Treo 600 - Feb/Mar '04

Treo 600

Converged devices often reflect compromises made in the design and manufacturing process between the dominant devices. Before Handspring (now a part of palmOne due to a buyout and corporate reorganization) released the Treo 600, converged telephone/Personal Digital Assistant devices generally appeared to be telephones modified to allow PDA functions or vice versa. Generally, the converged devices worked better at the side they favored.

The Treo 600 breaks from this paradigm. The engineers who created this marriage did such a good job it’s difficult to tell whether the 600 started out as a phone or a PDA. When you look at the device, it looks like a phone and a PDA. As a phone and as a PDA it works equally well. You can use it to access the Internet for e-mail and other purposes. To make things even more interesting, palmOne ships the Treo 600 with a built-in digital camera, thus making it the first converged PDA/phone to come with a camera.

The Treo 600 comes in two flavors: silver and charcoal. The charcoal one works with Code Division Multiple Access technology (Sprint) and the silver works with Global System for Mobile Communications/General Packet Radio Service technology (AT&T, Cingular, etc.).

Like its predecessors, the Treo 600’s PDA lineage comes from the palmOne family. Unlike its predecessors (and another first for the Treo 600), the Treo 600 comes with Palm OS 5.2.1H, a faster and more powerful processor with more RAM than any other Palm/phone. The Treo 600 has a 144MHz RAM processor; 32MB of memory (8MB are occupied by ROM); and a 2.5-inch color liquid crystal display. Although the passive-matrix screen is bright, it’s still difficult to read in direct sunlight. The Treo 600’s display doesn’t compare favorably to the superior screens of the top-of-the-line palmOne Tungsten series or the new Sony Clie’s screen.

The Treo 600 comes with the standard complement of personal information manager applications (Calendar, To-Do List, Contacts and Memo Pad). The 600 syncs with PCs and Macs.

At 6 ounces, the Treo 600 is slightly smaller than the Treo 300 (4.4-by-2.4-by-0.9 inches, without the antenna). Due to its superior design, however, the Treo 600 seems more compact than the Treo 300, and its narrower and longer shape fits more comfortably in your hand and your pocket.

The 600 introduces a five-way navigational button to the Treo line (comparable to the navigator button that appears on palmOne’s Tungsten line). The applications included with the device, such as the Post Office Protocol 3 mail program, the Blazer browser, the P-Tunes MP3 player and the Kinoma Player, already are set up to accommodate the navigational button.

The Treo 600 comes with a backlit thumb board of Lilliputian proportions. At first glance, I thought it would not work for
someone with normal-sized fingers, let alone someone with chubby thumbs. Everything is relative. By comparison, the thumb boards on the Treo 300 and the Research In Motion BlackBerry devices seem large. Anticipating the problem, the Treo 600’s designers didn’t use the traditional flat keys. The Treo 600 thumb board has domed keys that rise well above the base of each key and serve as the contact point for your thumb.

Separate from its power switch, the Treo 600 has a switch that turns all device sounds on and off. Those of you who will carry the device with you to court or meetings will appreciate this feature.

The Treo 600 accepts Secure Digital flash memory cards for backup and additional program and data storage. The slot that supports the SD cards also will accept add-on devices (such as a Bluetooth or a Wi-Fi card).

You will find a Video Graphics Adapter camera lens on the back of the unit, along with a second speaker for ring tones and alarms, and speakerphone. The speakerphone, by the way, works quite well.

The Treo 600 comes with a compact charger and universal serial bus sync cable, but no charging cradle. It also comes with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. PalmOne claims 10 days of standby time, and up to four hours talk time on CDMA systems and up to six hours of talk time on GMS/GPRS systems. The Web site also indicates the company will offer an external supplemental battery that should add up to another three hours of talk time. The amount of standby time will vary on the basis of actual use.

The built-in camera is a low-resolution camera that will not satisfactorily replace a better digital camera. As a telephone, the Treo 600 allows you to dial numbers on its virtual numeric keyboard with your fingers or stylus, through a linked interface with your contacts list or from the thumb board — in telephone mode a set of keys surrounding the letter F in a numeric keypad pattern shift from letters to numbers.

The Blazer Web browser functions well for limited browsing. The quality of your experience largely relates to the service provider. I tested the Treo 600 in its CDMA version on the Sprint network and found the Web experience slow, but satisfactory.

palmOne Inc.
(408) 503-7000

www.palmone.com

Price: $559 or less, depending on the carrier

Reviewed by Jeffrey Allen, a general practice attorney with an emphasis in real estate, business transactions and litigation based in Oakland, Calif.

Feb/Mar '04 Issue

PROS
The most satisfactory compromise between telephones and PDAs I have found thus far.

CONS
The Treo 600 would benefit from a higher resolution screen, more memory and a faster processor.

VERDICT
If you want a converged device and a service provider with coverage that matches your needs, you are well advised to get the Treo 600.