New Treo Reviewed

Bill Koslosky writes "Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal just posted his review of the new Treo. His initial review of the Treo 300 inspired many, including myself, to purchase this PDA/phone device. 'I prefer it to any RIM BlackBerry model I have tested, and it blows away any of the PDA/phones based on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system.' The Sprint CDMA version should be available in the beginning of October."

Comments

Nails?

[Anonymous Coward]

[A]t least one woman who tried my test Treo 600 hated the keyboard, saying it was incompatible with long nails.

Well, there goes the slashdot user base.

Re:Nails?

[pmuellr]

What really irks me with the Treo 300 device, and maybe the 600 has fixed this with it's 5-way toggle, is that you need to use the keypad AND a fingernail/stylus to run many apps that require some kind of tactile feedback. I get to the point where I keep the stylus between two fingers and shift my finger position so I can quickly use the stylus while texting. You have to text, because there is no grafitti. I would actually be quite happy with the graffiti area back and no keypad. Who needs a freaking keypad on a Palm? (Well, actually the Sony Clie's that fold out, with the keypads, are perfectly acceptable, since they have both keypad AND graffiti area).

I didn't spend 6 years using graffiti to just throw it all away now!

Re:Nails?

[Aetrix]

Disclaimer: IAAGF (I am a geeky female)

You bring up an interesting point about Technology nowadays. So many reviews of new gadgets are hideously male-dominated. The comparison that irks me is the "fits comfortably in a shirt pocket" standard that is somehow being held to all MP3 players, cell phones and PDAs. Frankly, I don't know many women that keep PDAs, Cell phones, or mp3 players in their pockets. Women don't mind carrying purses that hold their gadgets. And when you're stuffing your gadgets into a purse, the size doesn't much matter, but the weight does.

And the thumboards... I would think they would give large-handed people issues, but all keyboards, thumboards, and other sorts of button-based input devices give hell to women with longer fingernails. Even if a woman's nails aren't raptor-claw length, the slightest length will fudge things up.

Well I guess this is why I like Julie and Judie at The Gadgeteer so much. They strive to have a mix of male and female reviewers and they make sure not to laden their reviews with sexist bias.

Ahhhhh, perfect...

[greg_barton]

...for pr0n.

From the article:
Unlike the older Treo, this new model can be operated most of the time with just one hand.

Battery!

[neves]

It looks like this Treo solved the greatest problem with pda/cellphones combos: the battery lifetime. Any portable device that you have to charge twice a day is unusable. Does anybody know the battery technology that is behind this new Treo?

VisorPhone

[jooon]

I have the forefather, one of those old VisorPhones that you put in springboard of a Visor. It's about 2 years old now I think, and quite big in my pocket, if you compare with these new models. Still, I wouldn't trade for any of those other "smart phones" out there, except for this new Treo 600 of course. Why buy a phone that also tries to act as a pda, when you can get a really good pda, that can also act as a phone? I mean, the gadgets of a cellphone are more important than the phone itself, right. :)

Re:VisorPhone

[avi33]

I agree completely. I recently squished my Visor, and after doing all the research for a new PDA/phone combo, ended up buying another Visor on eBay (though you can still buy reconditioned ones from handspring).

Granted, I want nothing more than a Palm and a phone, in one device. I guess Samsung is coming out with one in Europe, but it looks to be expensive.

At one point (before they EOL'ed the whole line), you could get a Visor + VisorPhone for about $100. Now, 2 years later, you get them combined...for $400? (ok, it's $49/$199, depending on which company you sign your life over to for 2 years.)

Plus mine is GSM...remember that whole "you can get a new phone, slip the GSM card in, and your phone works, without a new plan" selling point? Turns out the bastards want $600 for the Treo if I keep using my own GSM card! (For the record, I want to keep it, since around the time my 1-year obligation wore off, my carrier called me up and offered me some cheap month-to-month plan with free long distance, a zillion minutes, etc.)

To top it off, they now want in on the data stream side of things, so they try to hardsell you a dialup account -- though you can get one on your own for next to nothing, if you don't already have one.

So, just to recap, it was a non-expandable (if slightly smaller) version of what I had, for $600 if I keep my own plan, or $49-199 if I sign up for a new two year plan. or, buy a used one on eBay for nearly nothing.

Break the upgrade cycle and maybe the bastards will start treating us like intelligent consumers.

Flimsy Case

[shalunov]

The case of the old Treo is made of low-quality flimsy plastic. To me, the resulting fragility is the biggest problem with the device. I wonder if the new one is any better...

Why shouldn't it be possible to provide a titanium or lexan case at the price they are charging?

PCMag.com Review

[elid]

It's the beta version, but anyway... Link

Re:eh, no thanks.

[pmuellr]

Sure PocketPC has the lead in interesting peripheral support, but Palm wins on software available. Bonus; Palm devices don't suck the juice like PocketPC. For anyone who really uses a PDA, and doesn't want to have the device in the cradle every day, there's no competition; Palm wins. The power usage of PocketPC is the ultimate killer for me, for that platform.

Everything except the flip cover

[conan_albrecht]

...is included in this phone. I've got a Treo 300, and one of its greatest features is the flip cover -- something most other phones don't have.

My flip cover is absolutely scratched up on the outside. My Treo screen is perfectly scratch-free. With the new 600 lacking the automatic cover, I'll have to purchase a leather cover or something -- essentially a useless hack that does nothing but cover the screen.

The 300's cover is actually useful! Sure, it might look like a communicator from the original star trek, but it does three primary things: 1) protect the PDA, 2) extend the phone when in use as a phone (the earpiece is in the cover), and 3) the see-through nature of the cover allows some PDA functions to be done without opening the cover (for example, when reading a grocery list at the store).

A typical leather cover does only one of the functions. If I upgrade, I'll sorely miss the other two.

Urban use only

[steveha]

One potential problem with the new combination PDA and phones: they are digital-only.

Someday, in the bright happy cheerful future, digital cell phone service will be everywhere. Meanwhile, there are still places where there is only analog phone service, and I actually go to those places.

My battered old StarTac phone has two bands of CDMA, plus a fallback to analog. I can use that phone pretty much anywhere in the USA that has cell phone service at all. The same cannot be said of the new combination ones.

There is a cable I have to connect my PDA to the digital connector on the bottom of my StarTac, and then I can use the StarTac to call up my ISP. This does not require buying any special "data" features, only using my phone minutes. Depending on where I am, my ISP might be a long-distance call, of course (buy my ISP has a toll-free number I can call and use for ten cents per minute).

I think that the combination of a really nice PDA (mine is a Tungsten T) and a really nice phone (battered old StarTac) is better, for my purposes, than the new all-in-one gadgets. It might be different if I lived in a big city and spent all my time there.

steveha