It could be argued that the chat "Treo" was on its way to acceptable the Kleenex of smartphones. Just as humans accredit to MP3 players as iPods even if they're not fabricated by Apple (much to the annoyance of the absolute manufacturer), the Treo cast about became metonymic for smartphone. But the PDA-phone and smartphone amplitude blossomed with new brands and anatomy factors while Palm seemed to brand out agilely bigger versions of their aboriginal admiration phone. Both the Palm OS And Windows Adaptable Treo models relied on a few key things it did bigger than any added accessory to authority bazaar share: absurd one-handed operation and abundant account enhancements that dispatch up frequently acclimated operations. Assuredly with the Treo 800w, Palm has brought their Windows Adaptable Professional phone up to blueprint with competitors: at endure we've got WiFi and GPS and a college resolution display. It' B9700 Wifi . Couple that with Palm's usability, and you've got a able and affable business phone.
Underscore the chat "business"; the Treo 800w is neither graceful nor sexy. It's a QWERTY bar of authentic text-oriented functionality. The 21st aeon ushered in the era of electronics gone personal: our adaptable and even not so adaptable accessories accept got to attending acceptable and accurate our tastes and preferences. The Treo may not say "I'm a dude in a suit", but it acutely says messaging and plan are my thing, just as the Samsung Instinct and iPhone say I'm about appearance and accepting fun. In added words, this is no iPhone adversary nor does it ambition to be.
The Treo 800w is currently offered by Sprint and it's a CDMA bifold bandage agenda phone with the faster EVDO Rev. A for data. It has a GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 320 x 320 pixel display, a 333MHz CPU and Windows Adaptable 6.1 Professional. The Treo 800w replaces the Treo 700wx in Sprint's calendar and we wouldn't be abashed if it came to Verizon eventually.
Design and Ergonomics
The Treo has a blow of the newer Palm Centro design, with straighter abandon and a Centro appearance d-pad button cluster. The Treo is bigger than the Centro but is by no agency ample a part of QWERTY phones. The arced basal and aback edges beggarly the phone feels acceptable in hand, and admitting it's a hair narrower than the old Treo 700wx, the 800w maintains the aforementioned accessible keyboard. Thankfully, the 800w has absent the 700wx's chubby antenna and joins the Palm OS Treo 755p on Sprint and the Treo 750 on AT&T in the avant-garde age. The Treo's keyboard is still one of the best in the business; it's appropriately as acceptable as the BlackBerry Curve's and bigger than the Centro's. The keys aren't too glace nor are they too asperous textured, and the doming and agreement are just right.
The Treo has a matte dejected artificial case that looks and feels sturdy, admitting it won't win any chic-gadget awards. Everything on the Treo is advised for account rather than abundantly acceptable looks, and to that end there are signature Palm touches like the ringer on/off slider up top and new for the 800w (the aboriginal Palm phone with WiFi) a WiFi on/switch. The Treo is one of the few smartphones to action a bequest IR port, admitting Palm has assuredly confused against a USB-style sync/charge/headset anchorage (MicroUSB). No, a accepted miniUSB cable won't fit in the new port, but it's abundant beneath fiddly than the old Palm accompany and allegation ports. The check is that there's no committed angle jack. Thankfully, Palm and Sprint cover a stereo earbud angle that fits the MicroUSB port.
Display
The Treo's 2.5" LCD sports a attenuate resolution for Windows Mobile: 320 x 320 pixels, just like Palm OS Treos. The beforehand Palm Windows Adaptable Treo phones such as the Treo 700wx and Treo 750 had 240 x 240 pixel displays (thankfully rare!), which was a acknowledgment for WinMo users acclimatized to the all-over 240 x 320 display. The added pixels are a acceptable addition- you can see a bit added if examination Office abstracts or web pages for example. The downside is the Treo's tiny LCD makes for baby fonts at that college resolution, and it's decidedly harder to tap hyperlinks or baddest the appropriate atom if alteration text. If your eyes aren't keen, you may acquisition them accepting annoyed afterwards account for continued periods of time. Another check is that WinMo itself seems to run in 240 x 240 approach (just as VGA WinMo phones run the OS at 240 x 320 QVGA). So you see beneath icons on awning than with a lower resolution 240 x 320 WinMo phone! Note that apps like IE Adaptable and Office adaptable do calibration to 320 x 320-- we're talking about arrangement screens like the programs and settings windows, settings screens (e.g.: the Buttons and Input applet screens) and menus.
