Slashdot Mirror
Handspring Treo Now Available
miradu2000 writes: "Handspring's Treo, the revolutionary new communicator is now shipping. This has been anticipated since October. See the scoop here! This could change the world..." My guess is no, it won't change the world. But it could reduce by one the number of gadgets a lot of people carry around.
The color model Found Here It should be out mid this year.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
I've been using a Handspring Visor and VisorPhone attachment for a little over a year now. For those who don't know, the VisorPhone is a plug-in Springboard module that adds a cell phone to your Visor. Its sort of the prototype for the Treo.
I really like the VisorPhone, although its not without drawbacks. Its a little large; well actually the combined unit is a little large. It defintely looks a little geeky, and I think the Treo will be worse - Captain Kirk anyone? I'm using the Cingular service here in San Francisco and the reception is not great. I sometimes find I am struggling to get a signal when other cell phone users aren't.
All that being said I like the VisorPhone lots and will probably upgrade to a Treo Real Soon Now. The main advantages are having only one unit to carry around (I'd have a Palm device anyway); having everything always synched up (again I'd be synching my Palm anyway, this way my phone book gets updated as well); good software integration into the standard PalmOS apps; and I can play DopeWars on my phone.
Just don't drop it. I've had to replace the screen 3 times. One of the biggest features of the Treo for me is that flip up screen cover...
Sailing over the event horizon
Got the Kyocera as well.
The Treo appears to be engineered more effectively, in terms of the
upcoming color unit,
keyboard option,
smaller form factor,
removal of buttons from cover/flip portion.
For those who publicly admit to using M$ products, Kyocera's Chapura interface for Outleak manages to lock the contacts list if accessed via the jog dial.
You can dial someone from the contacts list once, but then you have to do a soft reset before it will synchronize.
Does anyone know of a site that summarizes the cel standards and their areas of implementation, along with providers? Sure would be nice to buy a phone/PDA that is useful both here and abroad.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The Samsung I300 trounces both, and manages to do so without being quite so fugly.
I've been using this for a couple of weeks, it's got GPRS (here in the UK). I like it for a couple of reasons: the obvious one is I don't have to drag around a phone and Palm Pilot anymore, and the other is that since it uses the Palm OS loading all my old PP stuff on it was so easy.
Good points: ironically, the SMS facility is very well organised and makes it much easier to keep tabs on who sent what, and your replies. The keyboard is good too.
Particularly good point: answering a call in real Star Trek fashion by flipping open the screen shield. Cool.
Bad points: the sound quality when using the phone through the shield headset rather than the plug-in ear piece, not good. And the battery life is indeed not good, although it does have a good battery life indicator: a light starting at green and slowly fading to bright red.
Particularly bad point: no cradle, making the recharging/hot synching less convenient.
Otherwise, it's a good size, and feels robust. And (not that it really matters) it's got a "wow!" factor, but that's just a new gadget syndrome. Um, overall, a bit pricey I'd say: you know that in a year's time there'll be plenty of these at a better price.
Treo is smaller...so what, the Kyocera is almost too small as it is. They also made the Treo smaller by using a smaller screen then the Kyocera, so enjoy your scrolling.
No car kits from handspring...they are going to leave that to 3-rd parties, which means don't expect them for a while. Kyocera makes their own.
Treo: no voice dialing
Kyocera: voice dialling in the phone ( 99 names )
Treo claims 2.5hrs talk/ 60 hours standby. This is about half the Kyocera's capacity.
Treo says you may need to activate dial up access, and also get an ISP?!?! Both included in Kyocera service. And to make it worse, the Treo's modem is 9600 vs 14.4 in the Kyocera.
The keyboard is not that interesting to me, because I have used a palm long enough to get proficent with the software keyboard and graphitti. Plus my fingers are too fat to use buttons that small with any degree of accuracy...:^)
About the only think that is mildly amusing about this phone is that it is GSM, which doesn't help me where I live. I think I'll stay with my tried and true smartPhone.
This is the smallest palm available, by a long shot.
If you take a look at the Treo website, they have a few size comparison pictures to help out (including one against a credit card where the Treo does pretty well).
I have a Nokia 83xx phone right now, and the Treo looks to be a little wider (and have an external antenna) but is otherwise quite comparable in size.
I don't use a palm often enough unless it's in my pocket. This lets me use a regular wallet again.
Regards,
Ross
After waiting quite a while for the Treo to come out, they finally announced they are avaialble, so I run over to the site, put in my zip (Los Angeles), and start the process where they let you pick a plan and what area you are in.
Then I saw something that made me want to cry: "Cingular Data (required for web and email access) $4.95/mo. plus 15/minute"
I can't believe this thing is not setup to use Cingular's internal network for web browsing. (which costs you $5 a month, plus airtime (basically, 'free' on nights and weekends). Instead, they are using the old Cingular data-connect, which is $4.95 and $0.15 A MINUTE. You can't use your included minutes, it's $0.15 a minute, always.
Not only that, but you have to have an ISP to make that data call into! If you use a cable modem or DSL, you'll have to pay a 3rd party ISP like Earthlink $19.95 a month just to use your data features.
Cingular has been setup, and has been selling phones that use their own 'wireless web' network for at least a year now. This is so sad.
Paying by the minute for data when you have a bucket of free minutes, as well as the requirement that you have a 3rd party ISP, is simply not acceptable in this day and age when other providers (Sprint, Verizon, Voicestream) are giving it away.
Incredibly dumb.