By Nimish Dubey 
Remember the time when AMD and Intel were sparring about having the faster processor? Well, it seems the world of cellphones could be in for a similar spell, courtesy Asus’ highlighting the speed of the processor of its new handsets. The company has promoted its p565 handset with the claim that it has the fastest processor seen in a cellphone - at all of 800 Mhz. It has also pointed out that its P552w comes with a 624 Mhz processor.
The move marks an interesting strategy from Asus, which has been trying very hard to carve a niche for itself in the smartphone market in India, where Nokia is pretty much calling the shots. Highlighting processor speed (something that Nokia pointedly avoids focusing on in most of its products) might well sway some users. After all, there are still a number of people who subscribe to the “more Mhz is better” principle in the computer business. In fact, quite a few of my techy friends tend to ask about process speeds even when they go out to purchase cellphones. Asus’ publicity campaign around the p565 might just sway a few users about the importance of having a speedy processor even in cellphones. Right now, other manufacturers seem to be waiting and watching - while the likes of HTC and Samsung do mention the speeds of the processors in their devices, they don’t highlight them.
Having opened the processor speed Pandora’s Box, the next challenge for Asus is going to be to translate this speed into performance that sways consumers. At the end of the day, the speed of a processor of a phone is going to count for little if the phone itself does not come up to the users’ expectations. The P565, for all its claims of having a fast processor under its hood, did not really seem to be significantly faster in operation than other touchscreen devices such as theHTC Touch Pro or the Sony Ericsson Xperia. But that does not mean that processor speed does not make a difference to a phone’s performance - if combined with the right components, it can make a phone perform at an amazing turn of speed . Not too many people know that one of the reasons why the Moto Razr 2 V8 worked so fast was because it had a very fast processor beneath that sleek exterior.
Asus could be on to a good thing here. It just needs to combine performance with the stats!
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
You’re right Nimish, processor cannot be the sole indicator of a cell phone’s performance. Had Asus been using a symbian platform, I’m sure the performance of their handsets would be manyfolds the current performance on its sluggish WinMo.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Personally I think that the Asus N10e is an underated netbook, it has all of the specs of the similar lines, with the addition of the fingerprint reader. Most people don’t realize how great that little utility is, especially for a netbook. I don’t know about you but I like the ability to use my finger for logins and not have to worry about passwords. I’m wondering why this little netbook was left under the dust?
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Personally I think that the Asus N10e is an underated netbook, it has all of the specs of the similar lines, with the addition of the fingerprint reader. Most people don’t realize how great that little utility is, especially for a netbook. I don’t know about you but I like the ability to use my finger for logins and not have to worry about passwords. I’m wondering why this little netbook was left under the dust?
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:04 pm
A very worthy point. I completely agree. In fact, I think Asus lost the netbook plot a bit along the way. I still get amazed that Asus did not try to make a better fist of the 7inch Linux driven systems that worked just as well as the XP ones. I really think Asus would have had a more distinct image if it had done so. Right now, the eeePC is lost among the dozens of netbooks out there.