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.'"

Comments

Yet another...

[ackthpt]

Yet another one of these fine toys in a comoditized market. Heard on the way in that Palm is hacking off (or will be soon) another 18% of their workforce. I'm not complaning, mind you, far from it, but it's increasingly fascinating to see such a pace of innovation and roll-out while the cell phone and hand held markets are flat or imploding.

I guess it's something like treading water until the boom comes back and everyone needs one of these again.

Dumb dumb dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

When will it be understood that this kind of phone is never going to be useful?

Too big to be a good phone. Too small to be a decent PDA.

It's a large clunky prototype of what is to come. I assure you the future isn't in handsets.

Oppenheimer's Ghost

[Exmet Paff Daxx]

Scientists are so fascinated with the possibility that they can that they never stop to think if they should.

Traffic Deaths due to Cell Phone Drivers continue to rise, as the total dead begins to approach the figure posted by Mohammed Atta. And still we have hands-free device laws in exactly zero states.

Enter Handspring with a slick, convenient cellphone integrated with a PDA. A live wire for streaming Internet content, beamed directly to the driver's seat of the person pushing a Chevy Suburban down the freeway ahead of you in rush hour traffic. A cell phone which requires two hands to operate in PDA mode is now in the hands of the millions of American drivers who refuse to stop pinning a cell phone to their ear while driving.

Please understand that I'm not attempting to bash the technology. I only wish that companies like Handspring would consider the impact of their actions before unleashing something like this on innocent commuters. Anyone with a rush hour commute knows that people irresponsible enough to weave through traffic talking on a cell phone exist and are numerous. And they will buy this phone, take both hands off the wheel, and practice "Graffiti" at 60 miles per hour.

Does anyone know how hard it would be to make a cell phone deactivate itself if it starts moving faster than 40 miles per hour? Could you perhaps triangulate the three nearest PCS towers?

Re:Oppenheimer's Ghost

[scratch]

Please give some sources for the numbers quoted above.

Until then, I think a recent study at the University of Utah is getting to the heart of the matter. In short, they found that it's the interactive nature of conversation that's the real distraction. Tuning the radio, eating fries, etc, are just fundamentally different than
talking to people.

That said, the new Treo looks damn cool.

Re:Oppenheimer's Ghost

[qasama]

Sorry to say this but the idiot in front of you on his cell phone will just find something else to do if you remove it from his use. It's not the cell phone that's the problem, it's his complete lack of moral development.

He doesn't understand that there is anyone else out there besides him. Laws about hands free don't solve the crux issue which is his lack of morals. He's not thought about and understood consequences of his decisions...or he doesn't care.

I'm going to not talk on my phone because when I become distracted I might kill someone through my reduced reaction time

So while you might solve the preceived issue through legislation... you will not solve the issue which is that people don't think about the consequences of their actions when they are behind the wheel.

For Instance take these examples...

the guy who went flying around the curve on I-95 below Hanscom Field in the inside lane at 85 on my way to work this morning seems to have a similar problem...

Or the Saab who did the four lane sweep out of US3 onto 128...

Or the lady with her kids bouncing around in the back of her minivan on rte 62 yesterday afternoon...

Or the guy I watched eating a burger as we were both going through the Hooksett tolls on Saturday...

or mayhaps the State Trooper on the Pike last thursday who while seeming in no legal rush was flying West from Allston-Brighton at 80+ MPH suspicously close to shift change...

Or mayhaps the owner of the El-Camino with Maine tags I parked next to at Dunkin' Donuts this morning that had bald tires...

Or mayhaps the low riding, detailed out Ford Contour with the stereo pumping out the latest hip-hop jam I had the joy of sitting next to at a light in Woburn a week past on a warm day...

Laws about hands free don't solve the issue that these drivers got their licenses out of cracker jack boxes and obviously didn't learn the potential impact of their actions.

