Mobinaute Reviews the Mio A701

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://tinyurl.com/s4fqr' target='_blank'>http://tinyurl.com/s4fqr</a><br /><br /></div><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060328-A701.jpg" /><br /><br />French site, Mobinaute, has just reviewed the Mio A701 - a great looking GPS Pocket PC Phone Edition, which has a great set of specs, though unfortunately, lacks Wi-Fi. Babel Fish doesn't do the best of all jobs in its <a href="http://tinyurl.com/s4fqr">online translation</a>, but there are still plenty of pictures for you to have a look at. Interestingly, the benchmarks indicate that E-TEN's latest devices outperform the A701 on an overall level.

[Kacey Green]

Try a Google translation (http://translate.google.com/translate?sourceid=navclient-menuext&amp;hl=en&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emobinaute%2Ecom%2Fmobinaute%2Farticle%5Fcomm%2Ephp%3Fid%3D20060324145418)

[msafi]

i just received my A701 on Friday. Overall, the device is a lot worse than the latest wave of HTC products (i.e Wizard, Prophet, etc), but the inclusion of GPS makes it more usable, so even though i have a Wizard, i'll be using the A701 on daily basis...

[Faenad]

I possess an Eten G500 and indeed it's a very snappy device. Very fast and responsive. The Samsung processor does wonder, and I suspect the ROM to be very finely tuned.

If indeed the Mio A701 (processeur Intel 520 Mhz) is worse than the prophet and wizard (TI Omap 180Mhz...), then I wonder how they implemented the Rom. :?:
XDA Atom was a few months ago an example of a device crippled by a bad ROM (now things have improved), Mio A701 seems another case :|

msafi you should try the Eten they are very good devices and hold their own even against HTC's best.

[msafi]

the device is fast. it is definitly faster than the Wizard with the latest ROM, but speed is not everything. The battery life of the device is very bad, even though it has a bigger battery than the Wizard. For example, today i used the GPS for 15mins, played games for about 40 minutes and the battery was down from 100% to 6X%. the wizard on the other hand would never go down that fast...

there is also the screen. this device is meant for outdoor usage, but the display isn't bright enough to be easily viewable under direct sunlight. the wizard does a better job in that area with its really bright screen.

i considered getting a G500, especially because it has an additional band and built in TMC, but i still don't know any place that sells them, and it has a miniSD instead of SD and it's bulkier. so i decided i'd get the A701. to tell you the truth, i live in the U.S., and i don't see any difference in missing the fourth band, but i guess the built-in TMC is nice to have...

[Faenad]

You can check Eten-users.net for places to buy the G500 in the US :
http://www.eten-users.net/index.php?showtopic=1672&amp;st=0