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Rating : 6.7 / 10 |
Get it Together
Mio DigiWalker A702 is a Quad-band edge GPS PDA phone with a built-in 3.2 megapixel camera. Equipped with a built-in GPS receiver, Windows Mobile 6, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® connectivity, A702 is a stylish companion that simplifies business travel.
Windows Mobile 6 Professional
Take advantage of new security, scalability and manageability improvements in addition to Outlook Mobile®, Office Mobile and Windows Live® with Windows® Mobile 6 Professional.
Built-in 20-channel GPS Receiver
With the latest 20-channel SiRFstarIII GPS receiver, trust A702 to keep track of where you are and where you are going, so you can focus on what really matters.
Built-in 3.2 Megapixel Camera
With a built-in 3.2 megapixel camera, capture photos and video clips at a moments notice. Never miss a great shot.
Geotagging of Photos
With Photo Geotagging, embed GPS coordinates into your picture files and let others locate where they were take via another Mio DigiWalker device or applications like Google Earth.
WiFi Connectivity
Stay connected wherever you happen to be and keep up with your business contacts or the folks back home. Surf the Web, check your e-mails and use VOIP whenever you're in a WiFi hotspot.
Wireless Synchronization with Bluetooth® Technology
Throw away your cables and enjoy the freedom of wireless synchronization. Contacts, calendar events, emails, tasks, notes, general files and media can all be transferred with minimum effort by Bluetooth® technology.
CPU: 200 MHz (TI OMAP 850)
GPS Chipset: 20-channel SiRFstarIII
Networks: GSM Quad band (850, 900, 1800, 1900) GPRS, EDGE
ROM: 256MB to 2GB (Depends on Region)
RAM: 64MB
Memory Slot: MicroSD (Support SDHC)
Color Display: 2.7" Anti-glare touchscreen TFT
Resolution: 240 x 320 (QVGA)
Display Orientation: Landscape/Portrait
Battery: Lithium-Ion
Battery Capacity: 1130mAH
Battery Life: 200 hrs (Stand by time) 4 hrs (Talk time)
Bluetooth Technology: V2.0
Wi-Fi: 802.11b+g
USB: V1.1
Camera: 3.2 megapixels (With Autofocus and LED Flash)
Microphone: Yes (Built-in)
Speaker: Yes (Built-in)
Earphone Jack: 2.5mm
Depth: 16.5mm (0.65")
Width: 57.5mm (2.27")
Height: 110mm (4.33")
Weight: 148g (4.76oz)
Operating System: Windows Mobile® 6 Professional
Navigation Software: Varies by region
Video Player: Yes
Picture Viewer: Yes
Audio Player: Yes
Microsoft Office Mobile: Yes
Calculator: Yes
Calendar: Yes
Contacts Synchronization: Yes
Other Preinstalled Software: Varies by region
The Mio DigiWalker A702 is your all in one phone and mobile GPS. Utilising the well known Mio software and SiRFstarIII receiver, it is here to set standards. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.
I found the Mio software clunky, and the receiver only fair. To grab a fix on my location took a good minute on most occasions. In regards to the software, it is very toned down from a fully fledged GPS unit and lacks a few settings.
Voice prompts are great with multiple warnings before the turn, but not being able to lower the amount of prompts can cause a slight pain. When I wanted to lower the volume, the jog-dial only worked to magnify the map. I could only mute and un-mute on screen, and to change the volume, I had to go deep into the settings and change it from there.
Only able to save two locations to my favourites list was very disappointing, and when I wanted to travel to one, it would take me 5 minutes to fiddle before it was working.
Because it takes so long to locate my position, I don’t know if it is working or if I need to pick an option. On the presumption of an option selected being required, as the screen looks dead still, it slowed things down trying to get it to do what I wanted and wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.
At the end of the day, I decided that going to address and inputting the location manually all the time was the easiest. You put it in and visually see it go to work and know its working.
When you’re driving down a nice long straight road, it’ll suddenly tell you,
“In 300 metres, drive straight.”
My presumption of this matter is that the software is also very sensitive and when it detects an intersection, it reminds you that you need to go straight. Well, it is a nice reminder if you ever forget how much further in front you need to go.
Also while driving down the road, if you’re unable to take the path it has calculated, it will continually re-calculate your position and point you to turn into the next available road to get on you path. This is fair, but if that road was completely blocked and you need to take a detour, it doesn’t register this and always tries to take you back onto that path it has calculated. It will keep doing this to the point where that path is no longer viable in respect to your settings of ‘fastest’, ‘shortest’, ‘economical’ paths.
One day, I was heading back home it eventually deleted my home address from the destination and added other locations while I was travelling through the city, which wasn’t fun when I had to spend another 5 minutes trying to change routes before giving up and going back to the main screen to input my address manually again.
Providing around 3 hours worth of navigation has been pretty standard in a lot of devices. Mio Map provides an option to dim the backlight when inactive; when there is no voice prompting required.
But quirks and problems aside, Mio Map looks nice, easy to input addresses, and is still a solid software for navigation.
