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Review of the Handspring Treo
axlrosen writes: "Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal reviews the new Handspring Treo, and loves it. 'For the past week, I have been carrying around a new hand-held, wireless device that is simultaneously the best personal digital assistant I have ever used and the most capable cellphone.'"
I think we have to work more on improving cellular and digital networks around the country/world before we get excited over some fancy new phone that can make a 5 course meal if you press *2211. What good is a phone like this if you don't have service? I live in Connecticut, and my StarTac doesn't work in my house, at my office, intermittently in NYC streets, and never in a subway train. Cool phones are great, but more service would be better.
My boss and I were looking at these this morning on handspring's site, and we came to the conclusion that they either look really good or really bad, depending on your point of view.
For PDA users, this is great because it's smaller than you're PDA and it's also a phone, so you don't have to carry another device.
Most phone users, though, don't have a PDA, so they won't get to carry fewer devices, and the form factor really sucks in comparison to the newer phones on the market. Plus, if a PDA was something they wanted to have, they'd have gotten one in addition to a phone already. Why carry something as bulky as my phone a year ago just to have a set of features I don't really want or need?
For me, this looks pretty cool. For most of the people I work with, it's just bulky and expensive.
Narrative
Note to Handspring (and whomever else):
Add voice recognition capability!
How many people have phones now that you can add voice tags to people's numbers? This should actually be rather easy to implement in the Treo, I'd imagine. (I didn't see it explicitly stated in the review.) Imagine just saying someone's name, and their business card comes up and it asks you if you want to dial their number. Sounds like a winning deal to me.
Other than that, add some Bluetooth or 802.11b capability in there. Then I can use this as an uplink for my laptop. Or I can beam business cards with RF instead of IR. Or imagine being able to zap someone your business card through SMS. That's another cool feature.
These devices are ALMOST there. We're almost to convergence, and I think I'll wait a generation or two and take another serious look at it.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
I only wish that companies like Handspring would consider the impact of their actions before unleashing something like this on innocent commuters.
I do agree that driving while distracted is a bad thing. I curse at more cellphone yakking drivers a day than anything else. But to say that the manufacturers of the device are to blame? I can't abide by that logic. The devices aren't to blame, it's the stupidity of the user. I tried talking on a cell phone and driving ONCE...and I realized how my driving suffered, so I never did it again. It seems some people are unable to make that logical jump, or they're unwilling to sacrifice that "convenience" to possibly save their life or someone else's.
Aside from that part of the argument, I don't see how a Treo makes the situation worse. Cell phones already exist, as do PDAs. Any of the above behavior is already out there, and I don't think the Treo's audience is Joe Blow. Most average folk won't pony up $400 for a phone when (insert phone company name here) is giving them away with service. Two handed dialing? Maybe that'll make em realize how stupid phone use and driving put together are when they can't dial without releasing the wheel.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
- While having a single standard is a good thing, having competition among multiple technologies is also a good thing
sPhMany US cell networks were built before GSM was created, and must provide legacy support for the older standards
In terms of voice quality, no system out there beats the original Motorola analog
While GSM is an impressive technical and political achievement, do remember that one of its unstated purposes was to prevent Motorola from dominating the EC mobile market the way it dominated the US, and to give Ericsson, Nokia, etc. a competitive edge. In this it succeeded, with assistance from poor management at Motorola of course
No state may have such laws, but many cities do.
And while I hate the idiots that are talking on the phone while they're driving, you also have to face the facts. Wish I could find a reference, but on the news around a year ago, I saw some statistics about the apparent causes of accidents. Number one cause was food, at 21%, I believe. Futzing with the radio was at 11%, methinks. Should there be laws against eating while driving, or having a stereo which has no on-wheel controls?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
This, like many innovations, is just another step. Handsprings are slightly more modular than other forms of PDAs, while still having the minimal power consumption associated with palm pilots.
Many people, including myself, believe that the next frontier of technology is small, portable devices that communicate with each other wirelessly, though each device has a specialized function.
In order to make that happen, we need to start with devices such as handhelds - which CAN be easily specialized through software, and which have readily available wireless capability.
Its true that its "Just another handheld," similar to all of the other handhelds, but its more functional. Its not like another model car, which is exactly like the previous model, except that its "new and improved" (i.e. new and the current fashion); this is another piece of the puzzle.
And IT DOES MATTER that its slightly more functional. The advent of the 386 chipset allowed a whole new class of problems to be solvable that where previously too slow to do research - I know that this is the case for my field, which is computer vision. As time progresses, even more problems are being researched.
I'm looking forward to using technology such as this -perhaps even this model - in the near future (when it becomes pretty inexpensive - perhaps two or three years from now) as a module for home automation - it would be just about perfect for the purpose.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
... is simple. It's what people are used to, and what they expect. I know exactly where to find a "A", or an "R", on a QWERTY keyboard. I don't want to have to re-learn this just for my handheld.
One thing you fail to realize, I (and others in the US, thus, partially, the lack of the option) don't want super-integrated, ultra-bitchin', mega-color, web-surfin' on a screen that is 2" by 2". What I really want is an easy way to hook my computer (whether that be a handheld, laptop, whatever) into my cell phone so that I can dial into any service I want, not just the distilled pablum that the cell-phone companies try to shove down my throat because someone paid them an ass-load of cash. I've seen the 'wireless web', and it's just ugly. I didn't even use it during the free trial period. God knows I'm not going to pay for it.
I don't want integrated everything because something always gets left out in the process. Whether it's ease of use, ability to expand, ability to use it on a plane ("sir, you'll have to turn off your phone," what then?), easy to find batteries, what have you.
Damn, where did all that vitreol come from. That was a little more brutal than I intended. The message is, however, clear. I don't care about having ready access to movies and audio and internet on my cell phone because I have much better means of accessing it already available virtually everywhere.
One thing you fail to realize, I (and others in the US, thus, partially, the lack of the option) don't want super-integrated, ultra-bitchin', mega-color, web-surfin' on a screen that is 2" by 2". What I really want is an easy way to hook my computer (whether that be a handheld, laptop, whatever) into my cell phone so that I can dial into any service I want, not just the distilled pablum that the cell-phone companies try to shove down my throat because someone paid them an ass-load of cash. I've seen the 'wireless web', and it's just ugly. I didn't even use it during the free trial period. God knows I'm not going to pay for it.
That is exactly why the iMode concept isn't going to fly in the USA. Who wants a screen that is essentially a tiny cartoon-like color display that is not that useful? For American cellphone users, they'd rather wait for larger displays with full Palm OS functionality on their 3G phones so at least the cellphone have some real functionality for a change. The other thing Americans will probably want is the cdma2000 digital cellular format so high-speed data transfers over cellullar connections (read at least 256 kilobits per second bi-directional) becomes useful for laptop users.
I'm going to have to disagree that it's the same as having a conversation with somebody next to you in the car.
Phone conversations are traditionally continuous and uninterrupted. We've all been trained to use them that way, and the people on the other side of the conversation expect it as well. Phone conversations take up higher priorities (re-nice'd if you will) in our brain than conversations with other passengers.
Other passengers are far more likely to accept and expect breaks in the conversation due to traffic and driving issues. They often will break the conversation themselves to warn of impending dangers. You don't feel bad about not answering for a while if something needs attention while talking to a passenger, as usually they know what caused the delay.
Phone conversations are inherently more dangerous because we're expected to and pretty much always do devote more of our attention to them.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."