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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.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
For those who want the scoop, there's a video available with the co-founder of this neat little gadget (he also was the inventor of the Palm Pilot that many have come to love).
e ed.jhtml
The formats supported are RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime. It's available in 56k, 100k, and 300k flavors.
I just watched it and thought it was kind of neat.
http://www.handspring.com/products/treo/choose_sp
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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
.... but the battery life sucks. Anybody know what the battery life is on this thing?
A friend of mine has a Kyocera that does most of the same things (sans optional keyboard.)
What does the Treo offer over that?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
This thing is butt-ugly. I wish Apple would make one of those.
--[Nothing important]--
I'm a big fan of combining technologies and making life easier as much as possible, but in this case I don't think this product would work for me. I've always had palms in the past and have always kept them in my briefcase or outside compartment of my laptop case. I've gotten to accustomed to carrying a small phone now (the motorolo v8160) to carry something as large and bulky as the treo. Bottom line, I don't wish to carry something the size of a palm in my pocket.
Great phone for those that wear cargo pants.
Technology's a battle between companies producing more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots
On the contrary, I think the introduction of the Handspring Treo will increase by one the number of gadgets people carry around.
The only problem I have with my cellphone/visor is that the cell phone, visor and it's cable... are bulky when taken all together.. not exactly what you want on the beach, or during a hike on 2000 ft. cliffs (not to mention that I've already lost the cable twice). I thought the new device would be great... all-in-one, etc.
But I'm less and less impressed. First... they did not include the Handspring port - citing some bull about wanting to have two distinct product lines... this is a major down point for me because if I want to *replace* my visor, I can't without also losing all the modules I purchased. Secondly... other companies beat them to the punch and already offer cell phones married to full functioning PDA's.
So as far as I can tell... too little, too late.
The Time.com article quotes the need for daily recharging.
I'd say this is about right. My VisorPhone requires recharging once a day if I'm using it to make calls, it will last nearly 3 days on a full charge on standby. I'd guess the power drain of the Treo is similar to a Handspring+VisorPhone.
Sailing over the event horizon
Well personally needing to charge every day after heavy usage is ok. Needing to charge during the day us not acceptable.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
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.
Presumably being PalmOS based that means you can get ssh for it. However the keyboard doesn't look up to much and it doesn't look hi-res enough to do 80x24. I don't think this will replace the Nokia 9[12]10 for remote Unix administration, and to be honest that and checking Railtrack for alternate train times when the train companies fsck up *again* mid-journey are the only things I tend to use portable dial-up for.
$549 sounds like quite a normal price for a high-end mobile phone without subscription and not over the top. I don't believe I could get a GPRS phone here in Ireland for that price let alone less and that's for a phone, not a combo unit like this. Obviously we all want the Treo for $200 but face facts only the crummiest of mass-mass-mass produced phones reach those prices.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Hmm. It's a bit strange - most dual band phones support 900/1800, but this one appears to be 900/1900. That cuts out quite a large proportion of European users. It makes no mention of data rates either, so I assume it doesn't support HSCSD. That limits it to 14.4 kbps, which is pretty restrictive for a "Communicator" device.
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.
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.
...you can't USE the pda while you use the phone.
"Oh yeah Jim, um, what's-his-name wanted me to tell you, uh, hangon a sec." *flip, beep, poke poke poke, scroll, read, fumble, flip* "Ok Jim, yeah it was so and so, and if I remember correctly he said blah blah blah."
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but how might you take notes, lookup information, or otherwise use the PDA part of your "phone" while you talk on it?
.sigs are for post^Hers.
SprintPCS has a second generation device available, the Samsung SPH-I300. Color display, virtual Grafitti, dual-mode, external connection for hooking up your laptop, full HTML browser, voice recognition, second LCD (for Caller ID), among other features. It's also pretty compact. They also still offer the Kyocera. The Treo isn't bad, it may be "always on-line", and maybe you want GSM for one reason or another, but it doesn't look "revolutionary" to me.
