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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.'"
- 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!
I just picked up the Samsung SPH-I300 avaliable with SprintPCS last weekend.
It's a color PalmOS, 8MB memory which is shorter and narrower then my Palm Vx, though just slightly thicker. It does have the ability to dial from the sync'ed address book, and all the usual PalmOS features.
And it's avaliable now, though you may have to search a little to find it at a SprintPCS store. From what I can see, it has all the features the Treo has and more, except the physical buttons
More information on the phone can be found at http://samsungusa.com/i300/
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.
tar -xzf /fridge/turkey.tgz / /proc/oven/preheat / /dev/oven
&& echo 380 >
&& cat turkey >
e Voila! dinner is done without me entering the kitchen.
And you're telling me you don't care!?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
I think for their next iPod, Apple should add a couple features:
;-)
1) Cellphone that works with all the cell networks
in the world.
2) 802.11x or whatever that new superfast wireless
standard is that works with 802.11b, v.92 modem,
Gigabit ethernet, and the LCD backlight should be
able to blink morse code.
3) Military GPS accurate to 1"
4) A keyboard and also hand recognition (but not
graffiti crap, REAL hand recognition). And voice
recognition.
5) It's screen should be color and widescreen
format so I can watch my cracked DVDs on it.
6) It should run linux, but have virtual machines
so it can also run Palm and Windows apps. Oh, and
a gameboy advance emulator.
7) The battery should last at least a week,
preferably two.
8) None of this SDMI crap. I can put on and take
off anything. In fact, it should have a video and
audio in, so I can take input straight from my DVD
player into the device and share them with my
friends.
9) It should be the same size it is now, and still
use firewire.
10) Flash card, Smartmedia, multimedia card and
PCMCIA slots.
Oh, and I won't pay more than $150 for it.
That'd be cool!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies