Editors' Rating
| Design |  |
8.0 |
| Features |  |
7.0 |
| Performance | |
7.0 |
Published: 01 Sep 2008
At Palm's official unveiling of the Palm Treo Pro, we thought the smartphone looked pretty sharp, both inside and out. However, now that we've had some hands-on time with the device, our initial excitement is starting to fade. Don't get us wrong; there's plenty to like about the Treo Pro. Keyboard aside, we really like its updated and attractive design. It's sexy and is the sleekest touchscreen/full QWERTY combination, in our opinion. The Treo Pro certainly isn't lacking in the features department either. The business-centric mobile comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition and the full gamut of wireless options, including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
However, impressive as these features are, Palm is simply playing catch-up to the competition. Add the fact that, for the time being, Palm is only selling the Treo Pro as an unlocked phone for a whopping £399 (inc. VAT), and we have a problem. We understand the freedom of an unlocked phone, but don't see anything that really justifies such a high price tag. It's unfortunate since it's a generally solid device, but we think you can get comparable smartphones for less. Palm has not released a specific release date, but it's expected to be available later this month.
Design
The Palm Treo Pro represents a complete redesign for the Treo line, and it's most definitely welcome. The Treo Pro completely sheds the outdated, clunky design of previous models and trades it in for a sleeker frame, measuring 60mm by 114mm by 13.5mm and weighing 133g. You should be able to slip the Treo Pro into a trouser pocket with no problem, and it's still the only smartphone we can think of that successfully combines a full QWERTY keyboard and touchscreen into one sleek device. The eye-catching black lacquer casing is icing on the cake, but it does have a tendency to hold smudges.
Palm has done a lot to improve the design and hardware of its smartphones. Here is the Treo Pro sandwiched between the Palm Treo 700p and the Palm Centro.
The Treo Pro features a 2.5in. TFT touchscreen with a 320-by-320-pixel resolution that makes for a fairly bright and crisp screen, although we thought colours looked a bit washed out. The Today Screen gives you one-touch access to your wireless options, upcoming appointments, email and Google search, and you can customise the Today screen with various background images and themes. The Treo Pro also introduces a new screensaver that will show you the time, any missed calls or new text/multimedia messages at a glance. It's a small but convenient enhancement.
Below the display, you'll find a redesigned navigation array. You get the standard soft keys, Talk and End buttons, an OK button, shortcuts to the Start menu, Calendar, and Inbox and a navigation toggle with a centre select key. The latter will also flash when you have voice mail. Overall, the controls are fairly easy to use. The shortcut keys are set flush with the phone's surface, and we were initially concerned that they might be hard to press, but this really wasn't the case.
We're not huge fans of the Treo Pro's QWERTY keyboard. It's pretty cramped and doesn't really suit this business-centric smartphone.
Unfortunately, we did find some issues with the full QWERTY keyboard. The Treo Pro's keyboard is pretty much the same one found on the Palm Centro. There's a tad more spacing between the buttons than the Centro, but it's still fairly cramped. If you have small hands, you'll have problems using the keyboard. We also think that the keyboard doesn't really suit the smartphone. The Palm Treo Pro is designed for business users, and while the cute, gelatinous buttons might be OK for the consumer-orientated Centro, it looks a bit unprofessional on the Treo Pro. We would have preferred the hard buttons from previous Treos.
On the left spine, there's a volume rocker and a customisable side key, while the right side has a Wi-Fi power button. The top of the unit has a power button and silent ringer switch. A microUSB port and 3.5mm headphone jack are located on the bottom. Finally, the camera lens (sans flash or self-portrait mirror) and a side speaker are on the back, while a microSD expansion slot is hidden behind the battery cover.
In a first, Palm will ship the Treo Pro in sustainable packaging, which includes recycled content and a recyclable box.
The packaging and accessories included with the Palm Treo Pro are worth a mention. First, Palm is doing its part to help the environment by shipping the Treo Pro in a recyclable box and other recycled material. The user manuals are printed with soy ink, and the software CD (containing ActiveSync and more) is now preinstalled on the smartphone. You should be able to simply connect the device to your computer via USB cable, and access the content or install ActiveSync. As for the actual accessories, Palm has revamped the power charger that lets you swap out the adapters and improved the earbuds. The Palm Treo Pro comes packaged with an AC adapter, a USB cable, a wired stereo headset and reference material.
