Good But Not Perfect

Like most people who work in the computer field I carry a PDA and a separate cell phone. Carrying both especially when you are on call 24x7 becomes a necessity. I entered into my last dell phone contract with Cingular Wireless, now a part of AT&T, two years ago last week and I could wait for it to end so that I could finally purchase a Smartphone. I carry a Blackberry 7130e for work, but I wanted a Windows Mobile based device for my personal use. I did the research and decide against the Motorola Q (despite it small size), in favor of the more substantial—and expensive—Palm Treo 700W, with cellular service from Verizon Wireless.

Lucky for me the normally $499.00 Treo 700W was on sale for $299.00 after $120.00 instant rebate, and $100.00 mail-in rebate. Along with the Treo 700W I ordered a desktop charger ($49.95 and leather case $29.95).

The Product

In The Box

• Palm 700W handset
• Rechargeable Battery
• AC Power Charger
• USB ActiveSync Cable
• Combination Headset/ Microphone
• Getting Started CD-Rom with Users Guide and desktop synchronization software
• Quick Reference Guide
• Installation Booklet

The Treo 700W is one of two new Palm Treo 700 smart-phones manufactured by Palm and offered by Verizon Wireless in the Chicago market. The Treo700P runs Palm proprietary software and the Treo 700W runs Windows Mobile 5.0 software. The Treo 700Wis a dual-band (CDMA2000 800MHz/1900MHz) device that offers anytime/anywhere access to corporate (or personal) e-mail, contacts, calendar information, a Web browser, and a full QWERTY keyboard, running on an Intel XScal 312MHz processor, with 128MB (60MB user accessible) non-volatile memory.

In addition to the above mentioned QWERTY keyboard, the brushed silver Treo 700W also offers a 16-bit TFT touch-screen color LCD screen; Bluetooth wireless technology and polyphonic ring-tones, all bundled in a sleek, lightweight, and stylish handset. Other features of the unit include contacts, calendar, a to-do list, a memo pad, an alarm clock, and a calculator; pretty standard fair for today’s technology rich smart-phones, all of which can be synced with Microsoft Outlook 2xxx via the bundled Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2 software.

The Treo 700W takes full advantage of the Verizon’s Wireless’ EV-DO (EVolution-Data Only) network. EV-DO is part of the third generation (3G) of high-speed data enhancements to the CDMA cell-phone technology. Verizon claims that its Broadband Access EV-DO network offers high-speed Internet access anywhere, any time (the Treo 700W features Internet Explorer for web browsing). As far as I can see, the high-speed network is living up to its promise; web pages open almost as fast as on the desktop albeit without images in many cases.

Treo 700W users will enjoy a feature rich wireless experience, including fast integrated push-based email courtesy of Microsoft’s Exchange 2000/2003 messaging package. Internet based email can also be accessed via Verizon’s SyncExpress Internet Service (bundled with the phone), which allows you to access up to ten individual e-mail accounts including enterprise-class messaging and POP3/IMAP4 accounts. More on SyncExpress functionality later in the review.

The Broadband Access EV-DO network also will allow users to connect their computer(s) (laptop or desktop) to the Internet via VPN (Virtual Private Networking), using the device as a tethered modem, via a USB connection, abrogating the need to carry a wireless PC card—very impressive. Verizon claims an average transfer speed of between 400 and 700 Kbps.

The Unit

The Treo 700W, boasts a 240x240 pixel TFT LCD screen capable of displaying 65,536 colors that produces super sharp text and images. At 240x240 the screen is not as big as the 700P’s 300x300 screen but it is larger than the Blackberry 7250’s 240x160 pixel screen, while the Blackberry 7150e features a 260x260 screen. The LCD on the Treo 700W benefits from a backlit screen; that results in a very bright and sharp screen that is a joy to look upon.

Windows Mobile represents a whole new mindset for the traditional Palm user. Instead of the recognizable icon-driven Palm home screen, users of the Treo 700W will be treated to a customized Windows Mobile Today screen that adds and empty text box for typing in a contacts name or phone number. Below this screen are two buttons one can use for speed-dialing; other numbers—and buttons—can be added but then the screen becomes quite crowded.

The Treo 700W ships with the same full QWERTY keyboard found on the both the 700P and 700WX (the Sprint Wireless version of the Palm 700W) series devices. The QWERTY keyboard is a lot easier to use than the double-letter keyboard found on my company-supplied BlackBerry 7130e. All of the controls for the Treo 700W are in and around the keyboard except the volume controls, which are situated on the left side of the unit.

Right above the QWERTY keyboard are a number of controls including the 5-way navigator button, situated in the center, with the Phone/ Send, Start Menu, Ok, and Power/ End buttons positioned on either side. The left and right action buttons are positioned above these; they activate menu items directly above each.

The top of the Treo 700W is packed with the earpiece, LED indicator, small antenna, IR transceiver port, SD media slot, and ringer on/off switch. On the bottom of the handset you will find the standard 2.5mm headset jack, microphone, and the (Multi-connector) USB /power interface port for both connecting to a computer and for charging the device. Palm designed the USB sync-cable to accept the power connector for the Treo 700W; but both can be used independent of the other.

On the back of the unit you’ll find the speaker, removable battery, and the 1.3 mega-pixels digital camera with 1280x1024 resolution, automatic light balancing and 2x digital zoom. Remove the battery cover to access the unit reset button.

Device Use

One of the reasons I chose the Treo 700W was its ability to interact corporate email systems, most notably Microsoft Exchange 2003. Before connecting to the Exchange server the smart-phone first needed to be activated on the Verizon network. Once data and voice connectivity was established the Treo 700W was ready to start receiving corporate email.

