Palm Treo 700p Review

OK, so I have had my Palm Treo 700p for 2 weeks now. I feel I have a lot more to learn about the Palm OS and I have barely scratched the surface on trying out the available software for palm devices, but I am ready to write a review of it.

I’ll start my saying I don’t miss my old phone at all. It was a Samsung i600. The Treo is lighter weight and the same width. The Treo is 6.4-ounces while the samsung is 5.0 ounces. Obviously my perception of weight is off. I was amazed at the small size of the Treo when I first opened it. The Treo is the perfect size. I’ve used PDA’s for the last several years and I always wished for something smaller. But if the Treo were any smaller it would be too small. It is the perfect size right now.

It looks good. People notice when you have a phone with a QWERTY keypad and the Treo is a good looking design. There are a few out there that are just atrocious. They make me want to puke when I see them. The blue and gray on the Treo looks classy and not cheap. I would prefer to have an antennaless device and it appears to be on the horizon, but not yet.

The screen is a little on the small side for a PDA but huge for a cell phone. With a resolution of 320 x 320, it would be awesome if it were a little bigger, but not at the sacrifice of the size of the device itself or the keyboard. Basically i’m asking for the impossible.

The keys are surprisingly easy to push even with my large hands. I rarely make typos when typing on it and when I do the backspace key is right there to just back up. There are few little things to learn about the keypad but you learn it pretty quick and it’s nothing to worry about.

The directional pad is nice and the button in the center is easy to push, although I think I would prefer the pad from the earlier treos. The 4 shortcut buttons on the front are great and easy to reach and push with either thumb.

The speaker is loud and the headphone port works great, although I wish it was located at the top of the device and also standard size instead of the screwy mini-mini size. Certain cases will be unusable during headphone usage because of that odd placement.

Overall, physically the Treo is superior to any other device/cell phone I have used. Now onto the software and real world usage.

This is my first Palm OS device so I’m still pretty new to the OS and haven’t figured out certain things yet. Overall the user interface is pretty simple to use although I think it may be a little too simple for my tastes. I love having the ability to either use the stylus or use my finger or use the directional pad to navigate to my program of choice. Different times call for different methods.

The Phone software is pretty straightforward and seems to work pretty well. One nice feature is that it asks you if you would like to add people to your contact list after you hang up with them if they aren’t already there (this can be turned off in preferences). If someone that you don’t know calls you from another state it tells you what state that area code is from. Kinda cool.

I text message quite a bit and one awesome feature is that after you text somebody it turns your correspondence into a chat session so you can scroll up and see the entire conversation for the past few days (on my old phone I couldn’t even see my sent messages).

I don’t do much internet browsing on my cell phones, but the little bit I did for testing purposes seems pretty quick and I could see myself doing it more on the Treo than on previous phones.

One problem I have is that sometimes I can’t tell what is happening on my phone when I get a call or text message or alarm. It has a little alarm icon at the top but i can’t tell what it is referring to. Perhaps if I could remember which ring tones and alarm tones I set I could know what was happening and then push the correct corresponding shortcut key to take me to that application. As it sits now, I have to guess and usually I guess wrong. God Forbid somebody call me at the same time somebody else texts me and my reminder tells me I have a meeting… I might freak! This will go away with more practice with my phone.

One MAJOR problem I have so far with the Palm OS is that there is no concept of back or even exit. I can’t go back one step or can’t go back to the app I was just using. From what I can tell, you have to go through the main menu screen if you want to go to a specific program. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but just imagine you were updating your calender while listening to some music and you decide to skip the current song, you have to push the ‘home’ shortcut key, scroll to your audio player, select it, skip the song, push the ‘home’ shortcut key again, choose calender and then you’re back to where you were. TOO many clicks for me. I’m exploring some software solutions and possibly establishing some more shortcut keys for a workaround. But, you can reprogram the main keys to go to certain apps that you may use a lot. On a similar note, the menus for each app are sometimes hard to see or know they are there and some apps take up the whole screen without giving you the option of doing anything. You just have to hit one of the shortcut keys to get back to another program. The OS needs some work in this regard. I’m hoping OS 6 does in fact get released someday soon and I can update to it. I’m sure it will fix some of the problems.

I have a few other problems with the Treo 700p as well. I have been using a flip phone for over 6 years now. I hated the candy bar style of phone where you have to have the keys locked. I refused for the longest time to even consider another non flip phone, hence the Samsung i600. I finally decided the best combo unit of PDA and Cell Phone was a candy bar style design. So with that in mind, I am willing to accept the keyguard necessity. However, oils and grease just get on the screen and there’s nothing you can do about it. I wipe it off on my shirt a few times per day and I also put a screen protector on it which is helpful.

The keys should have a small hole in each one that the stylus will slide into if you ever need to type with the stylus. I also don’t understand why they don’t have more shortcut buttons available on the sides of the device. The left side is devoid of any buttons and it seems like a waste of real estate.

This is my first phone with a camera. I’m sure this camera is fine in comparison to other camera phones, but it is really lacking on features. I can’t carry my Canon 20d around with me all the time, so sometimes this thing is going to be it for me. In perfect lighting it performs admirably, but any other time your pics probably won’t be usable.

For example, Me in good lighting:

And my friend Maryam in overblown lighting:

The ability of the auto iris isn’t too swell. Also the 2x digital zoom is really pretty useless as well.

1x shot

2x shot

Overall, I would say the camera performs pretty well but I would like to see something with more features. Perhaps there will be some software I can install that will give me more control over the image. I would also like to see a flash on the camera. That would help things a lot. But I didn’t buy this thing for the camera it has, so I’ll shut up about it.

It does have a video camera feature in it as well and this is pretty cool. I don’t know how often I’ll ever use it, but sometimes it’s nice to get a few seconds of video for one purpose or another. Here is the sample video I shot for testing purposes. What is cool about this is that it compresses this video into a format called .3gp. (More info here) It is based off of mpeg4 codecs and is compatible in both Quicktime and Windows Media Player. Very cool.

So my final thoughts on this new device? I think the operating system needs an overhaul, but the physical aspects of this device are top notch. I will undoubtedly get a better handle on the OS, but I also think it is possible I could switch over to the Palm Treo 700w (same thing except it runs windows Mobile).

If you are interested in getting one or would like more information, this site is pretty awesome.

(Source 1, Source 2, Source 3)