The Treo Gets A Make Over

I’ve been a long time Treo Smartphone user, having had the 600 and 650 models for the past 4 years. PalmOne recently released their latest version, the Treo 700p, which I’ve had since the very first day it came out. For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a Smartphone is and does; it is a “converged device” which provides a cell phone, email, calendaring, multi media, thousands of software applications & games, and internet access all integrated together in a single handheld device. These “converged devices” are categorically dubbed as Smartphones in the industry, and the Treo’s are the leading Smartphone on the market today.

Smartphones are extremely powerful and useful tools, particularly for business users and people who are on the road a lot. However, they are most likely overkill for the average end user whose needs are limited to basic cell phone stuff and the occasional checking of sports scores or email. If you are new to the concept of Smartphones and want to understand the basics of what they do, check out previous reviews here on epinions.com or the Palm web site at http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo700p/details.html.

The 700p isn’t a revolutionary, or even evolutionary, release. In fact, the 700p doesn’t really do anything new in terms of adding new functions than previous Treo’s have always done. The major focus of the 700p was to clean up many of the usability issues that have plagued Treo users for some time. That said, since the 700p offers the same basic functionality as it did before, I won’t rehash the ABC’s of Smartphones here. Instead, in this review I will focus specifically on the new features & functions that the 700p delivers, which should help you determine if this model is worth the premium you will pay to have the “latest and greatest”.


The two most anticipated things that the 700p delivers are EVDO support and a huge increase in Memory (RAM):

1. EVDO network support: What is EVDO? It stands for Evolution-Data Optimized, and in layman’s terms it is the fastest data network available in the cellular world. EVDO transmits internet data at speeds of 400-700 kbps, with burst speed up to 2.4 Mbps. Non EVDO cellular data networks have data speeds of only around 14.4-56.6 kbps. Do the math; it’s pretty easy to see that EVDO is exponentially faster than non EVDO. In fact, EVDO is almost as fast as DSL broadband speeds which many home and corporate networks are based on. To put things in perspective, a 1MB file will take about 10 seconds to download via EVDO, but will take around 5 minutes to download on a non EVDO network. While EVDO networks have been in the US for a few years now, prior to the 700p, Treo’s were unable to access them.

Will EVDO be a big deal for someone who is an infrequent user of internet on their cell phone (such as the occasional sports score or email checking)? Probably not. But if you are a “power user” that leverages the breadth of features that a converged device offers, or if you are (like me) a person that travels a lot and relies on their Treo for access to corporate mail, applications & internet applications while on the road, EVDO makes a world of difference.

The biggest benefit of EVDO (to me, anyway) comes with the Treo’s ability to do leverage EVDO with Dial up Networking (DUN). DUN allows you to use the Treo 700p as a modem and have your laptop use your EVDO connection to access the internet. Sure, DUN was available on the earlier versions of the Treo, but without EVDO speeds, it was painfully slow and pretty much useless. I’ll fully admit that I was the biggest Doubting Tom regarding EVDO being “near DSL speeds” as the cellular providers claimed. But after using DUN regularly with my 700p I happily stand corrected; it’s good, very good. I VPN into my corporate network, send/receive email with large attachments, use all kinds of corporate web apps and software programs, peruse the internet, watch streaming video, etc. and can barely notice any performance difference vs. when I’m sitting at my desk with a wired connection to the company network.

With EVDO networks, data transmission is done on a separate frequency than voice transmission. This allows you to talk on the phone and have an active internet connection at the same time. Without EVDO, an incoming phone call would automatically drop your internet connection. The 700p incorporates a new feature that takes advantage split frequencies; when you get an incoming call you’ll still you’ll see a new “reply to caller with text” option. So if you are on the phone and someone calls, you can communicate with them via text message right away and keep your current call active.

A few things to keep in mind regarding EVDO:
1. While it is generally available in all major US cities, there are places where you may not get a connection to the EVDO network. If that happens, your connection will fall back to the traditional GPRS (non EVDO) network. I’ve only had this happen a couple times, once because I was in the “sticks” in the Midwest where EVDO wasn’t available, and another time when I was in the depths of the city where the EVDO signal was blocked by the neighboring skyscrapers.

2. Same as all other data access via cell phones, you will need to have an unlimited Data plan with your cellular provider. These run about $50/month. And if you want to do DUN, that will cost you another $10/month. You need to make sure that you ask for the DUN plan. For some reason they don’t tell you about this being an add-on option when you sign up.

3. Sprint and Verizon are the only two carriers in the US that have EVDO. So if you aren’t a Sprint or Verizon customer, either you become one or you don’t get EVDO. I switched to Verizon (from Cingular) and have been very happy with Verizon’s performance, both cellular and data wise.


