Treo 600

Got myself a 2nd hand Palm Treo 600 from ebay a week ago. Needed a phone which I can access my mails on the go due to work, and was kinda getting irritated by my old Sony Ericsson T610's too-slow-to-my-liking interface. To illustrate this point, try to visualize that the letters appearing on the screen is not as fast as your fingers typing on the keypad. But I must say its still a brilliant phone, one of those that has almost everything that you needed. Alas, I have to move on, and after spending 1 week playing around with my "new" toy, thought it is time to pen down my 2 paragraphs of Treo's brilliant lineup of smartphones.


On first hand, the size is definitely much bigger than my previous phone, much thicker as well, and love it or hate it, the big "highlighter" antenna, which I always regard it as kinda retro looking. Screen resolution is nowhere near my Sony Clie, which is still one of the best displays for palms. Not able to have the icons to be shown as small ones was quite irritating since I have been so used to my Clie. Brightness is very good considering this phone has been around for almost 2 years. With brightness and contrast set to 50%, I can easily read whats on the screen under direct sunlight. The qwerty keyboard is really fun to use, especially composing sms or emails, much better than T9, although I am sure I am still nowhere near the gal who holds the world record for SMS-ing. As compared to Treo 650, there are a few key buttons that are not available in this model, namely the dial and hang up buttons, and the keypad is slightly too close to each other, luckily I have thin fingers, so it doesn't bother me too much. Another key feature which I feel strongly is the lack of a sroller by the side, similar to the one on Clie or even Blackberry. That is very useful if you are scrolling through emails using 1 hand. The home and menu buttons located at the bottom right hand corner are also extremely unfriendly as you will always find it difficult to press it with one hand. This has been remedied in the 650 though. Software is pretty much typical for OS 5 compatibility although I am still struggling to get use to not been able to play the games which I was playing on my hi-res Clie. As I am using SnapperMail to read my mails, I am starting to really understand why Blackberry is such a mass market leader. To have mails pushed to your handheld as and when it is delivered is simply one of the best innovations that RIM has come out with. Many palm apps try to mimic this behaviour by doing sync with your POP/IMAP mailboxes all the time or at intervals, but this just drains the battery at ridiculous rate, since you constantly have to be connected to GPRS. But for 650 owners, there is good news come Jan 06 as Palm has announced that they will be making Blackberry Connect to 650 owners and I think that is when Treo is going to gain much market share again, together with the planned release of Treo 700w.

Overall, its a very good smartphone, but not the best in my context. Hope to save enough and maybe upgrade to a 650 in few months time after 700W is out - which means 650 prices would DROP! =)