Submitted By: James Traynor – After the demise of my Nokia 7110 it was time for a new phone. My history of phones included the Nokia 9000 communicator, which was a great device that survived 2 years of very heavy and often rough use.
The phone hunt started at the Erricson T68i, which was small, had bluetooth and could send email but looked like a “Tomy my first mobile” and had a fiddly little keys. Next was the Nokia 7650, a bigger phone with a camera (very low quality), bluetooth and a good OS but had an odd case design that would be a pain and looked really ugly. Then the Treo arrived on the scene, the 270 model had just been released to add to the existing black and white models. It seemed ideal, a proper converged phone and palm, in a small case and a colour screen. It would mean carrying only one device around, thus retiring my trust Palm V. So in the end I decided to buy it, and have now been using it for a couple of weeks , so it’s time for the review.
What is it?
The Treo is a combined Palm organiser and mobile phone. As a PDA it is a standard colour Palm, similar to the 505/515, with one big difference. It doesn’t use the grafiti handwriting recognition but has a QWERTY keyboard instead. It still runs all Palm software, it syncs just like a Palm, it has a stylus for screen navigation and like the best Palms has 16mb of memory. Another small addition is a jog wheel on the side, which does a basic up-down-click action. As a phone it supports 900 and 1800 networks, has all the usual speed dial, address book, sms functions and has a really useable speakerphone. It comes with a handsfree ear piece, charger and a USB sync cable. The Treo 270 is the third Treo, the two 180 models had a black and white screen and either the keyboard or handwriting text entry.
As a phone how is it?
For a phone to be useful it has to be small enough to carry around, have a battery that lasts a couple of days and do all those normal phone things. The Treo is a large phone, no-one can deny that, the bit that makes it big is the width, by height and depth it is smaller than my 7110. It will fit comfortable in your jeans pocket but I opted for the belt case to save damage. The battery will easily last two days, Handspring quote 150 hours standby/3 hours talk which seems a little long but only by a little. One thing to note is the battery is internal, it is not user replaceable, which is a pity but it does prevent the battery contact problems which most mobiles face. The phone software is very good, it works easily mainly due to the large screen but also to that little jog wheel on the side which makes one handed dialing a breeze. SMS is easy as there is a nice keyboard and has a screen that can show two full sms’s at once. As all the phone features use the Palm memory you can store a huge amount of numbers and texts. The speaker phone is a thing all mobiles should have and the one on the Treo works like a charm, there is little echo and all is heard clearly with enough volume. A nice feature is a switch on the top to select silent mode which prevents you having to go through menus to shut the thing up. The phone comes with an ear piece(nokia style jack) which does work but I don’t personally use as you always seem daft talking on them. Although the screen is large a clear it can be hard to see in bright sunlight, but because of the keyboard it is not needed to dial a number, however without the screen you can’t access the speed dials and phone book. In theory the phone supports GPRS however it doesn’t out of the box, needing a software patch to make it work, unfortunately that patch isn’t released yet but is apparently in beta. It also has a vibrating alert. It’s not perfect, but being an upgradeable device new features can be added at any time. As this is basically a third generation device (Visor+visor phone then the Treo 180) so lots of usability features have been added, but more are needed, like speakerphone being on before dialing and use of device as an IR modem (although there is a shareware program that now does this, it should be a standard feature).
and as a PDA?
The device is a Palm organiser through and through, only better as it has the keyboard, 16mb of ram and the jog wheel. The keyboard is definitely quicker than graffiti, well for me it is anyway, and it is also backlit which is a nice touch. The stylus is much smaller the other Palms which is a pity, but with a small device what do you expect! The OS is version 3.5 but with Handspring modifications that bring it nearer but not quite to version 4.0. All the apps I had on my Palm V worked first time and that included a route planner with big map files and GPS interface. There is something very cool about GPS sat nav on your mobile!! So what does it lack, the high resolution of a Sony Palm would be nice as would the Sony’s MP3 playback but the main thing it lacks is a card slot. Without the card slot, you are stuck with the device as is. You have no option to add bluetooth, more memory or whatever fancy new tech thing comes out, it is a real pity that will hold the device back in a years time.
as an HA device?
This is the good bit. As long as you have a web enabled HA system and can adapt the pages for a smaller screen, you have a really useable remote access device. I can view and control my home webcam, turn lights on and off and program by PVR all from this phone, no cables no fuss just access. Admitably the current 9.6k modem speed is a drag but GPRS will be there soon. When at home I can (in theory as I am working on this bit) plug the phone into a serial cable and use the device as a wired touch screen remote. It’s a pity the Treo doesn’t have bluetooth as this would really help its life as a HA connected device.
Conclusion.
It’s a good phone, it’s a good pda, it’s a good device, give it bluetooth or an mmc/sd card slot and it would be great. Out of the box it lacked a few features that needed filling by some freeware programs, and there are loads available. This really is the good part about this kind of device, software can just be added with no need to return the phone for re-flashing. There seems to be a large community developing programs for both Palm and Treo and the quality of this stuff is very high, a good place to start is www.treocentral.com. Using it means only having to carry one device around, which can’t be a bad thing. The cost of the device is £550 without contract, I got mine as an O2 upgrade at £299 which isn’t bad as that is about the same as a colour Palm. So the big question would be ,Would I buy it again? …… YES!!
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