PalmOne’s Treo smart phone has been the best combination of phone, PDA and e-mail device on the market.
It had a few key flaws, though, so the company has now released a new, improved model, the Treo 650, to be sold by Sprint starting next month.
But the rest of the industry is catching on to the idea of making a phone that, like the Treo, actually has a full keyboard for banging out e-mails. So the competition will be tougher for the new Treo than it was for its predecessor.
Over the last week, I’ve been testing the new Treo 650, and comparing it with two other PDA phones that have now morphed into models with keyboards. One is the Microsoft-based Pocket PC phone. The other is the Sony Ericsson P910 smart phone, based on the Symbian operating system. I concentrated on the new keyboards in these two competitors because that’s their main new feature. I have already reviewed another major Treo competitor, the new BlackBerry 7100t, sold by T-Mobile.
My verdict: The Treo is better than ever, but the two newest keyboard phones, like the new BlackBerry, will give some new options to mobile e-mail users who prefer different designs and different software.
The Treo 650, which Sprint will sell for $499 with a one-year service contract, looks much like its predecessor. But it boasts four big improvements. First, the screen now has four times the resolution of the 600’s display. It is gorgeous and sharp. Second, the battery is now removable, so you can tote a spare to keep talking longer.
Third, the keyboard has been improved, with wider, flatter keys, a big help for people with larger fingers and longer fingernails. Fourth, the 650 has Bluetooth wireless networking, so you can use it with wireless headsets and cars that use Bluetooth for hands-free calling.
In my tests, the Treo 650 performed all its tasks well. It synchronized with my PC, made and received calls, and handled e-mail perfectly. Using the new Bluetooth feature, I was able to hook up a Logitech Bluetooth headset without any problems.
But there are some drawbacks. The internal memory available to the user is still paltry, at 23 megabytes, which is actually a little less than the 600 offered. There’s no Wi-Fi wireless networking, and the built-in camera, while improved, is still low resolution at a time when other cellphone cameras are offering higher resolution.
Plus, in my tests, the preproduction Treo 650 I had crashed several times, and so did the Palm synchronization software, which has always been solid as a rock. PalmOne will have to solve these problems by launch.
Also, the 650 will have to hold up better in extended use than the 600 did. For some users, the old model was terribly unreliable, and had to be replaced, sometimes more than once. The firm promises the new one will be tougher.
The Pocket PC PDAs with built-in phones have always had two big drawbacks compared with the Treo: They were too bulky, and they usually lacked keyboards. The new Audiovox PPC 6600, which Sprint will start selling soon at $629, doesn’t solve the size problem. But it now has a handy keyboard, which slides out from beneath the unit.
The keyboard has membrane keys, which are often lousy for typing, but in this case, they work quite well. It has a solid feel, and, like the keyboards on the Treo and BlackBerry, it’s smart. It automatically inserts apostrophes in common words like “I’m” and “they’re,” and it knows enough to capitalize the first letter after a period.
The Audiovox has much more available memory than the Treo, and it also has Bluetooth. Sprint and some other wireless carriers will also sell a model with a low-resolution camera, though the one I tested didn’t have one.
But this new Pocket PC falls down in the area of one-handed navigation. With the Treo’s five-way navigation control, you can do dozens of common tasks, such as starting a new e-mail or sending one, without using the stylus. But the similar-looking five-way control on the Audiovox is much more limited, so you’re forced to use the stylus way too often.
The Sony Ericsson P900 was the best and sleekest Treo competitor to come out of Europe, but it lacked a keyboard. The new 910 version has a keyboard, which is hidden on the back side of its flip-down phone keypad. Alas, this keyboard is awful. It feels flimsy and wobbly, it’s cramped, and it lacks navigation or tab keys. Worse, it’s dumb, failing to automatically insert apostrophes or to capitalize letters after periods. And like the Pocket PC, it forces you to use the stylus much too often.
The Sony Ericsson is also expensive. It will cost around $700 when it goes on sale later this year, and consumers will have to activate it with their own phone-service plans, because the only U.S. carrier expected to sell it, AT&T (now absorbed by Cingular), will sell it only to businesses.
In my view, neither of these keyboard phones is as good as the Treo 650 or the BlackBerry 7100t. But at least consumers now have a wider choice in phones with keyboards, and their options are likely to improve.
Walter Mossberg writes about personal technology for The Wall Street Journal.
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