| Ablang 2006-06-07, 5:48 pm |
| May's Treo Leapfrogs Past January's
Published: May 18, 2006
THE electronics industry operates like a very expensive game of
leapfrog. You buy something in April, and then a newer, faster, less
expensive version comes out in May. Rats!
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Stuart Goldenberg
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The Treo's many functions include cellphone, Internet access and
streaming video.
On the other hand, you might get lucky; you might not buy in until the
better version comes along. There you sit on the train, on the plane
or at the baseball field, smugly looking over at the poor saps who
bought last month's phone, music player or camera.
If you've been shopping for a smartphone — a multipurpose cellphone
with Tic-Tac keys for tapping out e-mail — the game is picking up
speed. This week, Palm unveiled the latest model of its popular Treo
phone, the 700P, only four months after the previous one.
The Treo has found a special place in the hearts of the upwardly
technical. It offers a beautiful phone that fits sweetly in your hand,
displays photos on a big, bright touch screen, does e-mail and Web
browsing just about as well as a cellphone can — and doubles as a Palm
organizer, effortlessly synchronizing its calendar, address book and
Microsoft Office documents with your Mac or PC.
All-in-one gadgets rarely do any single job as well as a dedicated one
(think scanner-printer-fax machines or camera-music players). But the
Treo has always come deliciously close.
Somehow, Palm has managed to pack into it a BlackBerry-style keyboard
(brightly illuminated, at that); a physical switch that silences all
sounds (which, as the overture begins, you can hit without even taking
the thing out of your pocket); a built-in digital camera; a voice-memo
button that can also record phone calls (which is great to have when
someone starts rattling off driving directions over the phone); a slot
for an SD memory card (to hold more music, photos and videos); a
removable battery (4.5 hours of talk time, 300 hours standby); and a
five-way rocker switch that lets you operate most functions with one
hand.
Somehow, all of this works together without becoming a train wreck of
complexity.
IN January, Palm released a model called the Treo 700W, which shall
henceforth be known as the Blessing/Curse Upgrade. This model was even
sleeker (2.3 by 4.4 by 0.9 inches), faster (312 megahertz) and more
capacious (60 megabytes of free memory). More important, it brought
sunshine into the lives of business travelers by hopping onto
Verizon's and Sprint's superfast cellular networks (known as EV-DO).
For a price, you could do your Internet duties at something
approaching cable-modem speeds.
The 700W also introduced a better, higher-resolution camera (1.3
megapixels), dedicated Talk and End buttons, and even more refined
domed key shapes that are easier to hit with flailing thumbs.
The curse is that instead of the efficient, refined Palm operating
system, this model ran a mobile version of Windows.
Cramming Windows into a Treo was calculated to turn the heads of
corporate buyers whose motto is, "Nobody ever got fired for buying
Microsoft."
But from an elegance standpoint, it was a bizarre move. On the 700W,
rough spots and design mismatches stuck out like a handful of sore
thumbs. There was an OK button that actually meant Cancel, and a Start
menu that fit only seven programs. The date book permitted
appointments to begin only on the half-hour; the Calendar and Address
Book buttons were replaced by menu commands (which required more taps
to operate); and the on-screen Mute and Speakerphone buttons were
hidden in pop-up menus.
What connoisseurs of good design really wanted, of course, was a phone
with the modernized hardware of the 700W but with the more logical
Palm operating system.
Good things come to those who wait. The 700P is the Windows Treo
without the Windows, and it's almost everything you'd wish it to be.
That is, it offers all the same hardware perks of the Windows Treo —
the high-speed Internet, better keyboard, Talk and End keys, sharper
camera, improved specs — while sticking to the more efficient Palm
operating system.
Here's the Home button, back where it belongs; one press takes you to
a complete list of every program on the machine. (And here's the
optional list view, absent on the Windows version, which lets you see
22 programs at a time without scrolling.)
Here, too, is Palm's Blazer browser, which blasts Web pages onto the
screen much faster than the 700W's Internet Explorer; if you've signed
up for the high-speed Internet service, then streaming radio, music
and video clips are a joy.
