Remember Palm? It's been obscured of late by the whirlwinds caused by the Apple iPhone, the T-Mobile G1 and the BlackBerry Storm. But Palm is attempting to get into the mix with its latest smartphone, the Treo Pro.
The Treo Pro may be Palm's most beautifully engineered smartphone to date. It's got a sleek, albeit slippery-feeling black encasement. It's probably the smallest and lightest Treo ever at 4.49 i 2.36 x 0.53 inches. The Treo Pro weighs 4.69 ounces.
A 320 x 320 color touch screen makes for easy viewing. Unfortunately, the keyboard design feels a bit awkward. The keys are flat, not raised like they were in Treos of days past. It takes some deft finger work to avoid pressing multiple keys at once. The stylus also seems to be shorter than the one with the 700 and 800 w series, making it feel slightly uncomfortable when held for an extended period of time.
The voice quality was good, although the person at the other end on a landline commented that the voice coming from the Treo Pro seemed a bit muted, with a tunnel-like echo quality. In all fairness, this could be the fault of the service provider as testing was done in an area with spotty reception and not necessarily an issue with the Treo Pro.
The Treo Pro is unlocked, meaning the device is not tied to a specific carrier. Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g is included as well as WPA, WEP and 801.1x authentication. The Treo Pro picked up without any hesitation all of the access points in the vicinity of the test site.
Battery life is just as good as any other smartphones we have looked at this year. Palm's specs lists talk time at 5 hours, and with Bluetooth, wireless and the phone on simultaneously, we got about 9 hours of battery life.
The 2.0-megapixel camera has an up-to-8X digital zoom and can do video capture. The images taken with the Pro were clear and sharp. The built-in GPS is a neat addition, and the accompanying TeleNav software is easy to use and was remarkably accurate.
But it's the software that really stands out with the Treo Pro. Windows users will find comfort using Windows Mobile 6.1. It truly has the feel of a mini-desktop. Windows Office Mobile provides all the functionality of the Office suite. Reviewers sent a highly formatted spreadsheet created in Excel 2007 to the phone, and the file opened up completely intact. Encrypted files can even be opened on the Treo Pro using WinZip.
The Windows Media Mobile Player is convenient to play media files, connect to stream servers and play podcasts.
The bottom line? The Palm Treo Pro is not a revolutionary new offering from Palm. It does, however, remain a reliable and classic smartphone.
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