Mobile Phone Reviews

Palm Introduces a new Treo based on the PalmOs

Long-term users of personal digital assistants (PDAs) who made the inevitable move to smart phones tend to be quite religious about their devices of choice. Users of the old Palm Pilot will find their faith renewed with the new Palm Treo 680. Admittedly, I wasn’t a big fan of the Palm 750V, which marked the opening of a grand alliance between Palm and Microsoft in the push email stakes as they took on their grand nemesis Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry product.

The 750V was a brave statement of intent on behalf of both companies. It was perfectly suitable as a productivity device, easily accessing contacts and calendar information and checking email and the internet on the move.

For anyone new to the Palm family and au fait with Windows, it was a marriage made in heaven. But I could readily appreciate how alien the 750V must have been for traditional Palm fans who grew up with a particular operating system (OS) since the Nineties that has changed very little since.

It can be said the PDA is officially dead. Players like Dell have killed off production, while research from Canalys shows that year-on-year market growth for converged smart phone mobiles in 2006 was 26pc. With unit shipments set to exceed 77 million by 2009 Palm clearly wants a piece of the action.

The Treo 680 is built on the same chassis as the 750V so it looks identical but the similarities end there.

The 680 is ultimately a return to form for the Palm family, boasting the same standard OS but with a few nifty embellishments.

It has a handy ‘home’ screen for the quad-band mobile phone element of the device that allows you to slip seamlessly between contacts, voicemail, email and Bluetooth.

The quad-band feature lets the device work anywhere in the world. It also comes with 64MB of storage, three times the memory of the original Treo 650 smart phone. Users can also add up to 2GB of storage with expansion cards.

The device is ultimately being positioned as a productivity device, with email on the go, and comes with the ability to view, edit and share Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

My ultimate test for new phones is how quickly and easily I can get it working with my hands-free Bluetooth car kit and in this respect setting it up was very straightforward.

The only drawback for the device is really its size and weight. The BlackBerry Pearl by comparison is slimmer and lighter but performance-wise they do the same things.

The Treo 680 is a return to form for Palm and a relief for die-hard followers. However, I am hoping that Palm is already hard at work on a slim and slinkier version.
It looks like a good upgrade path for the Treo 650 owners though

The price is around 600$ unlocked in the US - 400 to 450 with a new subscription

Motorola famous for its thin RAZR series, unleashed another sexy slim phone, this time in a candy bar design, the SLVR or L7

Features and Design

Its metallic Nano-like looks are what will attract buyers to the SLVR. Pitch black with the now-familiar RAZR etched keypad glowing with a bright ice blue backlight and a vivid 2-inch screen (a half inch larger than the Nano’s), the SLVR (4.5 x 1.9 x 0.45 inches, 3.5 ounces) is about half the size of the Nano (3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27, 1.5 ounces), which makes it seem a bit more substantial than Apple’s music-only player. Of course for $199 you get 500-song capacity with a Nano, vs. only 100 songs on the SLVR.

But just how “limiting” are the SLVR’s features? Its 100-song capacity, when compared with even the $69 Shuffle’s 120 song space, seems miserly bad. But at an average of three minutes per song, 100 songs equals around five hours of music, which ought to be plenty for daily commutes, exercise sessions and local trips to the market.

The SLVR includes a pre-installed 512 MB Micro SD card that will store your iTunes songs, Bluetooth capabilities, Cingular EDGE compatibility, a VGA digital camera, AOL, Yahoo! and ICQ instant messaging and built-in stereo speakers. However, the SLVR’s Bluetooth does not include A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile), necessary to stream stereo music to the growing number of stereo Bluetooth headphones. Included with the SLVR are standard wired stereo earbuds with an in-line microphone. A USB cable for PC connectivity also is supplied.

As an EDGE phone, the SLVR connects to the Web and to the Cingular MEdiaNet store for ringtones, games, wallpapers and application downloads; there’s a soft MEdiaNet link on the splash screen, along with a direct iTunes access soft key. However, even though the SLVR is an iTunes phone, there is no connectivity to the iTunes site to download tracks. That feature may have to wait until Apple produces its own iTunes phone.

The SLVR has the usual spate of helper apps such as a calendar, calculator and alarm clock. But there is an Airplane mode that turns off the wireless so you can use the SLVR just as a music player.

The SLVR’s candybar orientation and good looks create their own problems. You don’t want to clothe a phone this pretty in a protective case, but it definitely needs one. Both the metallic keypad and especially the LCD screen exhibit every fingerprint and cheek smudge and require constant buffing to maintain their glamour. Some users may be reluctant to place it in a pants pocket for fear of scratching the surface. You’d want to use the Keylock feature to avoid accidental redials, however it doesn’t work when in Media player mode, so accidental song skipping may occur if you’re jogging with this phone

Performance

The SLVR’s iTunes interface pretty much parallels the iPod’s; but the SLVR is certainly no iPod. Filling the Micro SD card with 100 tracks takes about a half hour, twice as long as it takes to pour 120 tracks onto a Shuffle. Playback is periodically marred by crackle from either the wireless receiver or static electricity. And without a click wheel, using the navigation array to scroll through tracks or artists to find one track is tedious.

Discerning listeners will want to use their own headphones, which makes the inclusion of the mini USB-to-3.5mm adapter welcome. The included hammer-shaped earbuds hang loosely from the ears and easily dislodge with any vigorous movement. Even when the buds do fit snugly, music sounds muddy and is often overcome by ambient noise. But the buds are handy for dual music listening/conversation usage. Hearing your conversation through twin earphones vastly increases comprehension, and center placement of the cord clip on a lapel eliminates the need for idiotically holding the mic up to your mouth. Callers reported relatively clear sound at their end using the earbud/mic, even while walking down a noisy street.

The SLVR automatically mutes the music when a call comes in, which it did, and is supposed to automatically resume when a call is ended, which it didn’t during our tests. More dexterous manipulation of the multi-use button on the in-line mic may result in the result we couldn’t get.

Quad band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) reception was consistent throughout our usage. Voice volume was plenty high and voice quality was crisp and clean, even from another cell phone. Ringtone volume, however, was low, necessitating a reliance on the vibrate mode if you do decide to keep the phone in a pants pocket.

EDGE Web performance is adequate, with pages filling in eight to 15 seconds. As you’d expect, the VGA camera is useless in anything but bright sunlight, especially since there is no flash — but we doubt anyone would buy the SLVR for its picture taking capability. The SLVR’s 12-hour music playback battery life (6 hours/17 day talk/standby), is only two hours shorter

Conclusion

Since you can count the number of iTunes-compatible cell phones on two fingers — this one and the soon-to-be discontinued ROKR E1 — and since it’s doubtful that the choices will expand until Apple decides if-and-when to enter the cell phone business, iPod users who want to carry only one device are stuck with the SLVR. (Motorola’s upcoming ROKR E2 and RAZR V3x music phones will both be music platform agnostic.) But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The SLVR may be an excellent weekend phone for when music listening trumps staying in touch, and there’s room in your sweat suit for only one portable gadget.

Pros

• iTunes compatible
• Stylish
• Thin and light
• Micro SD memory card included
• EDGE compatible

Cons

• Limited song capacity (unless you upgrade the Flash memory)
• Easily smudged and scratched
• Poor-fitting, poor-sounding earbuds

Note that in other markets (Europe, Middle East) the L7 comes without iTunes but with a nice “Media Player” that synchronizes with Windows Media Player.