My previous PDA phones have been an iMate JASJAM (Dopod) and before that an O2 Xda Mini. This new Treo is probably the best of these three overall.
First and most importantly, it’s the lightest. Unlike the O2 or the JASJAM you can actually have this phone in your shirt pocket without your shoulder drooping.
This model Treo runs Windows Mobile 6.0 which is a dream for synchronising with my Vista laptop. All that syncing stuff always worked very well on all these devices but Windows Mobile 6.0 takes that to a new level. I particularly like the way the Mobile Sync automatically detects new photos from your phone and downloads them – no more navigating with Explorer to try and find the location of the images and copying them manually.
[I gave my old phone to Alyssa and encountered a bizarre issue. I wanted to DELETE all the contacts and appointments in my old phone before I gave it to her. Do you think I could do that? No, Billy Gates decided that I am too stupid to be trusted with a delete all function so he simply removed it. I had to go through a number of steps I discovered on the tech tips pages to clear out my stuff without erasing the entire device]
The Treo is even simpler to use that the older versions. Mobile 6 is not much different but Palm has added several neat little features not in the standard version. One is that the phone is permanently in “contacts” mode when at the today page. That is, whenever you type in letters on the keyboard it starts searching the contacts for a match rather than having to first go to contacts then typing the name. Another neat feature is that when you press the green phone button it pops up a menu with all your recently called numbers ordered from most recent showing the name of the person and a submenu IF you have USED more than one number for that person.
Another cool feature is that SMS messages are arranged into “chat sessions”. You select the conversation and then it lists all previous SMS’s from that person just as you would see in MSN Messenger or similar chat applications.
Mobile 6 makes sure that you never lose a number. If you receive a call from a number that is not in your contacts it makes sure you can save the number to a new contact or an existing contact.
The keyboard is pretty finicky to begin with and I still make mistakes when typing an SMS, however I am getting better with it and I can see that with another week or so I will be able to type as quickly as I was on the JASJAM.
This device is the first PDA/phone that I’ve had that you can use one-handed - useful when you are in airports and need to make and take calls while you are lugging bags or a laptop around. I lost the stylus of two days and never had any problems operating the phone.
Best: A switch on the top of the phone to turn the sound off. This way you can switch it off in your pocket if you forget to when you enter a meeting. No more getting the stylus out and turning the volume off.
Worst: Battery life. Now this is a shocker. The battery will not last a busy day on the phone! It needs to be charged EVERY night. I am quite unhappy with the batter life to be honest. I am seriously considering purchasing a second battery for when I go on business trips. Given the likely purchaser of this type of phone is a power user/business person, then wouldn’t they have made sure the battery lasted at least a day of heavy use! I checked the net for reviews and some claim it lasts 2 days with moderate use. Perhaps mine is faulty.
Worst Gotcha: This is not a problem with the phone but a gotcha to watch out for. Windows Mobile 6 and MS Exchange 2003 allow you to configure your PDA to receive email by push technology (similar to a Blackberry). Well it works great and so I configured it on my phone and started getting emails when they were sent to my work address. Then I checked my Vodafone bill after a week: $650 in charges!!!!!!!!!!! Yikes, after getting back up off the floor I disabled the feature and got on the landline to Vodafone. They informed me that I didn’t have a “data plan” – I stifled the urge to tell them I had a “shove it up your date hole” plan. Seems that I can purchase 100MB for $20 a month which would do my mail but because I didn’t have a “data plan” I was paying premium rates. The nice operator (he says through gritted teeth) said to call back when I got my bill at month end and they may be able to reduce it. Fortunately it is a company phone…..
In summary this is a very good phone but the whole combined PDA/phone/iPod things is still a little way off.
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