They tend to do everything they do pretty badly. For example: Nokia 5550 (Phone and MP3 player. MP3 player sucks, and phone sucks too), midi/mini HIFI systems (sound generally sucks compared to a nice seperates system), Webmin (sucks compared to a set of targetted, specific config tools), etc etc etc.
You get the idea.
Also, in my humble experience, I've found a worrying number of 'combined' gadgets such as this to fail in single areas -- and be almost impossible to fix due to their advanced miniturisation.
So... Nice gadget, but I'll stick with discrete tools -- my Sony Vaio C1, Nokia 7110 and Handspring Visor Edge do their specific jobs excellently.
More?
What we really need is for someone to reverse engineer to phone API. Handspring would probably not want to rock the PalmOS boat by opening any specifications.
Absit Invidia
A system for reading e-mail needs to be "always on" to use a phrase from the competition (RIM). As far as I can tell with Treo if you are waiting for an e-mail you would have press receive every five minutes until the e-mail arrived.
I have still sitting on my desk this device from Qualicomm that is the exact same thing. yes it was neat. until you try and actually use it. Battery life is crap. if you like to use your cllphone more than once a day for only a 30 second call you have to drop it on the charger at least 3-5 times a day. taking notes during a phone conversation REQUIRES the headset. and connectivity via the web is neat-o but expensive and slow.
Nice try Handspring, but qualicomm learned the hard way that unless you can give major advantages that outweigh the horrible design flaws it will die a nasty ugly death.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The Treo is an evolutionary improvement over previous cellphone and pda combination devices. Sure, it's smaller, and has nifty things like jogdial, but 2 things kill it.
1. It's still to big. Having handled one in person (I live in singapore and it's been out for half a month or so now) it's still too big. It hasn't reached that crtical *lack* of mass that'll make it replace my tiny Nokia phone as yet.
2. No GPRS.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
The Nokia 7650. It is so so sweeeeet. I wish we had it in the US.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
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
As any old hi-fi fan knows, "components are better."
____
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
...is not anything very advanced, but it has a set of features that I cannot find combined in a single PDA. It has:
The closest to what I want is the Handera (ex TRG) PDA, that has the compact flash slot, but it has no color screen. The Clie and Palm use those Memory Stick and SD/MMC respectively. And then, of course, there are the Casios and Compaqs who don't have PalmOS. Why can't they build such a simple handheld? In the meantime, I will wait to replace my old Palm III.
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.
I don't understand how Handspring expects to sell too many of these with single-mode GSM. GSM only may be fine in Europe where everything is GSM, but in the USA, if you travel, you need to be able to fall back to Analog. A great part of the utility of having a mobile phone is being able to use it while travelling, particularly in a semi-remote area. You would have to buy another phone for backup with the Treo. It's built in on the Kyocera or Samsung phones.
Today, getting color and good battery life isn't really possible. Especially with the screen size the Treo has.
Until Organic LED displays make it, you get color and no real battery life unless you bolt a large battery on (ala iPaq).
So you'll have to decide if you want to spend your money to show how cool you are or spend your money to get a useful/convenient product.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Having "probed" the Handspring people over the last few weeks, I think the keyboard on the Treo is in the event they lose to Xerox. Handspring is PUSHING THE KEYBOARD over Graffiti in a major way. Even when someone says they prefer Graffiti, the Hanspring people push the keyboard version....
Something is up. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Japanese cell phones still beat the living crap out of the most expensive American cell phone. This one here has a digital camera in it. I refuse to buy a cell phone, PDA, digital camera, or portable mp3 player, until they are all united into 1 cell phone sized device at an affordable price. The technology exists for something like this to exist right now. No company is doing it though. I wonder why?
