboard was another story, however, as the narrow body necessitates keys too small and too closely packed together for comfortable use. In fact, I wound up adopting a thumbnail-only technique on the keyboard since my thumb naturally spans two or three of the small, domed buttons. For the same reason, I also found myself using the virtual keypad on the touchscreen for phone dialing. Seeing as the QWERTY board is a major draw to a device like the P50, the too-small buttons proved a major design flaw in my eyes.
Another note: While many users will no doubt opt to leave the P50 tucked away in a pocket or case and use it for voice calls with a Bluetooth earpiece, I tested the phone primarily by holding it to my ear in the "conventional" manner. Since the touchscreen stays in phone keypad mode during calls by default, this led to many inadvertent cheek-to-screen key presses which, in turn, led to many key tones rather annoyingly interrupting my conversations.
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