xset

Treo 650 – first thoughts

// August 30th, 2005 // Personal

I’ve been the proud owner of Palmone’s flagship Smart phone the Treo 650 for 4 days now and figure it’s about time I let you know what I think of it.

The Hand-held

It’s not quite as bulky as I thought it was and the moulded shape feels very comfortable in the hand. The keypad is tiny but seems strangely usable after a bit of practice. That said I mis-key 100 times a day on a full size keyboard so a few slip ups on a thumb board are to be expected.

Battery life seems pretty good. Of course I’ve been playing with the darn thing nigh on incessantly since I got it so I haven’t really had chance to properly evaluate it yet but the charges are pretty quick and if I get into the habit of sticking it on last thing at night then I can easily get through a day’s moderate usage.

The screen is lovely, crisp, clear and a whole world apart from the Tungsten T.

The camera … is completely unrequired but seems to work ok. My only issue is with getting sound on video – i.e I can’t but I’m sure I’ll work it out.

The WiFi connection … doesn’t exist. Now I’m going to have to do something about that. Come on PalmOne, this is the 21st century, get with the program and give me WiFi support on my smart phone!

The Phone

The phone is amazing. It seems to get a signal almost anywhere (Cornish granite not withstanding) and the sound quality is crisp and clear. The speaker phone seems a little half assed but passable and the links into your contacts manager are everything I’d hoped for. That’s to say fast, easy, transparent.

One small issue though. This is a modern smart phone with MP3 playback capability? WHERE ARE MY MP3 RINGTONES? And yes I know I can buy one of 2 or 3 apps that do it for me but I just paid £350 for the damn phone… grr

The Web and Email

Versa mail = wow!
Blazer = wow x 2!!!

I love the ease with which I set this puppy up. It took me one hour to go from box to on-line with all contacts sync’ed. GPRS reports a data rate of some 112kbps which isn’t too shabby (think double a 56k modem and your nearly there) and the Versamail scheduled email check is a lovely feature (pity I can’t get it to check more than one account at a time though). The tie ins to blazer and Docs to Go are also fantastic.

Again though I have one small issue. There is no way to see a total of your GPRS data usage without using a 3rd party app. As mobile data in Jersey is not cheap I’d really like to be able to keep an eye on my usage over the first month to see if I need to change my Tariff to one that gives me a better rate on data traffic.

The other software

I’m used to the Palm OS suite of standard tools and the new versions don’t disappoint. ToDo is still crappy though only supporting one list with multiple categories but the rest of it is all wonderfully quick and easy to use.

I would ask why the hell they’re still shipping with Real Player though? And why doesn’t the media program recognise JPEGs copied onto the card?

Of course the first thing I did was grab a copy of Snails and the wonderfully addictive Village Sim which have been getting more action than most apps. I still haven’t really found a use for some of the preinstalled stuff though (SimBook … what the hell is that about?) but love the new look of the world clock.

So, Rob’s whirlwind round up:

Hardware: 9/10
Would be 10/10 but no WiFi = no winning point

Software: 8/10
There are a couple of gaping holes in the feature set but what you do get works very well indeed

Set-up: 10/10
Piece of cake

General Usage: 9/10
I love using the thing. I love it so much I’ve gone through 6 complete battery cycles since I got it

Would I recommend this to someone else? f you have a need to be in touch 24/7 and look good doing it the get yourself a Treo. It’s a fantastic little machine and well worth the money. Now … about that WiFi …