Introduction, accessories

It looks like Palm is getting itself together. The renowned American manufacturer had some really difficult times in the last couple of years, and I think the main reason for this has been the decline of the Palm OS operating system from Access. Those who have used a device with such an OS probably know that it’s a very user-friendly, well-structured, flexible and fast operating system, which has been very advanced at its age, or at least it has been better than Windows Mobile. The problem has been that development has blocked and Cobalt (previously called Palm OS), announced in February 2004, has never been launched. The company has started selling devices based on Windows Mobile a couple of years ago, and they were not successful at all.

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In mid-2088, however, something has happened that proved to be a fresh air for the company in Sunnyvale: they have launched their low-end device called Centro, which – probably thanks to Palm OS 5.4.9 – had great sales and it’s still popular nowadays. The company managed to use the profit very well in development, as they have recently announced the first handset based on WebOS, Palm Pré. The handset, besides having the new OS, is a special one, as this is the only mobile device besides iPhone that has a multi-touch display (still, we shouldn’t forget BlackBerry Storm, although one can’t do much with this feature on it). But the newcomer will start shipping only in the second half of this year, and until then the company launched a premium-category device, which is the subject of this review: here’s Palm Treo Pro. I wouldn’t like to say big words, but I can only hope that this is the last Windows Mobile handset from the company – and by this I of course mean that I have great expectations of WebOS…

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The handset, that we received from DIFO of RRC Hungary, came in a bit strange box, as one of its corners is cut off. I didn’t see what the point of this is; it’s still the handset that matters. The list off accessories is restricted to those of the strictest necessity; we get a charger combined with a USB cable and a stereo headset.

Hirdetés

Exterior

Palm devices are usually advanced soap-holders, at least regarding their design. It’s a fact that these handsets are not famous for straight lines, but this is what makes them really unique, which is attractive for many users. As a matter of fact I also like these pleasant-looking machines, so I’ve found Treo Pro a good-looking one as well, since the new phone perfectly fits in the usual design: square-shaped display, QWERTY keyboard with round keys, arced surfaces, shiny materials. Size didn’t change much either, the 113 x 60 x 14 mm large device weighs 133 grams. Assembly quality is near perfect and the quality of the materials used is the usual “Palm-quality”, which means medium-quality, shiny plastics. The colors aren’t really vivid, as Treo Pro is completely black.

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On the top of the front we can see the small speaker with the 2.5” transflective TFT display (having a resolution of 320 x 320 pixels) below, which can display only 65,536 colors, but it’s very high-quality and is easy to read in sunlight as well. In the center there is a Treo label and a logo on the center of the five-way d-pad. The very easy to use circle has three buttons on all sides, on the left there is the dial-, the Windows- and the calendar-key, while on the right we find the end call, the OK and the Outlook (messaging) hotkey. On the bottom there is the QWERTY keyboard made up of only 35 keys. It’s rather small, but after a short time we should be able to use it easily and fast.

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The back is rather plain, on top there is a small hole for the 2 megapixel fix focus camera, on its left there is the handsfree speaker. At about the middle there is a silver Palm logo, while in the bottom left corner we can find the mid-sized, non-telescopic stylus.

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On the top we can see the power button and the inevitable mute slider, which is still a brilliant thing, although it’s no new feature since iPhone. On the right there is the WiFi button and the – brace yourselves – IrDA port; on the bottom there is the standard microUSB connector, the 3.5 mm jack and the microphone, while on the left there is the camera’s hotkey and the volume control keys.

Hardware, operating system, speed, software

The handset’s OS is Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which runs on a 400 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 CPU. We have 128 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM, 70 MB being available for running programs and 80 megs for data storage. We can insert the microSD card after taking off the back, fortunately the battery doesn’t have to be taken out in order to do so. There is no flash memory in the handset, but the SDHC-compatibility makes up for this, as we can use a memory card of up to 8 GB in size.

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I’ve tried to measure the system’s speed with the well-known VsBenchmark 07/Pocket PC Mark duo, but due to the square display the first didn’t even launch, so I had to stick to Anton Tomow’s great program, which yielded the expected average results. During use the handset didn’t seem slow, although it won’t fly, sometimes we have to wait a bit for screen changes and program launches, but it’s not critical.

The Today screen is an average one, unfortunately there are no Widgets or any kind of quicklaunch interface. It’s interesting that the display won’t turn off in standby mode, only the backlight is turned off, so we can read the time – although this is practical, it surely affects the battery negatively. Taking a look at the software we might be surprised that a couple of programs are from HTC – knowing the applications of the current leader in PDA manufacturing this is of course a highly positive aspect.