Personally I didn't really realize myself until years after I got my license. I mean I knew it intellectually... and I follow the law... but it did not sink in on that gutt level.

For me the transition from an intellectual knowledge to that gutt knowledge happened when I watched from a house in Castine Maine the Hancock County Mounties scrape a young kid off a guard-rail on Maine Route 166 when he tried to take his bike around a steep curve at 110 while inebriated. People just don't realize till it affects them. I really think we should make it a requirement for kids getting their license to help clean up one traffic accident.

So while cell phones usage while driving may be a great campaign issue for politicians in seach of re-election (calling Swifty). It side steps the real issue which is that many drivers on the road today (and not just those in New England) don't really have a sense of what the impact of some of their preceived minor actions might be, the loss of their lives or even more sadly some innocent bystanders

Samsung I300 vs. Handspring Treo

[lnxslak]

Well what can I say, SPH-I300 vs. Treo. I should think that SPH-I300 easily tops most any pda/phone currently on the market. Allbeit the I300 is not compatible with 3G networks, but come on we barely have 2.5 networks... lets face north-america is quite far behind when it comes to cellphone technology. I live in canada, and we have only one major GSM provider.

I'd like to see this Treo mate with a SCP-6000 and see what happens. Also has anyone noticed the likeness between this Treo and the old Motorola I1000-plus phones. But its definately a step in the right direction.

Fighting for Peace, is Like Fucking for Virginity.

Re:But does it do Linux?

[laserjet]

Uhh... first of all it's not out yet, so it probably hasn't been hacked, second, I (and I think most people) don't care what OS my phone/pda uses as long as it is easy to use and intuitive.

An operating system is just a platform. Who care's about the platform on something that only has a few functions? personally I would rather have it run Palm OS rather than linux because I know Palm has a very nice and stable OS, and there are tons of programs for the Palm. Why you would put linux on something like this is beyond me.

Sharp's new PDA just released

[cbowland]

Its called the SL-5000D Zaurus PDA and is currently for developers only.

And yes, it does run linux (2.4 to be exact) along with PalmTop, QT, and Personal Java.

GSM (growing in the US)

[Fencepost]

I believe that several of the TDMA carriers are planning on switching to GSM over the next couple of years.

Here's a ZDNet article from late October about Cingular's plans to do so; the article mentions that Verizon is considering doing the same:

Analysts and industry insiders say the Cingular announcement Tuesday coupled with a possible switch by Verizon could swing enough new customers into GSM-based networks to ensure it remains the dominant global standard.

PDA/802.11b/VOIP instead of cell phone(s)

[jaydho]

My CIS teacher today was talking about using 802.11b in lieu of Excite@Home and what not (he may be getting cut off tomorrow.) That got me to thinking about an iPaq/Yopy (or any of the other linux/pocket pc capable PDA's), 802.11b PCMCIA/CompactFlash card and a VOIP application, all combined with a nice NAN (Neighborhood Area Network.)

About 5 linksys WAPS ($139 a Piece on Pricewatch) would cover our entire campus (I have my own personal one but it just covers the dorm.) Anyway, carrying around a little PDA (or using your laptop) would give you nice voice/video/data as long as you were in range, spread those WAP puppies around the city and that would be pretty pimp. Imagine roaming with nice speeds anywhere in town.

That brings me to the point where I am clueless. Can anybody help, how do you provide seamless transitions between WAPs? I'd hate to be downloading a file and wander out of one WAPs range, can another closeby pick me up seamlessly? (I know I can connect to either, but can it switch automatically without interrupting communcation?) Linux seems to usually be the most ahead in these types of bleeding edge apps... Anybody have any URLs?

worldLOG Connecting the lives of friends and family.

My sig, http://www.jdhodges.com

Re:other hybrids

[Sokie]

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.

You *obviously* haven't discovered WAP porn (or WAPr0n as I like to call it). My roomate has a WAP phone and WAPr0n is the coolest thing I've seen someone do with a cell phone.