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Handspring Treo 600 Finally Available
knightwolf writes "Well, finally, handspring has released their updated Treo - the Treo 600. Its only available on the sprint network at the moment, and owners of any of the other treo communicators can get a discount on the phone. Current price is 449 after a "service credit", or 399 for those trading up their current treo's. There's numerous new features, such as an SD/MMC slot, camera, Palm OS 5.2.1, a 144 Arm processor, 32MB, and other updates. Take a look, as I'd imagine this is the last actual handspring release, before they fully merge with Palm. "
I picked one of these suckers up yesterday, and it is MUCH better than the Treo 300: Following is my long-winded review, with some technical issues, work-arounds, answers, and heresy. ;-) Oh, and how to use your Treo 600 (or 300) as free, wireless internet access for a laptop, that does not use your minutes!
The Treo 600 is signifigantly smaller than the 300. It actually feels more like a "smartphone" than a PDA with a built-in cell phone, like the 300 did. It's the same height, but slightly slimmer from front to back, and signifigantly slimmer in width. Definitely feels sexier, though the color scheme for the GSM verision looks nicer/more professional, in my opinion. This one (The dual-band CDMA) looks... slightly cheaper than the GSM version.
The screen is not 20 times brighter like some reviews will lead you to believe, but it is definitely brighter (2-3 times), and the gamma is different. Comparing the two, the 300 has a definite yellowish cast to it. Also, the screen is evenly illuminated, unlike the 300, which was illuminated from the upper-right corner of the display.
The keyboard is slightly more difficult to use, as they keys are closer together, though, each key's surface area is larger than the 300. However, my impression on the usability might be colored by two things: A) the fact the keyboard layout has changed somewhat, and B) the fact that I've been using the 300 for the past year. It'll no doubt become easier to use as time goes on. I've only had the thing for a day and a half. ;-) The keys are not backlit as brightly as the 300, which is unfortunate. They're fine in a dark room/at night, but in a dimly-lit room, they can be difficult to read.
Ah, the 5-way jog-dial! Actually, it's more like a 4-way directional keypad with an enter-button... kind of like the remote for a DVD player. VERY nicely integrated. You'll need to play around with it in each application to become accustomed to how it operates (it's slightly different in each app, based on what you're using it for; this might be slightly less intuitive, but is superior for final usability, in my opinion), but once you do, it blows the up/down buttons away. However, 3rd-party applications must have support built-in for the 5-way buttons. Otherwise, the left, right and center buttons are ignored, and it only operates as up/down buttons.
Speaking of 3rd-party software, software compatibility seems to be something of an issue. Many shareware titles that worked fine on the 300 have issues on the 600. Some are just more buggy, and some don't work at all, reporting errors crashing and/or reseting the 600 with no warning. Also, some apps that claim to be compatible with ARM processors, but operated with odd results, usually display-related. (Appearing as though it was intended for one resolution, but is being displayed in another.) This may be related to the fact that most ARM-optimized apps are also intended for high-res devices. I'm not sure, but one might infer that all ARM devices prior to the Treo 600 might also have been high-res devices... which might lead to this problem?
One item of note regarding resetting: The Treo 300 would never turn wireless (phone) mode back on after a soft reset. However, a couple of third-party extensions would allow you to (among other things), cause the 300 to automatically turn wireless mode after a soft reset. The 600 seems to do this on it's own, but not 100% of the time, and there does not appear to be any pattern to when it will or will not turn back on, post reset. However, you know whether or not wireless mode is back on because A) you get bumped back to the phone app and B) it will make the same annoying chime that the Samsung A500 made. (Or at least, the first half of it), and displays part of the Sprint corporate ID. (You know, with all of those hokey icons?)
The 600 now has a built-in camera, which is really just a gimmick in this iteration (only 640x480, at relatively low quality)