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Asus will this month ship its latest GPS-oriented PocketPCs in the UK, the MyPal A632 and A636.

Both devices feature an integrated GPS receiver with the rotate-and-fold antenna mounted on the side of the handheld rather than the back. The receiver is powered by SiRF's Star III chip. The bundled route-planning app is Destinator, provided with street maps of the UK and Ireland. Other territories are available direct from Destintor, an Asus UK spokesman said.

The machines also eschew the usual PocketPC button layout in favour of styling designed to work as well in landscape orientation as portrait mode. The customary five-way navigator control sits between four application buttons, arranged in a circle, and the unit's speaker.

As PDAs, the two MyPals run Windows Mobile 5.0 on 416MHz Intel XScale PXA272 processors backed by 64MB of SDRAM and 128MB of Flash - users get access to 85MB of combined memory and storage capacity. An SD IO slot provides space to increase that total, though the A632 also supports MiniSD.

The gadgets sport 3.5in, 240 x 320, 65,536-colour displays and incorporate Bluetooth 1.2. The A636 also has a 802.11b wireless networking adaptor.

The 12.2 x 7.3 x 1.9cm (2cm at the stowed antenna), 186g units contain a 1300mAh rechargeable battery good for 7.5 hours' continuous GPS usage, Asus said, rising to 44 hours with the wireless receivers and the GPS turned off.

The A632 will retail for around £299, while the A636 should come in at £349. ®

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