Mio A701 GPS smart phone

Review Satellite navigation is a must-have these days. Established brands like TomTom, Garmin, Navman and Magellan are being challenged by a wide range of companies. Mio was early to market with competing products and even its own route-planning software, although until now none of its devices have sported phone features. Enter the Mio A701, a smart phone with a fully integrated GPS receiver...

The A701 is slightly taller than the Orange SPV M600 we reviewed recently and a sliver thicker. It measures 10.7 x 5.7 x 1.9cm and it weighs in at 149g without a memory card. It might not fit your shirt pocket, but it's small enough to live in a coat pocket without weighing you down.

There are plenty of features besides the internal SiRFstar III GPS receiver - it's hidden in the black bulge in the top left corner. Mio has gone with an Intel Xscale PXA270 processor clocked at 520MHz and paired with 128MB of ROM and 64MB or RAM. Experienced GPS uses might already have figured out that this is far from sufficient space to store maps, so you'll be glad to know that Mio bundles a 512MB SD card in the box.

The screen measures 2.7in and has a native resolution of 240 x 320, although a higher resolution would've been welcomed due to the amount of information that is displayed when you're using it as a navigator. As a phone, it has a tri-band (900/1800/1900MHz) GSM/GPRS pick-up, although support for EDGE is missing.