By now many of you have already heard (or seen) that the Treo was going WM5 as well as PalmOS.
I recently had a chance to play around with the 700w on the Verizon Wireless network and had this initial reaction. Nice!
For those of you who already own a Treo of older generation(s) (remember those flip-lid doodads?), there's no doubt that if you love your Treo now, you'll really love the 700 more regardless of which OS you pick... One of the main complaints I had with the Treo was with its picture quality. Sure, it was only a VGA camera, but even then, the quality was so horrible that it's kind of like the MDA's picture quality - horrible.
Luckily, with the MDA, there are some hacks you can perform to make the quality a bit more tolerable. The Treo's camera by comparison, is a bit better off-the-bat. Palm finally made a Treo with a 1.3 Mp camera and while its not really intended to be a shutterbug's dream cameraphone, it should be possible to also improve its quality with some white balance / contrast and other little tweaks as you snap pictures.
I won't go into the phone features that much other than to say that it's basically like your current Treo - it works! I've noticed that even with its Intel® XScale™ 312MHz processor, it still feels like it chokes a bit at times while quickly dialing numbers and placing calls - could this be a WM5 thing?
While I'm still not a fan of the stub antenna that has become one of the trademarks of the Treo, at least its reception is decent enough to deal with its existence at the top left corner of the device.
No changes have been made to the 240x240 touch screen. While not as large as the MDA's 240x320 (which is really nice!), it still delivers enough real estate to do the basics. I'd still much rather work on Excel files in the MDA (and this too has its limits), but quite frankly I use it more for web browsing. This is where I'm torn. The Treo as a phone is great, but it's really not that great of a messaging/officework/browsing device. On the other hand, the MDA is the complete opposite. While some of you may be drooling at the speeds that EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) can deliver, it'll cost you (especially with Verizon). I should also mention that the 700 series _still_ has no Wi-Fi which I guess makes sense that it's rolled out on the "fastest" data network for its debut.
My suggestion is to wait it out and get it when the GSM carriers (Cingular, T-Mobile) begin to stock them. They'll most likely do this when the MDA/8125 age a bit more (if they aren't recalled by then ;)). If you needed a reliable, tested phone with WM5, the Treo is the way to go. Otherwise, stick with the MDA - it's cooler and has more useful web/office/connectivity functions.
We'll be posting a 700W versus T-Mobile MDA comparison review in the coming weeks.
Happy Treo'ing!
Posted 06/05/2006 by Administrator | Filed under: Treo
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