Palm Treo 700w EV-DO Smartphone (Verizon Wireless)

In Brief

The marriage of Palm and Microsoft over the Treo 700w smartphone has produced a slightly schizophrenic offspring. On the one hand, thanks to Palm's user-interface expertise, the 700w is quite simply the best Pocket PC phone to date, and those coming from the Windows Mobile world will love it. On the other, Treo 650 owners used to the streamlined Palm OS may balk at the buried menu options and sometimes endless navigation needed to perform essential functions. Whether or not you like it will be a matter of perspective.

From our standpoint, the benefits that Windows Mobile 5.0 brings to the Treo platform -- such as true multitasking, robust multimedia playback, and native Office/Outlook support -- greatly outweigh the costs, and that's not even counting the 700w's broadband EV-DO access, which is 10 times faster than that of the Treo 650.

For $399 plus your choice of voice/unlimited data contracts starting at $80 per month, the Treo 700w can be yours. You'll get a top-notch 3G cell phone with broadband surfing and email access, full Windows Media playback support, a 1.3MP still/video camera, and Bluetooth support for headsets, synching and printing. What you won't get is Mac synching, phone-as-modem capability for your laptop, or integrated Wi-Fi. Mac support is coming soon from Missing Sync and PocketMac, and you can pop a Wi-Fi card into the SD card slot, but these add-on solutions inevitably don't work as well as integrated features.

If you need to sync with Microsoft Outlook or Exchange email, as well as work with Office documents on the go, the Treo 700w is an excellent and obvious choice. If you use a Mac, or already have a Treo 650, you may want to hold out for the next Palm OS Treo, which will surely have broadband cellular access -- either EV-DO (Sprint, Verizon), or HSDPA (Cingular).

In Depth

Design-wise, the 700w feels much like the 650. Keys and buttons have new (and better) shapes, and colors have been tweaked, but the size and weight are virtually identical. The biggest difference is the screen, which is only 240-by-240 pixels, compared to the 320-by-320 resolution of the Treo 650. The screen size was mandated by the Windows Mobile 5.0 OS, and the extra real estate is sorely missed when viewing Web sites and Office documents. In other applications, such as the phone interface, calendar, email, and tasks, we didn't feel as deprived.

The navigation buttons above the keyboard have different functions from the Treo 650, and are mostly tied to the WM5 OS, rather than specific applications. They allow one-handed operation of almost all Today screen functions, and many applications as well. The phone button at left pops up the Today screen, which is the center of the Treo universe, the Windows icon button brings up the Start menu program listing, and the power button at right locks down the keyboard when you turn the phone off, guarding against accidental battery drain in your pocket or purse.

The back of the phone has the door for the replaceable Lithium Ion battery, the camera lens and self-portrait mirror, and the speaker. The infrared port, silence switch, and expansion card slot are at the top, and the headset jack and USB/Power port are at the bottom.

Finally, the left side has the volume rocker and a programmable application button.

That all-important Today screen is the jumping-off point for all major phone and PDA functions, and can be customized with your own favorite applications and background picture. At the top, there's today's date, followed by the carrier name and two important status icons. The first shows whether your current location is being broadcast to others (here it's not), and the second shows whether Bluetooth is on (it is). Just below that there's a box for entering a name or phone number to dial. There's no need to tap in the box first, you can simply start keying the name or number, and a list of matching items will start to pop up. Select a phone number or contact, and it will dial the number right away, or let you compose an email, text message, or SMS. We absolutely love the integrated phone/text/email interface, which makes communication easy. Another innovative voice/text integration feature is that when you want to ignore an incoming call, you can choose to reply via text message. This is great for meetings and other locations where you can't talk, but want to let the caller know you saw them.

Moving on down the screen, we find two more useful Today features: your next calender appointment, and the number of unread email messagesk. Finally, there's a Web search box that takes you right to the results in Internet Explorer. If you click the Phone button while in the Today screen, you get a popup menu with recently dialed numbers, Voicemail access, and the phone Dial Pad, which puts big, easy-to-press buttons on the touchscreen (see below). The Voicemail interface has really cool tape recorder-like controls that works seamlessly with most systems so you don't have to "Press 1," "Press #," etc. That status bar at the top of the screen shows what wireless connections (EV-DO, Wi-Fi) are active, their signal strength, and battery life remaining, as well as the current time.

As a phone, the 700w is top-notch. Headset voice quality is excellent, coverage was seamless and mostly broadband in the major metro areas we tested (Boston, Las Vegas, and San Francisco/Oakland), and dialing is a snap. The 700w even automatically sets up conference calls for you. Just dial a second number through the Contacts application, and your first call will be put on hold and then conferenced in. The silence switch also makes it simple to turn off ringing and other alert sounds, which can be customized to virtually anything. You can even set a video as your ringtone, but our favorite phone feature is the ability to use photos instead of names for your frequently dialed numbers (as in the Today screen at the top of this page). The one disappointment is the speakerphone, which could use a better microphone pickup.

Review Continued