And here, praise be, is the bright, 320-by-320-pixel touch screen that
the Treo used to have — not the 240-by-240 one on the Windows version.
In some ways, in fact, the 700P leapfrogs past the 700W and offers a
few nice touches all its own.
For example, the slide-show, movie-playing and audio-playing programs
all have a consistent, modern look. Not that you're likely to choose a
phone based on its slide-show software, but you can now attach a voice
comment to each slide, if you so desire.
The Palm's miniature copy of Microsoft Office, called Documents to Go,
is now burned right into the Treo's circuitry so that it no longer
eats into the 60 megabytes of free memory that's available for your
use. You can open Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF documents, even when
they're sent as e-mail attachments.
Far more important, the 700P and its first carriers (Sprint and
Verizon) have embraced the miracle known as dial-up networking. That's
the feature, often frowned on by the carriers, that lets your laptop
get online over the phone's high-speed connection.
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Multimedia
Video: The Treo 700P
Video: The Treo 700P
An Audio Version of This Column (mp3)
CNET Review: Palm Treo 700p
Pogue's Posts
The latest in technology from the Times's David Pogue, with a new
look.
Go to Pogue's Posts »
You can connect the laptop to the Treo either with a cable (Windows
only) or wirelessly, using a Bluetooth connection (Mac or Windows). In
that case, the phone remains in your pocket, invisibly treating your
laptop to high-speed e-mail, chat and Web service.
Some have knocked the Treo 700 family for its lack of Wi-Fi wireless
networking; the 700P doesn't even accept Palm's $100 Wi-Fi card. Then
again, if you can get online through the high-speed cellular network
in hundreds of big cities, why limit yourself to scattered hot spots
here and there?
The 700P is so capable, elegant and satisfying to use that it's likely
to make more people than ever ask: "Should I get the Treo or the
BlackBerry?"
Both devices work with e-mail, both personal and corporate. (The new
Treo comes with presets for AOL, Gmail, Earthlink, Apple .Mac,
Hotmail, Yahoo, Exchange ActiveSync and many e-mail services.)
Verizon's Treo even offers wireless real-time "push" synching of your
e-mail and calendar with your Windows PC back at home, as long as the
computer is left on — a cool, BlackBerry-ish trick.But the BlackBerry
doesn't take movies or photos, doesn't have a touch screen and has no
library of 10,000 add-on programs — from tip calculators to subway
maps — as the Treo does. (That's precisely why corporate technical
managers love it; a closed system is simpler to troubleshoot.)
If you ultimately opt for the Treo 700P, go download a shareware
scientific calculator for it. You'll need one to figure out how much
all of this goodness will cost you.
The Sprint version costs $550 or $400, depending on whether you sign
up for a one- or two-year contract. Unlimited high-speed EV-DO service
starts at $15 a month, including a TV channel and a Sirius satellite
radio channel (not including the price of a voice plan).
Unfortunately, that doesn't include using the Treo to get your laptop
online, which costs another $40 a month.
Verizon's version of the 700P costs $400, after rebate, when bought
with a service package, like $110 a month for 1,350 minutes of talking
and unlimited high-speed Internet. Here again, the dial-up networking
for your laptop costs extra: $15 a month.
(Don't forget to leave $140 in the budget for inMotion's tabletop
stereo speaker system/Treo dock. The Treo slips into it, the better to
pump out your music collection as it recharges—and when a call comes
in, the music stops and the device turns into a crystal-clear
speakerphone. Cool.)
So what's the downside of the new Treo? It's expensive, of course. And
because it works on the Sprint and Verizon networks, it doesn't work
overseas. (If history is any guide, a Treo 700P designed for Cingular
and T-Mobile will appear later in the year. Those are the G.S.M.
networks, the European standard.)
Otherwise, the new Treo itself is a joy — a communicator with immense
power and potential whose software is a help instead of a hindrance.
If you've held off on a smartphone until now, congratulatio
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==
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