The M530w is another entry level PDA phone from ASUS-it lacks a touchscreen, but
includes a full QWERTY thumb board. The M530W goes head to head with the Motorola MotoQ and the Nokia E61i-right down to the slim design. The ASUS M530w is offered in two colours-white and black. We got the pearly white for review, and the photographs don't do it justice-it may look like the old Sony Ericsson noo, but the white body with orange detailing manages to look quite appealing. The navigational buttons are well laid out-they are large, comfortable to use and have good tactile feedback.

However, the numeric keys have an orange glow thanks to the backlight, and the screen-printed numbers on them are not easily legible. The M530w runs on Windows Mobile 6 and has all the standard features set of the mobile as. There is no ASUS launcher application pre-installed here. You get the ClearVue viewer for Word, Excel, PPT and PDF file formats. Other applications include Java, Remote presenter, Task Manager and a business card recogniser. The M530w's multimedia features-especially music-are just passable. It supports MP3 and video playback, but entry level phones from other makers will easily beat the M530w at this.

The 2 megapixel camera is quite similar to one on the P256, and delivers decent photographs-nothing particularly remarkable here. There numerous connectivity options WiFi, 3G, GPRS and Bluetooth. Internet browsing speeds are decent on WiFi and GPRS. though the battery life takes a beating when these features are used. We managed around two days of battery life on nominal usage. We didn't encounter any problem with signal reception, but voice clarity could do with work-some crackles creep in. At Rs 18,500, the M530w goes head to head with the Nokia E61i, which has a similar feature set. Given a choice between the two, choosing one is a tough call; we'd stay with Nokia E61i just for Symbian.