These days, we've apparent some admirable blow screens on top end affection and smartphones, alas the Treo 800w's affectation isn't awfully ablaze or vibrant. 3 years ago it would accept been cachet quo, but today it looks tired. As you can see from the photos above, the Treo 800w's awning is actually dim even if one cleft beneath the max accuracy setting. The abridgement of accuracy doesn't advice with alfresco visibility, admitting the awning is readable. The LCD has actually a bit of blaze which aswell hinders alfresco use.
Speed Demon
The Treo's Texas Instruments 333MHz processor doesn't complete like much, but this phone is one of the faster Windows Adaptable Pro phones on the market. Palm did a admirable job accouterment cartoon dispatch and all-embracing optimizations that beggarly beneath lag if scrolling, aperture airheaded and ablution programs. The Treo has 128 megs of RAM with 69.9 megs chargeless at boot, and 256 megs of beam ROM with 160 megs chargeless to abundance programs and data. That's affluence of RAM to run several programs accordingly and a advantageous bulk of storage. Should you charge added amplitude for an MP3 or video library, the Treo has a microSD agenda aperture that supports accepted and SDHC NOTE i9220+ top accommodation cards. We activated it with a Kingston 8 gig microSD agenda and a 4 gig SanDisk card, both of which formed perfectly.
Phone and Data
The Treo is a agenda bifold bandage 800/1900MHz CDMA phone that works on Sprint's network. It has EVDO Rev. A for fast abstracts with fallback to 1xRTT for areas that abridgement EVDO coverage. It sports all the accepted Windows Adaptable alarm affection including abutment for addition ID, alarm waiting, appointment calling, speakerphone and alarm history. We're captivated that Palm included Microsoft's Articulation Command 1.6, one of the a lot of able articulation command solutions for WinMo. Out of the box the phone doesn't abutment articulation dialing through Bluetooth headsets and car kits, but Palm has already appear a appliance that adds this affection (future Treo models may accept it pre-installed).
Bluetooth ambit and superior accept been abscessed credibility with beforehand Palm OS Treo models. Windows Adaptable versions had bigger articulation superior but lower than boilerplate range. We're blessed to abode the Treo 800w has boilerplate ambit for a phone and acceptable audio quality. We activated it with the Plantronics Discovery 655 (a accomplished aural angle that has poor ambit with all phones) and got 6 feet-- about boilerplate for the 655. The Discovery has a actual acceptable DSP and our alone complaint is that approachable calls had added babble than is accustomed for this headset. The aboriginal Jawbone formed able-bodied and ambit was about 15 feet. The Jawbone 2 additionally formed able-bodied and accomplished 15 feet. Admission alarm superior was accomplished and approachable was appropriate (as is the barometer for the Jawbone 2). All formed with the new articulation dialing patch.
Call superior via the handset is beneath par for admission voice, but is actually acceptable for approachable articulation superior and volume. Admission articulation is softer than accepted for a CDMA handset, and choir complete somewhat muffled, as admitting the apostle had a bandage in foreground of his mouth. But our alarm recipients admired how we articulate and said they heard us loud and clear. The ringer isn't awfully loud, so you'll wish to use your loudest MP3 or WAV files for ringers. We angry on the exhausted + ring advantage in complete settings, but abnormally our Treo alone vibrated once, admitting it kept campanology until we answered the call.
The Treo has EVDO Rev. A for abstracts and supports tethering (using the phone as a modem if you accept Sprint's PAM abstracts plan option). Speeds are acceptable and web pages amount bound acknowledgment both the Windows Adaptable 6.1's speedier networking and Rev. A. Our dslreports adaptable dispatch analysis after-effects in the DFW breadth averaged 470k with a abounding EVDO signal, which is a bit slower than some WinMo 6.1 phones on AT&T's HSDPA network. We acclimated the ##EVDO# command to ensure that Rev. A was angry on for our tests. However, Sprint TV works bigger on the Treo 800w than any added Sprint phone we've activated and we rarely saw buffering lags-- actual nice!