Configuring the Treo 700W to receive email from an Exchange server (ActiveSync) is not as simple as Palm, Microsoft, and Verizon would have you believe. There are a lot of bells and whistles in the background that have to be tweaked just right. For example your Exchange server has to have an Outlook Web Access (OWA) presence on the Internet before Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) will work, and even then there is no guarantee of success. As I write this I have not been able to get OWA up and running; stay tuned.

Lucky for me Verizon offers its own solution in the guise of Wireless SyncExpress, wherein your mail is send from and Exchange server to a small applet running on a workstation connected to the Internet. This applet periodically checks the Outlook inbox for received messages. Once in the inbox the message is sent via the Internet, then to your Treo 700W over the air, and into your inbox. The system work rather well. You can also respond the email in this fashion. This application will also synchronize your calendar, contacts, and To-do list, and there is web-based component.

Then there is ActiveSync for the desktop which will also synchronize you Outlook calendar, contact, inbox, To-Do list and folders with the Treo 700W, via your desktop computer. The strength of ActiveSync is its ability to speck directly to Outlook. But the latest version of the software is rather buggy, so beware; I had to reboot the device several time during the initial setup of the software.

By default the Inbox is downloaded to the device upon initial connection with ActiveSync and you can control which subfolders are also synchronized. If you never empty the Sent Items folder, and redirect it to your device, it will quickly fill up with mail you have already processed. My advice: do not redirect your sent items folder to the device.

Once read emails can be deleted from the device without deleting them from your Outlook mail client, but you can fully synchronize the two, so that whatever is deleted from one is deleted from the other. And of course you can respond to email, as well as compose new mail and forward existing messages.

As a cell phone I find the Treo 700W somewhat awkward to use. And it seems a little off-putting to hold larger-than-normal device up to my ear to place a call. It helps that there is there is a separate send and receive button to place and end calls. The Treo 700W is of course fitted with Bluetooth so thankfully I make most of my call via the Motorola HS850 Bluetooth headset, which was effortless to mate with; this is probably due to the HS850’s support of Bluetooth v.1.2 standards.

With the Treo 700W you can place a call directly via the dial-pad, via the contacts list, or by voice command. However voice command does not work as well as expected; in fact it had been rather disappointing. With voice commands application open readily enough but the phone often does not respond to commands to dial a number.

One other little annoyance: if the device is locked when a phone call comes in, you will have to unlock it in order to accept a call. With the Blackberry device you can accept and incoming call with the device still locked. I expected this feature to be universal, regretfully I was wrong.

Once you are connected you can activate the speakerphone, which offers decent clarity. On-screen displays allow you to control the volume and provide other useful information such as the duration of the call and of course the number. Coverage through the Verizon network is outstanding even in my house where historically, my cellular reception had nose dived. While at work my reception never falls below four bars, and at home I typically get two, but it is enough to send and place calls and send and receive data.

Battery life for the Treo 700W is acceptable; so far I have had no problems. The initial charge took about three hours, and I can usually go a day or two without recharging the unit and the battery life only dropped by a quarter and this is with moderate email and phone activity.

Software

Because the Treo 700W uses Windows Mobile 5.0, Pocket versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Media Player, Internet Explorer and Terminal Services Client are available on the device. In addition Calculator, Pocket MSN, and assorted games are available.

Conclusion

All-n-all I am very satisfied with the performance of the Treo 700W although I must admit that the device has a learning curve. The documentation shipped with the device, as voluminous as it is, fails to adequately detail the devices functionality. The full blown User’s Guide is available on one of the two CD-ROM’s that ship with the device.

Though I have yet to avail myself of the Exchange OMA piece, there is a workaround that so far is working just fine. And Windows Mobile 5.0 has many features to recommend it, including ring-tones, and a well laid out interface. The Treo 700W’s well lit QWERTY is a joy to use, and the bight colorful, backlit touch screen is and equal joy to look at.

I do not regret my purchase of the Treo 700W thus far it has proved it can compete with the other Smartphone’s and do so in style.

The Palm Treo 700W features: Complete functionality including:

• Phone
• Email
• SMS
• MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)
• Wireless Data Access
• Address book
• Internet Browser
• Calendar
• Memo Pad
• Tasks
• Media Player

Palm Treo 700W Specifications:

o Operating System: Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition;
o Memory: 128MB (60MB user accessible) non-volatile;
o Processor: Intel XScale 312MHz processor;
o Screen: 240 x 240 color TFT touch-screen display 16-bit color displays over 65,000 colors
o Wireless: 800/1900MHz nationwide digital phone Palm Treo 700w smartphone for Verizon Wireless; CDMA2000 EvDO network—compatible with 1xRTT network; Bluetooth 1.2 wireless support;
o Digital Camera: 1.3 megapixels with 1280x1024 resolution; Automatic light balancing; 2x digital zoom; Integrated self-portrait mirror; Video capture;
o Audio: 2.5mm headset jack is stereo headset compatible—requires a stereo headset adapter, for use with standard 3.5mm stereo headphones; Speaker; Windows Media Player 10 (included on CD-ROM); Polyphonic MIDI, MP3, WAV & video ring-tones; External ringer on/off switch w/ vibrate mode;
o Keyboard: Full QWERTY key layout with backlight; Integrated number dial pad;
o Expansion Slot: Support for MultiMediaCard, SD & SDIO cards;
o Battery: Removable, rechargeable lithium-ion battery up to 5 hours talk time and more than 300 hours standby time;
o Power/Sync: Multi-connector on device USB sync cable; AC adapter (108-132 VAC/60Hz);
o Size/Weight: 2.3" W x 4.4" H (excluding antenna) x 0.9" D /6.4 ounces / 180 grams