The second most anticipated improvement in the 700p is the 400% increase in Memory (RAM): The 700p ships with 128MB of built in RAM (60MB usable). This is a significant increase over the 32MB (22MB user available) that we had with the 600 and 650 Treo’s and is a long overdue improvement for a number of reasons. Treo 600 and 650 owners will be the first to tell you that with all the cool software applications available for Palm that you can burn through your 22MB of available space in no time flat. And when your 22MB of space was near full, your applications had a tendency to run slower and even crash the phone.

Sure, running apps and storing files off an SD card was an easy fix for the lack of RAM space on previous Treo’s, but some apps simply run better from RAM than they do from the card. This is particularly true if you use Mapping/GPS programs such as Mapopolis or TomTom, they search maps and perform much better from RAM then they do from an SD card.

Now, on to the many usability improvements that the 700p delivers:

a) Exterior & Physical Appearance: At 2.3"x 4.4"x0.9" and 6.49 oz, the 700p is virtually unchanged in terms of size, shape and weight and form factor. What stands out quite a bit is the new color scheme, the new grey and taupe color scheme is a more professional looking and business like than before. It’s a subtle, yet very good, color scheme and I think it was a good change for Palm to make.

“Square ness” is also a very prevalent them in the 700p. The rounded back and corners of the 650 have now become angular and squared off on the 700p. The keys on the keyboard and navigation buttons have gone from egg shaped to being squared off now too. I like these changes; they make the 700p look and feel far more professional and modern than the Treo 650.

b) CPU: The Treo 700p has a 312MHz processor which is the same speed as the Treo 650. However, the 700p uses an Intel PXA272 processor, which is a slightly newer, smaller and faster version of the Treo 650's PXA270 CPU. The PXA272 does seem a little a whole lot zippier than its predecessor. But now that we have so much more RAM space to store applications on, it almost seems like a wash when you are running a lot of apps. But increasing the RAM so much and not losing any processing speed is a pretty good end result.

c). Screen: The 700p has a 320x320 TFT 16bit color LCD screen which is the same as we had before. However, the 700p now has a whiter backlight and is a brighter than before which does provide a noticeable improvement over what was already a pretty darn good LCD display. SIDE NOTE : For those of you considering the 700w (the Windows Mobile version of the Treo 700), make note that the 700w only has a 240x240 screen.

d). Keyboard: The QWERTY keyboard is bit more crescent shaped than it was before which looks a bit better aesthetically, but I can’t say that it has an impact on typing performance. The keys themselves are squared off on the 700p (vs. rounded off keys on the 650). Personally I like this change quite a bit because with the squared keys I can aim for the corner of the key with my thumb. This allows me to type much faster than I could trying to locate and push on a round key. With the rounded keys I found myself going slower just to make sure that I had successfully pressed the key before moving on to the next letter, but I don’t find myself being so cautious with the squared keys.

e). 5 way Navigator and Hot Keys: All the keys are now larger and squared rather than egg shaped as before. Honestly, I don’t really like the new look here. I think the smaller curved Navigation keys were more appealing to the eye than these big squared keys. The function mapping of several of the hot keys has changed too, and unfortunately, not for the better. My #1 gripe is the erratic change of the menu key. In the 650, the Menu key, which is one of the more commonly used keys, was conveniently positioned as the top/right key. But in the 700p, the Menu key is now a small key at the bottom of the QWERTY keyboard, next to the ALT key. This is just a terrible spot to move it; it requires you to “hunt and peck” to find the menu key where as before it was something you could find without even looking at the phone. This seems to be a change simply for the sake of change with no real improvement in functionality, and was a bad decision by Palm.


f). Ringer/Silent Switch: The Ringer/Silent switch at the top has been enhanced so that when you slide it to vibrate mode, it will vibrate once to indicate that it is in silent ring mode. This may seem trivial, but Treo 600 & 650 owners know all too well how much of a nuisance it was to have to take the phone out of its case and look at it to make sure your ringer was switched off.