GPS
This is the aboriginal Treo with an chip GPS, and acceptable affair too back GPS has become a basic not alone on smartphones but top end affection phones too. This is an assisted GPS that works with the included Sprint Aeronautics ($10/month) and with the admirable Maps appliance included on the phone (no fee to use Maps, admitting it does crave a abstracts plan to download maps and POI's over 1x or EVDO). Maps uses the GPS to acquisition POI's of your allotment on the map, and provides phone numbers with the advantage to add a POI to contacts. You can aswell map any abode in Contacts or artlessly get a map of your accepted location. Sprint Aeronautics is full-featured acquisition with articulation and in our tests it formed able-bodied with the Treo. The Treo gets a fix in 30 abnormal or beneath outdoors or in a car, and managed to acquisition 8 to 10 satellites.
How about non-Sprint GPS software? Google Maps and Windows Live Search both formed fine. We installed CoPilot 7 Live, a accepted and able mapping and aeronautics appliance that we analysis with all Windows Adaptable GPS-enabled phones. The Treo 800w is the aboriginal phone that took a audible animosity to CoPilot and it afraid aggravating to automatically acquisition and configure the GPS. We rebooted the Treo but afterwards that, the phone radio wouldn't plan (no added articulation and data). So we harder displace and approved afresh with the aforementioned adverse result. Our guess? The GPS chipset is angry to the phone radio and if one gets hung, they both go down. We again approved the chiral GPS bureaucracy advantage in CoPilot (on COM4) but it bootless to acquisition the GPS. Moral of the story-- don't install CoPilot 7 on the Treo 800w. We don't apperceive if added standalone mapping solutions ability plan better.
Multimedia
Benefiting from Palm's cartoon dispatch enhancements, the Treo 800w did a actual acceptable job arena a array of video clips stored on a microSD card. Sprint TV formed like a agreeableness as continued as the phone has at atomic 50% arresting strength, and the amateur uses the absolute awning for playback. Sprint's TV channels looked actually aciculate and bright compared to Verizon and AT&T's alive services. If on-demand video and TV agreeable is your thing, the Treo is one of the few smartphones to abutment it and abutment it so well.
Should you adopt to accept to alive media and music wirelessly rather than through the dull active headset, the Treo's A2DP stereo formed able-bodied with the Samsung SBH500 stereo Bluetooth headset. Ambit was an absorbing 30 anxiety and complete superior was abounding with acceptable break and affluence of volume. The Treo comes with the accepted Windows Media Amateur Adaptable that plays both music and video in ASF, WMV and MPEG4 formats.
Camera
The Treo has a 2 megapixel camera with a anchored focus lens. There's a ample self-portrait mirror but no flash. Images are hardly beneath boilerplate for a 2 megapixel camera phone, with apparent babble in even moderately lit calm shots and cogent blast of highlights that creates a white brume about the behind object(s). Calm colors are able-bodied counterbalanced with reasonable assimilation and alfresco shots tend to be anytime so hardly cool. The camera can yield photos at a max 1600 x 1200 pixel resolution and there are a array of lower resolutions acceptable for MMS and photo addition ID.
The Treo can shoot video at 320 x 240 and 176 x 144 resolutions with audio at 17 fps in .3G2 format. The camcorder handles movement able-bodied after boundless ghosting and the colors are good, but E50 3G video is appealing blocky.
Battery
The Treo 800w has a decidedly low accommodation 1150 mAh Lithium Ion battery. Past Sprint Treo phones had actual top accommodation 1800 mAh batteries and we're activity those missing milliamps. Those of you who use advance email and allocution on the phone actually a bit may wish to advance in a additional array for the 800w. In our tests, we got 3 hours and 20 account of allocution time in a acceptable advantage breadth with no use of the multimedia or PDA features. Standby time is actual acceptable at a claimed 8.3 canicule which was reflected in our tests (this agency actually no use of the phone).
Conclusion
The Treo anatomy agency is harder to exhausted if you wish a message-centric smartphone. Palm as consistently has added one-handed and all-embracing usability, authoritative the accessory both affable and productive. On cardboard it looks like a actual aggressive phone with GPS, WiFi and EVDO forth with a few aliment like Sprint TV. These days, the bazaar is awash with abundantly able WinMo phones, and the Treo doesn't angle out or accession the bar. Its acceptable admirers will be those who are already awash on the Palm account acquaintance and the Treo's acceptable ergonomics. The 800w does accept one advantage over its keyboarded Windows Adaptable antagonism on Sprint (the HTC Mogul and the Treo 700wx): alert as abundant memory. That's an important point for ability users who wish to run several applications simultaneously.