Palm Treo Handheld Device
Palm, the king of the PDA, vies for Smartphone throne
Palm was an early Smartphone adopter, making the Treo into one of the most recognized handheld devices in the arsenal of the traveling business person. The Palm Treo is the handheld organizer PDA that looks and handles like a cell phone. The current iteration is the Treo 650, successor to the much-loved Treo 600 model.
The Treo handhelds are the best-selling Smartphones on the market that employ the Palm OS. The Treo 650 offers cell phone functionality with versions for Sprint, Cingular and AT&T Wireless, including unlocked versions for use with any GSM carrier. Armed with your wireless network, Treo lets you send/receive IMAP/POP3 email and messaging from anywhere, and includes tools to allow you to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments or even browse the web with Treo's Blazer web browser. Treo is also compatible with your Bluetooth wireless devices, allowing you to talk on the phone hands-free.
Featuring the legendary Palm OS, digital camera and playback MP3 transfer/storage and playback functionality, the Treo has earned a niche as a less stuffy, more colorful and playful cousin to the Blackberry. Improvements over the 600 include the 650's updated 320x320 TFT LCD display, a significant improvement from the 600's 160x160 passive matrix display. Palm added Bluetooth DUN (dial up networking) compatibility, which rounds out the significant updated features on the 650. The earliest versions of the 650 didn't have this feature available but have been since released with a firmware update which you can obtain from www.palmone.com. The user-replaceable battery is one of those no-brainer features now featured in the Palm Treo 650.
Trouble with Treos
The Palm Treo 650 seems like a major update with a lot to offer an already solid product, but practical user experiences have brought to light some problems with the product line.
Memory allocation problems are reported by a number of users who upgraded from the 600 to the 650. They claim that files that took up 132k non-volatile memory now take up as much as 859k of space. Non-volatile memory stores data in 512byte chunks whether the file sizes are smaller than the chunk required to store it or not. The Treo 600 that could only use standard (volatile) memory didn't have this storage limitation, and users upgrading to non-volatile are finding their storage requirements dramatically increased.
Other users have had such severe problems with sound quality, buzzing and choppiness they filed a class action lawsuit against Palm in September 2005. The lawsuit also claims problems with poor and broken screens, crashes and electrical surges. Class action suits could well be indicative of major problems with the product but could also just be opportunism on the part of an isolated group of lawyers. Still, it's probably best to see how this lawsuit pans out before making any solid decisions about investing in a Palm Treo at this time.