Palm Treo smartphones

Gollnick

Gollnick

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I currently have a T-Mobile Sidekick. But, it's had no data service (web or e-mail) since about noon on Sunday. We're heading into our 4th day of outage now. This is the 4th major outage we've had in the last couple of months. So, I've been thinking about switching to Cingular and a Palm Treo.

Any experiences with these?
 
I'm very happy with my 600.

Check out the forums at www.treocentral.com to get an idea of what to expect. Ther are at least as busy (and sometimes busier) than here and you'll beable to learn a lot.

N2
 
I don't have one yet, but several people in my sales and IT organizations have them and downright love them. They've replaced their Blackberries and generally don't have to travel with a laptop any more just to manage email--to me that alone would be a great reason to switch!

The two areas of concern for me are the provider's coverage and call plan options(In my area, NY, Cingular isn't bad but not nearly as good as Verizon) and using Palm based software. In my case I'm used to an iPaq, but it doesn't sound like a big change.

It seems they've also released a version with Bluetooth, too. I'd spring for the Bluetooth headset as it makes using the phone a lot easier ergonomically, IMO.

Here's another hands on review you might enjoy:

Gadgeteer Review
 
I recently picked up a Blackberry 7100. Great phone and I cannot say enough good things about it. It is so handy for me to be able to get my email when I'm out and about or when my wife is tying up the phone lines, which has been ALL the time lately.
 
I use my Treo 600 to check my email, check prices online while i'm in a store, check ebay before I buy something at a thrift sale, keep all my contacts, listen to mp3s, watch movies (3rd party software needed) , take quick snapshots, play games and talk on the phone.

There are thousands of great programs for the palm platform and a very active community supporting the treo on treocentral. I even have a program that converst most any x into most any y (length, didtance, volume etc) mm-miles is fun :D . It's something I would have paid for but it was freeware.

The 650 has bluetooth and a better screen and camera but the 600 is quite a bit cheaper for those who don't need the extras.

I have mine in a sturdy aluminum case from innogear that keeps it safe and secure (even in use). I also have a great AA battery charger that can recharge the battery 2-3 times with 4 batteries. Oh and a great usb cable that lets me sync and charge it all at once.

It's much more than your average phone and is a must for a gadget hound.

N2
 
I actually surf bladeforums with the Sidekick... when it's working... which it still isn't. Two more hours and it will be our fifth day of outage. :grumpy:

T-Mobile does Treo's too. Anyone know if that's on a separate server?

The current Sidekick problem, you see, is really not T-Mobile's problem. T-Mobile provides the air service, but the actual data services come from a company called Danger Inc. (I kid you not, that's their name) and the problem is with Danger.

Any T-Mobile Blackberry or Treo users out there? If so, are you still working right now?

Also, what's the total difference (aside from price) between a Treo 600 and 650? How much better is the 650's screen?

How about those HP iPAQ's? Spendy, spendy. Anyone got one of those?
 
I use T-mobile.

The best part about the Treo series is the browser is html standard compliant and can handle quite a few websites directly. Even in the few times that T-mobile loses data, I can still dial in and connect via dial up.

Here's a great review of the 650 which tells a lot about the 600 via comparison.

http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/504-1.htm


also here's the FAQ with most questions about the 600 covered

http://www.treocentral.com/content/FAQ/index.htm

The 650 has twice the resolution and twice the processor speed plus bluetooth and a nicer camera.
Geez... now I want a 650 (and I already have a 600) it's like knives and flashlights... :rolleyes:

N2
 
We're now entering our sixth day of outage on the Sidekicks. They had it going briefly (maybe 10 minutes) just past midnight this morning, but it crashed again. I have honest doubts that they'll ever get it up again.
 