Speaking of input, Mio gave the A702 a nice ‘Mio Keyboard’ for people who like to text, or are used to using a keypad. Before we dive in, like other PDAs, you have your onscreen keyboard, transcribers, and block recognisers. As usual, the recognisers are a pain until you get used to writing the shortcuts. The transcriber option works fairly well. A few characters gave me trouble such as H and 1s and 0s, but recognition is quick and writing sentences isn’t too difficult as the stylus is long enough to hold, however a little thin. The onscreen keyboard works well but you can’t switch between large and small keys on the fly; at least, I had to change it, switch modes and switch back for it to refresh and have the new size.
Now, the Mio Keyboard is a great addition to the device. It’s small, feels nice, and has your standard keys. The star, 0, and hash keys have been vertically aligned next to the 3, 6, and 9 however. Sometimes I would forget and think the 0 was on the bottom.
This aside, the key entry was ridiculous. You cannot hit the keys quickly or the A702 won’t register the input, so rather than ‘boil’, you would probably get ‘bnik’ as it doesn’t get the ‘o’ or ‘l’ on time. Mid way through typing, it does come up with a list of words to pick from, but if you’re speedy when it comes to typing a text message, you may want to adapt to using the onscreen keyboard on this device, or some other method.
Using the T9 option also was very bad. Of course, you can grab your words a little easier, but you can’t use ‘1’ to select your full stops, commas, apostrophes, etc. It’s all in the menu you have to pick. It will show you a list of words that correspond to what you type in and once you get the word you want, it is numbered in the list and you hold the key corresponding to that number down for a seconds for it to register and put it up into your message, or point to it with your finger or stylus; not very ideal. You’ll eventually realise how slow this method really is.
By default, when you go into an application that allows input, the Mio Keyboard with T9 is selected.
Working through Internet Explorer using the Mio Keyboard isn’t doable. But whichever method of input you get used to and prefer, is up to you.
When browsing online, sometimes its fast, sometimes it slows down. In general, the A702 ran quite well while opening pages and scrolling through. Only loading the page took a little bit of time but wasn’t too bad. I found myself downloading at an average download speed of 50 to 100 kb/s, which is decent.
I would have the same page loading at one point quickly, and at another, slowly. When it is loading slowly and I tried to stop it, reload, or go to a new URL, Internet Explorer go to the point where it crashed.
But if you’re patient enough, this really isn’t a problem and I was able to browse online for around 3 hours.
Being a PDA as it is, it also provides some entertainment. Music was below average, while movies were quite good. Games did fair, depending on what you were playing, but loading times and game performance played well.
The speaker on the A702 could not pick up the really low and deep sounds but bass was fractionally evident. It didn’t crackle much, only on the highest volumes and depending on your file. The audio quality applies to video playback also.
Visual quality of the video was dependant on the source file. A nice clear movie looks great, even for a QVGA screen. Of course, because of the lack of colours, some of the visuals aren’t as vibrant as the real thing, but for a portable media player, the A702 does very well. The jog wheel is used to change the volume and it doesn’t affect playback, so if you’re in full screen, it stays like that. Anything else will bring it back down to size.
The oddest thing I experienced was that music could only run for around 5 hours, where as movies went up to 6 hours. On the overall, I found video playback being the best experience; little trouble to work, and good battery life.
The camera experience was quite fair. During light settings, it worked great. During dark settings, you may as well give up.
The 3.2 megapixel camera has very limited settings; size, ISO, portrait or landscape, limited colour schemes, all the very basic functions to a digital camera. The A702 only supports a normal shooting mode and burst, now schemes, utilising the half press to focus the camera, and full press to take the picture.
I found using ISO200 more preferable. Noise levels was very little like ISO100, a little more blur was evident in the shots, and it provides a little more vibrance in the image compared to ISO100. At ISO400 and ISO800, noise became much more apparent and the shots were too bright.
When taking night photos, you’ll need to pump up the ISO, but that will generate too much noise to have any real fun. Using the flash didn’t help much either, and it only works on the high ISO settings. On the lower ones, the image will still come out dark, or dull.
One nifty function is that when the A702 is on, holding the ‘GPS’ key on the side for a few seconds will turn on the flash and you can use it as a torch for up to 15 seconds before it shuts off automatically. The flash is quite bright and can really help you get out of a dark situation.
Using the A702 can only be considered fair. The front speaker has moderate volume, and the microphone only moderate sensitivity. When using speaker mode, the back speaker wasn’t load enough, and the microphone would only pick up clearly up to 10cm away. A bit further and it starts to break.
While using the demo unit, one issue I had was that phone calls only lasted around 1 hour or so. Apparently rated with 4 hours of talk time, I was wondering what could have caused the odd problem with my unit. When everything else works to your general time, the phone call suddenly kills it is very odd.
It’s hard to say whether the Mio DigiWalker A702 is worth it or not.
For a GPS PDA system, the only thing that makes it worth the while is the video playback and multi-tasking abilities. But everything else is only sub-par.
If that is fine for you, then just make sure you switch GPS software unless you’re happy with what the Mio Map V3 provides for you.
The keyboard is a gimmick so don’t be fooled into the A702 because of an extra keyboard.
Turning up the brightness while in daylight helps keep the screen visible for the most part. The anti-glare touchscreen wasn't a strong feature either.
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