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I promised a review of the Treo 600, and I try not to break my promises, so here goes. First, a word or two about why I decided to buy another phone/PDA[1].

A year or so ago, my old phone died, and I decided to switch networks to take advantage of a good offer on the Sony T68i at the same time. I hoped that with the PIM features on the phone, and the ability to sync with iCal and Address Book, I could stop using my venerable old Palm IIIx glance and therefore slightly reduce the number of gadgets I have to lug around with me (finding an ergonomic and stylish bag to carry it all around is a whole other story). Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out like that. Using a PIM on the phone—-even with predictive text—-was a bit awkward, and the Sony’s applications just didn’t have the same usability as the Palm versions. I also missed other things like reading books on my Palm while waiting at the bus stop, so reluctantly I went back to lugging both the phone and Palm around.

At the same time, the signal strength on my network (Singlepoint) deteriorated to the point where there was almost nowhere in Oxford where I could get enough of a signal to make or receive calls. Obviously, that made the phone a bit of a white elephant, and—-to cap it all—-my Palm finally died. It wouldn’t keep the date when switched off, even with new batteries in it (not a useful attribute in a PIM), and the touch screen refused to accept taps most of the time.

I saw that Orange were doing the Treo at quite a good price, and thought that by switching networks I could solve both problems at once. I’ve passed the T68i on to Mr. Bsag to replace his prehistoric plastic brick, so that wasn’t wasted either. I’m really glad that I did—-the Treo is great…

Phone features: The Treo has a custom screen which appears when you power the unit up, and is activated by pressing the leftmost hardware button. This shows a message which instructs you to dial by pressing the number keys on the keypad (duh!), and also has a figure at the bottom to show you the shortcuts which will be activated by using the 5-way navigation buttons. Left takes you to the Applications page (also available via the ‘Home’ button on the keyboard), up shows the Orange shortcuts, right starts the camera, and down opens Contacts. If you choose the latter and just start typing, it does a live search for the name you’ve entered—-press the enter button (in the centre of the navigation keys), and it will dial that number. This is a huge improvement over the menu ergonomics of the T68i. The Orange shortcuts are great too. You can set up speed dial ‘bookmarks’, email, internet or texting shortcuts, or even open any application. These can have a letter key associated with them, so that when you are in the phone screen, pressing and holding that key will activate that shortcut. This is fantastically useful, and a great addition even for the Palm functions. Integration between the PIM functions and the communication apps is very slick.

When you recieve a call, you can use the real buttons or soft buttons which appear on the screen to handle the call (hang up, answer, put on speakerphone etc.). You can also activate any of the other functions while you are taking a call, so that you can use the speakerphone (or the provided hands-free headset) to carry on talking while you enter a memo, look up your availability, enter a number in Contacts or even play a game (perish the thought!). Battery life seems quite impressive, and you can turn the wireless mode on or off independently from the screen to save power. The screen power button can also be set to lock the keyboard when the unit is switched off, which works very well. Another nice touch is that there’s a hardware toggle button on the top of the unit to switch off the speaker and put it into silent mode (it vibrates instead). This is much quicker and easier to set than having to navigate layers of menus.

Palm features: After my old monochrome Palm, and its majestic 4MB memory, the glorious colour screen and whopping 30MB memory feels like total luxury. The keyboard—-tiny though it is—-is surprisingly functional, and the 5-way navigator is great (though not all applications make use of it). I find that I rarely have to get the stylus out. But if you have big fingers you might find the keyboard a little cramped. The screen is very bright and clear, and the keyboard is backlit for those late night memos or texts. I’ve got all of my old favourite applications loaded up, and found a few new ones, which I might write about a bit later. I’ve finally got Life Balance working smoothly on the Palm, which is really useful. It did run on the Palm IIIx, but there really wasn’t enough memory to have a lot of entries in the database, and it was a bit sluggish. GPRS web browsing and emailing works well enough (as you’ve already seen), and I can see that it might well be handy to be able to access maps and so forth while on the move. There’s an SDIO slot, and much to my surprise and pleasure, the Treo came with a free 32MB card, giving 60MB or so in total.

Niggles: I don’t really have any serious problems with the Treo. I think that it was a mistake for them not to include Bluetooth, but I don’t personally miss it that much. The charging cable is a bit of a tangled mess, and the inclusion of a single cable to charge via the USB port would have been a nice touch. I’d like more applications to use the 5-way navigator, but since these are third-party applications, this is hardly Palm/Handspring’s fault. You do have to be careful what applications you install on it though: having your phone crash because of a faulty app is surprisingly annoying.

I would heartily recommend the Treo, but given the size of the keyboard, I think that it would be wise to actually try one out in a shop before you take the plunge, to check that the form factor suits you.

[1] I suppose that you could argue that this is me trying to justify the expense to myself—-and you’d be partly right.