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Palm Treo 700p


Thu Jun 8, 2006 - 12:41 PM EDT - By Michael Ducker, Harv Laser

Messaging/Connectivity

Michael: The Treo 700p comes with four built-in email applications. VersaMail, Web, Sprint Business Connection, and the Good email service. Sprint Business Connection and Good's email service are both targeted mainly to corporate customers with an existing enterprise IT structure. In the past I have been very impressed with Good's client and complete integration into enterprise email systems. If your business needs enterprise security and exchange syncing, I would highly recommend looking into Good. Palm includes the web browser in their definition of an email client recognizing that many people use free online web mail. In a separated printed manual for setting up email, they even give the mobile addresses to Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

VersaMail is Palm's long-term email client with roots that go back to the late 90's MultiMail. In 2006, VersaMail handles up to 8 IMAP and/or POP3 and one Exchange account. It has an easy to use interface similar to SnapperMail. Palm offers preconfigured email settings for 25 different providers and has a wizard for setting up new accounts. I enjoy using VersaMail as it is an incredible example of the quality that bundled applications on the Treo should be. The interface is great, the speed is acceptable (IMAP speed is much improved over EVDO), and it offers advanced features. For example, did you know that VersaMail includes built in message filtering? It took me years to find this feature, but it is under preferences.

The big feature added to VersaMail on the Treo 700p is built-in Exchange contacts support. On the Treo 650, VersaMail introduced built-in Exchange Activesync for email and calendar (the first sign of a partnership between Palm and Microsoft). The new contacts support is great if you use exchange, and makes the out of the box experience with the Treo even better.

What's missing from Palm's Treo 700p out-of-the-box email experience? Blackberry Connect. The long promised native Palm OS Blackberry client has shown up on Treo 650s in Asia, but is still missing from Treos stateside. This is a carrier decision, one that when reversed will only help accelerate the sales growth of Treos. Overall, email out of the box on the Treo has never been a better experience, and Palm has made it as simple as possible to setup.

SMS

Michael: Text messaging on a Treo is one of the best Treo experiences, and Palm only made it better on the Treo 700p. The Messaging client on the Treo 700p went to a spa and got a facelift much improved over 650. The compose message window is split up into attractively highlighted text input areas, that change from grey to white when selected. Quicktext and Smilies are still only a button away, as well as adding media which now shows up as a separate bubble when selected.

Adding recipients is easier and slicker than ever. Simply type in the contact's initials or name, and a drop down box, reminiscent of those on the Treo 700w, shows up with the phone numbers matching the contact. Very simple, this method is far better than selecting lookup contact on the 650 and having to use a new form to select the contact. Of course, my favorite feature of messaging is still there: the automatic threading feature that groups all messages between you and another person in one instant messaging chat-like display. I have not met a phone that makes text messaging easier and more fun than the Treo 700p.

Harv: The new messaging layout looks the same as the 650's at first blush until you dig into it a little and discover these neat improvements. While it's certainly not the only reason you'd want to get a 700p, it's just plain better, more powerful, and ultimately more intuitive than earlier versions, which proves that SOME changes truly are smart upgrades that make sense.

WEB browsing Blazer improved

Michael: Internet browsing, done through an application named Web (which is still good old Blazer), is a completely different experience with EVDO's speed. Pages that used to take minutes download and render in only a few seconds. Web includes pretty good support for CSS, JavaScript, SSL, downloading files, and nearly all image formats used online. For faster viewing, you can switch to an image-less rendering with one tap. Web tries to reformat pages to view in one column, but on some sites, it's easier to view the webpage in wide screen mode with both vertical and horizontal scroll bars, which is only a menu option away.

The newest feature of web browser is a built in video and audio player that can stream some content from the internet, such as WMAs, WMVs, and MP3s. Macromedia Flash, QuickTime and RealPlayer videos will not work. In such cases, a large "Media not supported" button rears its ugly head. I think that the built in video player is a great feature, but because it only supports a few of the most popular video formats it falls short.

Harv: Kinoma coded the new media player in the ROMs. Oddly, due to Palm's dictates, you can't launch it with an app icon since it has no icon, so you can't run it and feed it a URL to a media file. It'll only appear when Blazer hands off streaming or downloaded media to it. Look for Kinoma to release a new player later this year which does act as a normal app with a launcher icon. And speaking of streaming media, while you can upload videos directly from your Treo to sites like Youtube.com, you can't view any of the thousands of videos on that site (or on many others like Google's video service) with the 700p, since their media is wrapped in a Flash player and there's no Flash on the Treo. Argh. How about we all get together and light the torches and climb up the hill to castle Youtubenstein and tell them we have these lovely new high speed Treos and please let us use them to view their content? A grass-roots movement (firm but polite) could just make it happen.

Something that didn't thrill me about the revised Blazer: See that new little lightning bolt in its top row of icons? Tap that to toggle graphics loading on and off. What happened to the icon that toggled between wide (desktop style view) and optimized mode? It's gone! They moved it into one of the pull-down menus. I think this exactly the opposite of the way it should be. With an EVDO connection, the 700p loads graphics ten times faster than the 650, so it doesn't make much sense to me to put the graphics on/off switch in your face. Why would you want to turn them off? I'd rather have the optimized / wide mode switch back where it was. You'll discover some other tweaks to Blazer, but this change bugged me.

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Product Info

Details

>	Name Treo 700p
>	Company Palm, Inc
>	Size 2.3" W x 4.4" H (excluding antenna) x 0.9" D
>	Camera 1.3 MP
>	Bluetooth Version 1.2
>	Wireless 800/1900 Mhz EVDO, 1xRTT
>	Screen 320x320, 16 bit TFT Color
>	Memory 128 MB (60 MB available)
>	Processor Intel XScale 312 Mhz
>	Operating System Palm OS Garnet 5.4.9
>	Weight 6.4 Ounces
>	Fact Sheet & User Opinions

Availability

>	Available

Pricing

$399

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