Palm Treo 700w Smartphone

[PAGETITLE=Introduction] With each day that passes, technology is working to completely free us from the shackles that bind us to our desk. Technology has also taken the items we use every single day and made them small enough to carry around with us at all times. From phones to computers, we are to a point where we can carry them with us everywhere we go. From our email to spreadsheets, the joining of these two devices has launched us into the age of the smartphone. Today we are working with the Treo 700w from Palm. Long known for their Pilot PDAs and their Treo line of smartphones, itâ€™s safe to say that Palm has had their share of success in the mobile market. The 700 series is the first Palm smartphone to use an operating system other than Palm OS. The Treo we will be working with today is running Windows Mobile 5.0, Microsoftâ€™s latest OS for the mobile community. Can the Treo 700w give me that office in my pocket feel? Since it is a phone and a computer, how well does it act as both? While no one will by this smartphone for the phone itself, it is an important part of the entire package. How well does Windows Mobile 5.0 work and will it allow us to do what we need to on the Treo? With all these questions in mind, letâ€™s find out. What is a Smartphone? Before we get too involved in this review, I would like to take the time to describe what a smartphone is. There are many different criteria that need to be met in order to consider a phone a â€&oelig;smartphone.â€ The basic explanation is to imagine a PDA that allows the users to place phone calls through a cellular service provider. This is a somewhat sticky explanation because in one way or another because most all cell phones today have some form of PDA functionality such as contact lists phonebooks and calendars. While these are certainly handy features to have, they donâ€™t exactly make your Motorola RAZR a smartphone. To me, a smartphone would be a miniature computer of sorts. Something that allows me to send and receive email, allows me to sync it with my PC at home or at work, it must have a QWERTY keyboard to ease the messaging process and perhaps it would have a camera. I would also like to be able to install programs either onto the device itself or onto a flash card and to install anything onto a flash card; the phone would have to have expandable memory. These are all things that I would look for in a phone to classify it as a smartphone. Smartphones, basically being small handheld computers, need an operating system to function. There are many different operating systems available and more often than not, depend on the maker and the service provider of the phone itself. Notable smartphone operating systems include: Linux. Symbian. Microsoft Windows Mobile (a variant of Windows CE) Palm OS. Each of these operating systems has their own advantages and disadvantages, just like any OS on the desktop market. I personally have only worked with the Palm OS and in this review, Windows Mobile. Most users will be able to recognize, for the most part, the ins and outs of working with Windows Mobile and in my experience with Palm; the OS is straight forward and relatively easy to work with. I have no doubts that Linux and Symbian are the same for users who work with phones that run these operating systems. Packaging The Treo 700w came to us in a humble white box that included in the kit, as well as all of the items that ship with the retail Treo. The contents are packaged safely and securely in a molded plastic casing, virtually guaranteeing that it will make its way to you safe and sound. Once we have everything laid out, we see the USB Sync cable to connect your PC and your Treo, the manual, warranty information, a getting started guide, driver and program disks, a hands free set and the phone itself. No bells, no whistles, just the essentials to get you going right out of the box. Once we have the phone out, we see itâ€™s a decently sized. With a full 240x240, 65K color screen and a full QWERTY keyboard underneath, the Treo is a beautifully designed smartphone. A closer look at the front of the Treoâ€™s keyboard shows a designated number pad that will display numbers when calling and letters when writing. We see the send button with its green handset on the top. Next to it is the windows button. Pressing this, like on all keyboards, will bring up the start menu and all the included options (or drop down the start menu in the Treoâ€™s case.) In the middle of the Treo is the d-pad. With the center button in the middle of the d-pad, you can select anything on the screen that is highlighted, or activated. Think of this button as your double click button. Moving on to the right, there is an OK button. This button acts similar to the center button but is easier to get to if you are using the Treo with both hands. Finally, we get to the end call button. This is designated with a red handset and can also be used to turn the phone on and off. [PAGEBREAK] [PAGETITLE=Closer Look] On