The Treo Pro is Palm's latest smartphone designed for business professionals,
featuring support for HSDPA mobile networks, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and built-in GPS
hardware for navigation applications.
As a messaging phone, the Treo Pro is a potential rival to RIM's BlackBerry
models, and Palm's model is slightly longer than the
BlackBerry
Curve.
At 133g, it is also heavier, but about average for a modern smartphone, and
we found it fits comfortably in the hand.
The Treo Pro is based on the Professional version of Microsoft's Windows
Mobile 6.1, which supports touch-screen input. Users can thus control the phone
by keys or using a stylus stored in a slot at the rear to hit on-screen buttons.
You can also use your fingers, but the on-screen buttons are so small we
found it easy to hit the wrong one by mistake.
We found that this dual capability often caused us confusion at first. For
example, the home screen has shortcuts to Contacts and Internet that are
on-screen 'soft' buttons at the bottom of the Today screen.
On other Windows Mobile smartphones (without a touch screen) the labels for
the context-sensitive function keys appear here.
Palm has, however, put some effort into making life easier for users. A
sliding switch on the Treo Pro's top edge turns off all sound, avoiding the need
to dive into menus to mute the phone in meetings.
Another on the side of the device turns Wi-Fi on and off, which enabled us to
re-connect at the touch of a button to any nearby access point we previously
used.
Another nice touch is that the five-way navigation control flashes as a
visible indication you have a voicemail waiting.
The display also goes into screensaver mode after a few seconds of inactivity
to save on power, during which it shows the date and time.
There is also a Google search box on the Today screen that makes it quicker
to search the web for items.
While the Treo Pro is about the same size as the Blackberry Curve, we found
Palm's keyboard not up to the standard of the BlacKberry. The keys are tiny,
which caused us to mistype if we tried to key in text at any speed.
However, Palm has made it easy to type characters such as @ and dot (full
stop), which can make keying in email or web addresses a pain on some other
devices we have seen.
We tested the Treo Pro with a Vodafone 3G SIM and found we could get a HSDPA
connection when necessary from our central London offices. Web pages loaded at
quite a decent speed, although many sites serve up a mobile version of their
pages unless you choose a different browser than the built-in Internet Explorer.
The Treo Pro has built-in GPS that worked with the built-in copy of Google
Maps on our evaluation model. Buyers that purchase their handset SIM-free should
also get this, but those bought from a mobile network are likely to feature that
supplier's subscription navigation service instead.
On the Treo Pro, Google Maps seems to default to using information from the
cellular network to fix your location. For a more accurate fix, we had to select
'Use GPS' from the menu. As with some other handsets, it can take time to
acquire a satellite fix.
As this is a First Look, we did not have time to test the battery life, but
Palm quotes its 1500mAh battery pack at five hours talk time and upwards of 250
hours on standby.
While the Treo Pro has 256MB memory, only 100MB is available to the user. A
Micro SD slot is available for Flash storage cards, but this requires you to
slide the back off the phone to access it.
Overall, the Treo Pro looks like a promising handset for business users, but
is unlikely to tempt dedicated BlackBerry owners.
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