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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).
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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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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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
More?
It's called a headset. It comes with it for free. ALSO, the Treo seems to have some sort of "personal speaker phone" capabilities which means that as you're using the phone you can hear your caller and continue talking to them.
How about READING the freakin' article? It's not like I knew this before or had to search for it, it's in the second paragraph down.
-Russ
Me
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)
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.
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