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!

Review: Treo 750

Recently my JasJam decided (after it's 5th graceless crash to the ground) that it would only work under certain conditions. These include the 4th blue moon of the year, only on days starting with X and the like. You get the picture. Adios JasJam.

So being phoneless is no fun (although very quiet :-) ) Being a geek and needing email access and the like, but refusing to have a crackberry, I opted to have a bit of a look at the Treo 750. Compact, nice weight, nice screen and the keys feel good. Okey dokey. So being a high powered manager I demand and receive one immediately (ahh sweet sweet power). I've been using it for a couple of months now and here are my thoughts:

Windows Mobile 6 - much nicer than 5. Speedy and hangs up in a quick manner. I like that. Interface is nice, the green is very pretty and it has some useful functions. These things I like. Very easy to set up mail and stuff and I like the way it handles text messages using threading. Aye, that's pretty. I *still* don't like that you can't have an MP3 for the alarm tone. Come on! It's 2008 - catch up Microsoft!

Stylus - cunningly placed, nice weight, unlikely to get lost in the pocket and works well. I like it.

Keypad - I like the keypad too, although the buttons are small and I sometimes hit the wrong ones when I'm not paying enough attention they have a lovely tactile response to them.

Generally it's a good device. It hasn't crashed yet on me and it holds a good charge given I use it extensively throughout the workday. I can get probably 3 days of battery life out of it which is great. It's weight, shape and size are pleasing also. In general I feel this device to be a better one than the JasJam was. It has mini-SD memory (bit of a change from micro like everything else). I promptly put a 2GB card in there and it works great.

It lacks a front camera for video calls (but I never make video calls so who cares). Also, the camera that's built in has poor resolution and the like but again, that isn't why I got it. It does a reasonable job and that's really all I care about. Sound and voice quality are fine, dialling easy.

So I'm quite happy with it. It's not quite as good as my e61 though on calls and the like, but is smaller and easier to deal with than the e61. So in conclusion - not a bad bit of kit at all.