Collaborations with car manufacturers are not uncommon in the consumer electronics world. Acer makes products with Ferrari and BMW brandings, while Asus has used the Lamborghini brand for some time now in its notebooks.

While the internals of such notebooks don't differ much from their high-end cousins from the same brand, they usually come with special materials and designs on the outside that set them apart. That's not too different from buying a supercar for city driving--you can't really go beyond 70kmh most of the time, but it still feels good driving one because of envious stares. Asus has extended the Lamborghini line to its PDA-phones, too. The first handheld to receive the treatment is the ZX1, first announced during CeBIT 2008.

Upside

The number one priority for a Lamborghini consumer product would surely have to be its looks and the ZX1 does pretty well in this aspect. The angular nature of its sides does give this Asus the Lamborghini feel. And if that doesn't, the stylized brand name is printed prominently under the display so you can't possibly mistake it for a Ferrari. Though it doesn't particularly have a small footprint, this device is pretty slim at 13.2mm thin.

You can't use a supercar's name and not be fast. The ZX1 is equipped with a 450MHz Texas Instruments processor. This is a change from the more common Qualcomm and Marvell ones we have been seeing of late. Of course, TI is not new to this, but most of its processors have been used in older or low-end models as companies prefer the Marvell PXA310 or Qualcomm MSM7200 processors for their mid- to high-end models due to the higher clock speeds. We have yet to test out this new TI processor but it's heartening to see that the ZX1, too, supports 128MB of RAM, so there's now more memory for running applications. Asus' current flagship model, the P750, still runs on only 64MB.

Downside

The ZX1 has all the connectivity features that you could possibly want including HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS. But wireless functions aside, we couldn't help but feel that it needs another feature to make it complete--a VGA display. While it's no mean feat powering a 640 x 480 display compared to a QVGA one, the fact that this is a premium product should justify any development effort to make it happen.

Outlook

As announced earlier, the ZX1 will come with Windows Mobile Professional 6.1, the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system. According to Asus, the ZX1 will be available in June. The price is still unannounced at this point. We expect that it won't come cheap but will be a good companion to anyone keen on its design or who just wants to own a Lambo but earn only enough in a year to buy a set of Gallardo tires.