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I was able to spend a few minutes with BenQ's latest effort in the Smartphone space. BenQ hopes to have this unit available in the US by July, but makes no promises. It is available in Taiwan right now and because it's a GSM phone, it will work just fine on carriers like Cingular and T-Mobile should you want to buy it on the grey market.

BenQ P50 in hand

As you can see from the above picture the device is actually somewhat small for a Pocket PC offering, which in my book is a good thing.  The BenQ P50 will come in at 4.7" x 2.4" x 0.8" (length x width x depth).  The weight will also be kept at 5.3 ounces, making it comfortable to pocket and carry around.  The screen is 2.8-inches diagonally, so certainly smaller than other Pocket PC Phone devices such as the HP iPaq 6315 that has a 3.5-inch screen.  Also worthy of note is the fact the HP iPAQ 6315 weighs 6.7 ounces, over an ounce heavier than the P50.

The keyboard on the P50 is built-in to the device, no sliding mechanism such as on the Audiovox 6601 Pocket PC Phone, it's just right there for you to use.  The buttons are quite uniquely shaped, they are highly rounded in nature and I found this made them easy to push.  The spacing is certainly a little cramped, but the keyboard is serviceable still.

The one thing I didn't like was the joystick BenQ is using on this device.  It is a very stiff joystick and I found it hard to navigate with.

The design of the P50 is quite plain too.  No fancy flashing lights or sleek curves, it's in fact very sparse looking.  Some might like this clean look, personally I like my high-tech gadgets to look a little more jazzed up and have some of that "take a look at me" factor.

Built-into the P50 will be a 1.3 Megapixel camera, a big improvement over the VGA resolution cameras available on Pocket PC Phone devices currently on the market.