Review: Palm Treo Pro

As I mentioned in my previous post, I use a Palm Treo Pro for work purposes. I chose this phone for a very specific reason: we use an Alcatel/Lucent phone system and there are various integration technologies available (for both Windows Mobile and the Nokia Symbian OS) that I want to test and use in a production environment.

Having used the Treo 750 to great effect in my previous job, I hoped the new iteration would prove just as useful. Unfortunately I find this phone to be cumbersome and annoying at times - I will elaborate of course.

Visually the Treo Pro is slimmer and slightly smaller than the Treo 750 which is nice - the 750 was a pocketful by itself, whereas the Pro is slim enough to squeeze in with my keys. The screen is large and well lit and accuracy with the stylus has not been an issue. The touch screen is sensitive but not overly so and is quite responsive to the fingernail tap. Palm have added a wireless on/off switch on the side which I find to be redundant (you may not). I don't use the phone on our wireless network enough yet to find it to be wonderfully handy.

OK, here's the roundup:

Pros:

• Windows Mobile operating system allows for excellent integration with Microsoft products
• Browser is excellent
• Many different methods of connectivity - bluetooth, 802.11 etc
• Good call quality
• Multimedia playback is pretty good
• Threaded SMS/MMS - I loved this feature on the 750 and continue to love it on this device

Cons:

• Crappy message tones (this can be fixed I know)
• Phone has locked up several times and requires the battery to be removed to get it to work again
• Keys on the QWERTY keyboard are hard to use quickly and easily
• Unlocking the phone during a call to use handsfree is something I'm yet to master
• Battery life is not impressive
• Black case gets grubby looking quite quickly
• Ringtones are soft, even when turned up to maximum value

All in all, it's quite reasonable, apart from my gripes above. I use it quite extensively to log work, fiddle with my calendar and email and it is adequate for all of those things. I think that some of the issues are to be placed at the operating system's door rather than the Palm hardware. It does seem to be reasonable hardware and the phone is much more compact than it's predecessor. I look forward to updating this review once I play with more of the features it has and the capabilities it has with the excellent Alcatel/Lucent phone system we have. Stay tuned!

Windows Mobile 6 Review

I've just updated my i-Mate JasJam to Windows Mobile 6. Although I was initially skeptical about this, I had to do it, basically. My JasJam checks my email continuously throughout the day, and when I'm on a call, the data check drops the sound for the call which is a major inconvenience. So I looked into some updates - via the Telstra JasJam site and found that Windows Mobile 6 was a free upgrade.

Being an early adopter of technology I decided to give it a whirl (even though it's been out for a while). During the update things went slowly. At one point I thought I'd fried my JasJam, a moment that made me decidedly uneasy. It came back to life however, and things progressed from there. I've been using it for about 14 days now and here are my impressions:

• wireless connectivity (802.11) is much better and setting up connections is easy and relatively fool proof.
• bluetooth seems more reliable
• no more sound drop outs during calls and while phone is checking email (yay!)
• I like the look of the new interface - pretty!
• Speed of dialling is faster. Previously the onscreen keys took a moment to register a press - now it's very quick.
• hanging up happens immediately. Previously, I had to press the "End" or red phone key several times until the phone would drop the call. Annoying if you say things after a call you don't want the caller to hear (oops!)
• Email interaction with the server is smoother and runs without any errors.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the improved interface. I note that it has it's own "Windows Update" built in. It also has updated versions of the various mobile office applications - Outlook, Word, Excel for example.

Most importantly it still has the block breaker game - my usual boredom killer.

OK, so here are my gripes:

• the alarm tone still has to be a wav file - large, unwieldy files that rarely seem to work
• the phone has hung a couple of times
• battery life seems to have decreased

All in all, not a bad update and fairly straightforward to implement. Works well with both Vista and XP. I should also note that the use of the phone as a modem is much improved. Well worth the time and effort to do.

i-mate JasJam Review

About a month ago I bought an i-mate JasJam. Partly because I'm a geek, partly to keep myself organised.... well... mostly because I'm a geek. A very nice bit of kit I must say.

Problems.
Very rarely I need to restart this device to fix up some minor issues. These include:

• everything being in CAPS
• problems re-connecting to the GSM network after I've turned it off
• problems with it closing the calendar (of all things).

These have been very rare - only one or two instances of each.

Good things.

• the keyboard is great to use, even with my semi-controlled fingers
• the wheel on the side is incredibly useful
• battery life is better than my Motorola V6 Maxx
• everything works
• syncs with Outlook easily and quickly

I've been quite happy with the phone functions and quite happy with the PDA functions. I'm a bit better organised than I was and I'm finding it incredibly useful to have access to documents/excel spreadsheets while on the go. Adding a 2GB MicroSD card to this device has made it very useful for listening to (perfectly legitimate) music and for the abundance of photos I've been taking. All in all, a nice bit of kit.