I have an iPaq 3xxx series,the kind with Bluetooth, one I found used with a 340 mb smartdrive. It's great: I added a BT GPS device and with Mapopolis I have a good if not as good as an in-car based GPS that's very portable. (I travel a lot for business so that's worth a lot to me)

It's easily synched with Outlook, can work with most of the rest of Office, and has been pretty robust. With the BT link or an added 802.11 you can web browse, and as with Palm there's a very active third party and support community. I can use it as a mobile substitute for a laptop for a few days and be productive with it.

I haven't tried to use the BT link with my Moto 710's link, so you may want to look at HowardForums or PocketPc Passion for some details on that. Verizon was offering a Windows-lite smartphone but it was north of $600 when I looked last year.
 
My Blackberry service is through T-Mobile. Nothing but great service and good things to say about it.
 
I have the Treo 600 (Sprint). Get the 650. Bluetooth.

Easy to mess up the screens though.
 
My good friend has just upgraded to the 650 and given me her old 600. the resolution of the 650 is much better than the 600.The difference is very obvious when viewing photos. If you expect to use the treo as a photo album or viewer, you will be much happier with the 650. In fact, that was one of the main criticism of the 600 was that it's resolution lagged even with the rest of it's competetors in its generation and the main reason my friend switched to the 650. Another problem with the 600, is that some times I get a call but it doesn't ring! Happens once in a while.
Connectivity to the net and email is a breeze and justa button press away, though.
( my model is a gsm model, not sure its the same with cdma model.

Hope tat helps.
 
This post is getting a bit stale, but I'll chime in anyway.

I have a Treo 600 thru Verizon. I dropped the cash for it because I was carrying a brick-like cell phone, AND a Toshiba 705e with extended battery. The two added up to about 3 pounds, and I still could not surf the net.

The Treo does not have the best cell phone quality, but the marriage of phone and PDA is seamless, and it's a great device. One of my favorite functions in the WiFi poor part of the country is a utility program called PDANet. In short, I connect the phone to my laptop with the sync cable (650 can do this with blue tooth) and have a full blown internet connection on my laptop. I have the all-you-can-eat data plan with verizon, so there's no additional charge for connection time.

Great product. More PDAish than the Blackberry, but less adept at data type communicating than the blackberry.
 
Peter Atwood said:
My Blackberry service is through T-Mobile. Nothing but great service and good things to say about it.
Click to expand...

It is important to understand that T-Mobile is not at fault for the Sidekick outage that caused me to as bring this up. T-Mobile provides the data transmission facility which was not out. The actual e-mail and web servers are provided by the same company that makes the Sidekick, Danger Incorporate. I kid you not, that is their name, Danger Inc. It was Danger's servers that were down.

Blackberries can also use T-Mobile's network for transmission. But they use different servers.

The Sidekick is back up and running now. But the very prolonged outage coming on the heels of three previous 24+ hour outages was just to much to bear.

I looked at a Treo 600 in the store, but that tiny keyboard was just too... well... tiny. The Sidekick's keyboard isn't exactly full-size, but I can do ok on it with my thumbs.
 
I've just gotten the Treo 650 with Cingular, it is a great machine - I'm surprised to like it even more than I thought I would. Cingular's edge network gets me an avg of 100kbits/sec download speed from my apt (the only place I've checked the speed tester), which surprised me (I thought I'd be getting modem speeds at best). The full browser it comes with does a pretty decent job of rendering web pages (I mean, how good can some websites be that are optimized for 800 wide), I mostly download w/out images and the speed is perfectly useable.

The best thing I got was chatteremail which provides a ton of options for downloading your email - I use IMAP idle which gives me my mail effectively in realtime. It's pretty amazing how well it works.

The keyboard is small, but I've definitely gotten used to it already and am gaining proficiency as my fingers start to remember where all the punctuation keys are.

I gotta say, it is a great piece of gadgetry, it does reset itself, seemingly regularly, but since it starts up right away and reconnects to everything, it's sort of like having a minute of downtime once or twice a day, which I can live with.
 
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