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Actually, I'd consider it for only that reason. Not that I'd end up with an empty pocket. I'm one of those guys who wears cargo pants and uses them as God intended: to haul cargo! But it's easier to carry everything you could ever need if the individual components are smaller. I've been waiting for something like this to replace my clunky palm3 and small-but-still-substantial ericson phone, which are the two bulkiest items I carry.
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I also have Cingular in SF, and it sucks whatever phone you have. Verizon is also bad, but AT&T is actually real good. I'm switching to them as soon as my 1 year with Cingular is up.
Just a consumer information apropos.
Thanks for the info, here are some calculations...
a /10903_na.HTML and some other pages I found, multi-slot class 10 means 4+2 slots, i.e. 4 downlink and 2 uplink. The slot capacity is dependent on the coding scheme, which in turn varies depending on radio conditions - this looks like the CS-2 scheme, which is 13.4 Kbits per slot, since 4 x 13.4 is 53.6 Kbps downstream. (See http://www.nuntius.com/solutions22.html ) Upstream should be 26.6 Kbps of course since there are half as many slots. This probably doesn't include IP overhead, and may also not include the various layer 2 and below stuff above the actual radio link (there's a lot of tunnelling between the GPRS device and the network, to enable roaming).
S alkintzis.pdf
According to http://www.compaq.com/products/quickspecs/10903_n
Anyway, YMMV depending on number and activity of other GPRS and GSM-voice users in the cell - if they're busy you won't get the full 4 slots. Also, as the radio conditions worsen you'll drop down to CS-1, which has more error correction but maxes out at 4 x 9.05 = 36.2 Kbps downstream for a 4+2 device.
Fortunately, if you are using an efficient protocol, such as WAP or perhaps a custom protocol on top of IP (like some of the compressing/transcoding proxy setups), you can get pretty good response times out of a GPRS device, but it's not really meant for big downloads. On some tariffs, it's cheaper to use HSCSD (two GSM phone calls at once) for downloads, but ultimately GPRS will become a commodity and should end up being cheaper, with HSCSD the high-end service for those who can afford it.
At present, you may actually find WAP over a GSM call is a bit faster (I did a side by side test with Ericsson T68 vs Nokia 7110 on the same Orange UK WAP site) - but GPRS is much more convenient particularly for quickly checking a website on your Treo, or for sending an email without firing up your PC or making a data call on your phone. In the longer term, there'll be higher-spec phones, up to 8 slots downstream for 115 Kbps, but there'll be a price in battery life and perhaps overheating.
I don't think the country matters - GPRS works the same way regardless of frequency, so the US/Canada's GPRS at 1900 MHz will have the same data rates IMO as the UK's 1800 and 900 MHz (subject to radio conditions of course).
For a technical intro to GPRS, have a look at http://ww1.comsoc.org/pubs/surveys/3q99issue/pdf/
I, for one, am considering a PDA to work as a simple organizer. Phone numbers, addresses, maybe some information about local take-out and delivery restaurants. Is everyone aiming for the high-end PDA market? When will we see the "Celeron" of PDAs gain more improvements?
-bugg
You can get an Ericsson T68 GPRS phone in the UK for less than 100 UKP on contract, or 400 UKP off contract... This has a colour screen and Bluetooth, so it's sort-of equivalent in positioning. So you are right about that sort of phone - but I bet the price is more than $549 when it hits Europe! There are definitely cheaper GPRS phones available than the T68, too.
A cell phone requiring daily recharge is simply inacceptable in this day and age.
I've discovered in this economy it's actually: a human being requiring daily recharge is simply inacceptable in this day and age.
Sure, mini-stereos suck compared to a decent component system. They also cost about... what, as much as one, maybe two pieces of that system, tops?
Personally, I also will not buy a Treo - until they tell me that in addition to being a cell phone and a PDA, it can play MP3's. I've been waiting for a couple years for all three functions to be consolidated in a base unit without add-ons. Give me stereo headphones with a mike on the cord for the mp3 playback, and a device smart enough to pause the mp3's when a call comes in, and I'm happy.
-Dan
Both! :)
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