Three applications fall in this category: Task Manager (which lets us set up the X button to shut down running application and pops up the list of running apps on the Today screen), the Camera’s software and Comm. Manager that handles all data transfer services.

We can find some other interesting stuff in the list of programs. One of these is the icon called Get WorldMate, which opens up Internet Explorer and helps in buying the program. Google Maps and Sprite Backup can prove much more useful, but that’s the end of extras, as all other applications are default ones.

Phone calls, data transfer, GPS

I had no problems during phone calls, sound quality is great and thanks to the automatic keypad lock I didn’t press any button accidentally. Software related to phone calls are all default ones, which might be a negative aspect for the contact list, as due to the lack of the letters on the right searching might be difficult – although thanks to the QWERTY keyboard it won’t be hard to type the first couple of letters of the contact’s name. Outlook handles the phonebook and messaging, so we can enter contacts until there is some free memory, while as for messaging we can send/receive SMS, MMS and email messages, authenticated IMAP servers and a couple of attachments being no problem for the application.

The data communication arsenal is full and complete. GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA and WiFi are here to provide the basis of data communication required for browsing the web, and as a bonus we have Bluetooth 2.0 and the SIR/CIR infra port, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 115200 bits/second. The microUSB connector is a standard one, fortunately it supports the USB 2.0 protocol, so it’s fast and we can even charge the handset from a computer – as a downside, we have no Mass Storage mode.

Webraska Navigaton 7.5 | iGO 8 launch error

Treo Pro has a built-in GPS receiver, but we don’t know much about it. It’s still sure that it makes positioning faster with the help of cell information. There are two programs related to navigation, the first being QuickGPS, which helps locating satellites faster with a data packet downloaded from the internet, while Webraska Navigation is the 14 day trial version of a car navigation software. It downloads maps from the internet, and it’s pretty fast as it doesn’t tell us much more than street names and house number – our actual position easily fits into 2-3 KB. Unfortunately our legal iGO8 didn’t launch, although we didn’t try the latest version.

Multimedia

The camera’s resolution is 2 megapixels and it has fix focus. We can always ask the question if such a business model needs a camera at all, even more when it’s not a high-quality one.

The camera’s software is from HTC, so it provides quite a lot of settings: effects, resolution (large and medium, ehh), light metering (matrix and center-weighted), exposure correction, white balance. As you can see on the pictures below, image quality is not the best, as although the dynamics range is fine and the colors look good as well, but noise filtering is too powerful, which leads to a loss of details and pictures that resemble oil paintings.

As for music we don’t get much good besides the 3.5 mm jack, since HTC Audio Manager is not installed. Unfortunately there aren’t any other players, so we have to stick to Windows Media Player, which can sort tracks by ID3 tags, but it won’t display album covers and has no equalizer. Sound quality is average both on handsfree and the default headset. There is no FM radio.

Battery, summary

The physical size and capacity of the battery are both large: 1500 mAh. Thanks to this piece the little Treo stays online for longer than an average PDA-phone, although not much longer. It has to be charged every other day, as even if it would take it another day, the battery would surely go dead in the middle of our most important call.

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Summary: Palm Treo Pro is basically not a bad handset. It’s assembled pretty well, it provides fine text entry, it’s good for a phone, supports all the data transfer protocols and it’s not even slow. There are two problems: it has a square-shaped display, which is unsupported by many programs and it’s unrealistically expensive, as we have to pay about 500 euros for it. And it’s not that good.

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Summary from Bog: I’ve been using Treo Pro for a couple of days too, it’s a nice model if you don’t know how much does it cost. It’s a fine everyday companion, another example for the fact that it’s hard to replace a physical QWERTY keyboard with a virtual one. It’s fast, easy to use, it does what it has to until the battery goes dead. It’s price, and in some places the unknown brand name, can be what block its spreading.

Palm Treo Pro

Bocha feat. Bog

Translated by Szaszati

The handset has been provided by DiFO of RRC Hungary. Thanks.

Specifcations

Palm Treo Pro
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2100 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
	Size	113 x 60 x 14 mm
	Weight	133 grams
	CPU	400 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201
	ROM / RAM	256 / 128 MB
	Display	2.5” diagonal, 320 x 320 pixel resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen display
	Expandability	microSD (SDHC-compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra / Bluetooth	present / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	present
	Audio	3.5 mm jack, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	2 megapixels, fix focus
	Battery	1500 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	QWERTY keyboard