the bottom of the keyboard, flanking the spacebar, are two shift keys. These work just like the keys on a desktop keyboard and allow you to use upper case letters. To the far right of the keyboard on the bottom, there is a small button with the entire top being dark gray. Think of this as a function button. If you want to use the â€&oelig;@â€ symbol, you would simply press this button and then the â€&oelig;Iâ€ key. Not much to it and it adds a lot of depth to the Treo as an emailing piece of hardware. To give you an idea of what 240x240 really looks like, here is a quarter on the screen of the Treo. Ahh, the state of Wisconsin, known for their cattle, cheese and football (not shown.) Moving away from the front of the Treo, the back of the smartphone is home to the Treoâ€™s 1.3 megapixel camera as well as the external speaker. If you notice, there is a small convex circle to the right of the camera itself. This is a self portrait mirror that allows you to get a good idea of the orientation of your picture should you be vain enough to take pictures of yourself. Directly below the camera is the speaker. This is where your ringtone will come out of as well as any audio that you might have your Treo play. Under the camera and speaker, there is a door that covers up the battery. On the left side of the phone there are 3 buttons. The two that are together are for volume control. The bottom button can be programmed to do any number of commands. On the top of the Treo, there is a mute switch, an infrared port and interestingly enough, an SD flash disk slot. While the 700w comes with 128MB of internal memory, only 60MB of it is usable for the owner. Because 60MB can fill up fast these days, even on phones, the SD slot adds a lot to the overall package of the Treo. Accessed through Windows Mobile, the user can store music, pictures, videos or anything else that one can think of. No smartphone is complete without its stylus. With this in mind, Palm provides not only a quality stylus, but a convenient place to store it away. Running down the left side of the Treo on the back side, the aluminum stylus is truly a solid piece of work. Specs Before we get into the phone itself, letâ€™s take a look at exactly what we are looking at. Straight from Palm, here are the specs of the Treo 700w. Operating System: Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition. Memory: 128MB (60MB user accessible) non-volatile. Processor: Intel XScale 312MHz processor. Screen: 240 x 240 color TFT touch screen display, 16-Bit color with 65K+ colors. Wireless: 800/1900MHz nationwide digital phone, Bluetooth. Digital Camera: 1.3 megapixel with a max resolution of 1280x1024, Automatic light balancing, 2x digital zoom Self portrait mirror, Video capture. Audio: 2.5mm headset jack (stereo compatible), Speaker, Windows Mobile Media Player 10, Polyphonic MIDI, MP3, WAV and video ringtones External ringer on/off switch with vibration mode. Keyboard: Full QWERTY key layout with complete backlighting, Integrated number dialing pad, Keyguard feature. Expansion Slot: Support for MultiMedia, SD and SDIO cards. Battery: Removable and rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery, Up to 5 hours talk time and more than 300 hours stand-by time. Power/Sync: Multi-connector on device, USB sync cable, AC adapter (108-132 VAC/60Hz) Size: 2.3â€ x 4.4â€ (excluding antennae) x 0.9â€ (W/H/D), 58mm x 113mm x 23mm (W/H/D) Weight: 6.4 ounces / 180 grams. In all of those specifications, there are a few pieces that truly stand out to me. I am personally interested in the ability to sync the Treo with my PC and of course, the battery life needs to live up to the implied times in the spec sheet. For those of you who are dedicated Treo users, you will notice that the 700w has a smaller screen than the older 650 Treo. While I have not worked with the 650 model, I have not had any problems with the display on the 700w. The colors are bright and ultimately the screen is easy to read. Features and Usage Windows Mobile is far and away the feature that stands out the most on the 700w. With Windows Mobile comes Word, Excel and power point. Word and Excel work much the same way that the desktop versions while Power Point will allow you to go over a presentation before you have to present it. Working in IT with a background in sales, I can certainly appreciate Power Point on the go. With corporations in Palmâ€™s crosshairs, Outlook is the bread and butter of the Treo 700w. Using Verizonâ€™s mobile broadband, emails can be sent and received in real time, allowing seamless communication even when youâ€™re not at your desk. Another method of connecting to other people and devices is Bluetooth. Included with the 700w, Bluetooth allows the owner to use a Bluetooth hands-free headset should the provided wired headset not be enough. One last method of connecting to other people and devices is the Treoâ€™s built in infrared port. Something that the Treo isnâ€™t capable of is Wi-Fi. While not a...

Palm Treo 700w Smartphone

Page 122 –