g). Operating System: The OS is Palm OS Garnett 5.4.9, which is the same as the Treo 650. But this is noteworthy because not changing the OS version means that your existing Palm apps will still work on your 700p 

h). Camera & Multimedia: Palm did a lot with improvements to the multimedia capabilities and has finally made the Treo a top notch multimedia device.
Camera: The 1.3 mega pixel digital camera is a huge upgrade to the previous 0.3 mega pixel camera and produces sharp, clear, colorful photos. The camera UI is far more intuitive and easier to use than before. They also totally revamped the skins so the camera application looks pretty slick and modern. Also new with the camera is that you can now share your pics without having to leave the Camera application, as well as save a photo to a contact and/or send it as an SMS message attachment directly from an album.
Camcorder: While the core functionality of the camcorder hasn’t changed, it does takes advantage of the new skins and UI that the Camera application has.
PhotoViewer: Greatly improved from the previous version. You can create an audio caption to a photo, rotate images, and draw on images. Albums are shown more intuitively as a stack of photos, instead of as a category drop down. Photo rendering is dramatically faster in the new viewer software; gone are the agonizingly long waits for the latest photo from your camera to display. A new slideshow feature includes cross-fades between photos to make for a more appealing show.
Voice memo: This is a new feature in the 700p that records your audio memo and can save it locally as well as forwarded as an email attachment or as an SMS text message
PocketTunes MP3 Player: This is the leading MP3 player for Palm OS on the market today and is now included free with the 700p.

i). Text Messaging: The existing UI for the Messaging application was already one of the most advanced on the market. They have added a type ahead feature that will search your Address Book as you type and bring up matching contacts. If you Text a lot, you’ll really like this new improvement.

j). Bluetooth: Supports the 1.2 version of Bluetooth which is an extremely belated improvement.

k). SD Cards: The 4GB SD cards are now supported. MP3 lovers will really like this since they can juggle less SD cards for all their music!

l). eMail: The 700p ships with the new VersaMail 3.5 client which has improved functionality, including support for Exchange Server 2003, Smart Addressing (it remembers recently used e-mail addresses), faster scrolling, and a Sort button on the main inbox page. Most important, VersaMail is more stable than the previous version, which tended to reset the Treo 650 randomly.

m). Documents to Go 8.0 is included with the 700p so you can work with attachments like MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. V8 of Documents to Go now supports native PDF files which is a long overdue feature. In all honesty, it doesn’t handle PDF’s all the great right now, but it’s better than not being able to open them at all. Look for a fix pack for V8 later this year that should improve PDF capabilities.

n). Blazer Browser: With a media player now embedded in the browser it can handle some (not all) streaming media content from the internet, such as WMAs, WMVs, and MP3s (Macromedia Flash, QuickTime and RealPlayer videos still do not work). This is actually a version of the Kinoma Player but unfortunately there is no direct launch button for the Kinoma Player and it will only launch when invoked from a web application. I read that a future fix pack release for the 700p will change this, but we’ll have to see if that really happens.


Lastly, no Technology/Electronics related review would be complete without some gripes, so here goes! What they should have fixed or improved, but didn’t:

a). Still no WiFi: Palm is sticking to their claims that adding the drivers for WiFi support will require a major rewrite to the OS. It seems unlikely that we’ll ever get WiFi on the Treo but with EVDO, I’m fine without WiFi
b). Voice Dialing: Being able to dial a contact through a voice invoked prompt is pretty much standard on most other cell phones, but for some odd reason, we still don’t have it as an included feature with the Treo. You can purchase a Palm application that will do voice dialing for you, but Palm should be including this for free.
c). Contacts: The Contacts application gets the job done and functionally speaking it isn’t half bad. But the UI is still very bland and overly simplistic. Since the focus of the 700p was around usability improvements, I have no idea why Palm would have overlooked dressing up the Contacts application.
d). Phone UI: Same as with the Contacts application, Palm completely overlooked sprucing up the UI of the phone. The Phone UI is the most frequently used UI on the whole device, why they ignored it and stuck with a simple, bland UI is beyond comprehension.

SUMMARY: The 700p is as highly functional as we’ve come to expect from Treo’s. I was hoping to see more in terms of net new capabilities, but the sprucing up and tweaking of the existing capabilities are quite good (and long overdue in many cases). Personally I’m very happy with the 700p and having EVDO alone makes the 700p worth every penny. I am constantly on the go, travel frequently for work, and in general I rely on my Treo quite heavily as a business tool, so having a speedy internet connection and DUN at my disposal makes a world of difference. I’ll probably save twice as much money as the 700p costs me just by no longer having to pay WiFi access fees in hotels and airports.

If EVDO access doesn’t present a significant benefit for you, then I might suggest you look at the previous release, the Treo 650, simply because they are dropping in price dramatically now that the 700p is out. If you aren’t going to reap the benefits of EVDO, you can still get a great Smartphone in the 650 at a fraction of the cost! If you are an existing Treo 650 user and EVDO or the increase in RAM don’t present a big benefit to you, I’d probably say you are better off waiting until the next release of the Treo to open your wallet. If you are looking for your first Smartphone, you definitely can’t go wrong with the Treo 700p.