Asus appears to be taking various pages from the playbooks of its competitors with the Galaxy 7, a WinMo smartphone with a big 800×480 touchscreen, TouchFlo-like UI, and BlackBerry-esque trackball. Russian site Mobile-Review got a hands-on with an early version of the device – formally called the P835 – and found the build quality to be excellent (metal battery cover, leather around the trackball, soft/velvety plastic elsewhere) although the processor turned out to be a 528MHz CPU, when it was previously thought that it’d be an 800MHz Marvell CPU.

The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 with a custom UI shell over the top, drawing comparisons to HTC’s line of TouchFLO devices. Other features include built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, and a five-megapixel camera. The GSM/EDGE/HSDPA P835 will apparently be available around Europe sometime in March or April for a whopping 20,000 Rubles (about $737 dollars).

[via wmpoweruser.com]