Features
The Palm Treo Pro marks a great advance for the Treo line, but when compared with the competition, it doesn't offer anything revolutionary. It's simply playing catch-up. As the name would suggest, the Palm Treo Pro is designed for mobile professionals and is an evolution for the Treo line, but doesn't offer any revolutionary features. The smartphone runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition, complete with the full Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for editing native Word and Excel documents, and viewing PowerPoint presentations. In addition, Palm ships the Treo Pro with Internet Explorer Mobile, Windows Live integration, OneNote Mobile, a PDF reader and the WorldMate Pro travel suite to help globetrotters stay on track. Other productivity applications include a voice recorder, a Zip manager, Sprite Backup, a calculator and a Task Manager to help optimise CPU and memory usage. The Treo Pro comes with 128MB RAM and 256MB storage (about 100MB of it is user accessible).
The Palm Treo Pro features a microSD expansion slot, which is located behind the battery cover. It can accept up to 32GB microSDHC cards.
For email, you get Microsoft's Direct Push Technology for real-time message delivery and automatic synchronisation with your Outlook calendar, tasks and contacts via Exchange Server. You can also configure the Treo Pro to access POP3 and IMAP email accounts, which, in most cases, is a simple process of inputting your username and password. We were able to set up our Yahoo account on our review unit with no problem and started receiving email within a few minutes. Windows Live Messenger is the only instant-messaging client preloaded on the smartphone.
Phone features on the Treo Pro include quad-band world roaming, a speakerphone, speed dial, smart dialling, conference calling and text and multimedia messaging. The contact book is limited only by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts), and there's room in each entry for multiple numbers, email addresses, instant-messaging handles and birthdays. For caller ID purposes, you can assign a picture, one of 37 polyphonic ringtones, or a group ID. Bluetooth 2.0 is also onboard for use with mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, object exchange and dial-up networking.
The Treo Pro supports HSDPA, which means you'll be able to get 3.5G speeds on a suitable network. The smartphone also has integrated Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), providing an alternative method for browsing the web. Simply press the one-touch button on the right side of the smartphone to turn on the Wi-Fi and connect to a network. The smartphone will automatically scan for available networks and allows for authentication and data encryption.
The smartphone also has integrated GPS for your navigation needs. To speed up the process of determining your location, the Treo Pro includes a utility called QuickGPS that downloads the latest satellite information via an internet connection. Google Maps is also preloaded on the device, which provides turn-by-turn directions, local search, traffic updates and more. However, for real road warriors, you might want to consider getting a full location-based service, so you can get more robust navigation features, including text- and voice-guided directions.
Although it's been all business up to this point, Palm includes some features to bring some balance between work and play. First, you get the standard Windows Media Player 10 Mobile that allows you to enjoy your AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4 and WMV files, to name a few. Plus, if you have TV shows recorded on your Windows Media Center PC, you can transfer them to your device for on-the-go viewing or stream your home's TV programming right to your device with a Slingbox and SlingPlayer Mobile. The Treo Pro's microSD expansion slot is designed to accept up to 32GB cards (when available), so you can fill up a high-capacity card and enjoy all your media.
On back of the smartphone, you'll find the Treo Pro's 2-megapixel camera. There's no flash, but you do get 8x zoom and video-recording capabilities.
The smartphone is also equipped with a 2-megapixel camera with 8x zoom and video recording capabilities. You can shoot still images in one of five resolutions and one of four quality settings. There's no flash, but you do get effects and white balance and brightness controls. A self-timer and time stamp are also available. In video mode, options are a bit more limited. You have a choice of four resolutions and can adjust the picture via white balance, brightness settings and effects. There's no limit to recording length.
Picture quality was mediocre. There was good definition but colours looked washed out.
Performance
We tested the quad-band Palm Treo Pro in San Francisco and call quality was decent. For the most part, we enjoyed crisp and loud audio on our end, but there were a couple of instances where voices sounded garbled or we heard a bit of cackling. Still, the overall experience was good and we were also able to use an airline's voice automated response system with no problem. On the other side, our colleagues reported good results with just a couple reports of an echo. Speakerphone quality was OK. We were able to carry on conversations, but calls sounded a bit hollow and at the highest volume setting, audio could sound slightly blown out. We were able to pair the Treo Pro with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones with no problem.
Armed with a 400MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 processor, the Treo Pro's general performance was OK, but not great. We didn't suffer any system crashes during our review period, but we definitely experienced some of that notorious sluggishness that plagues Windows Mobile devices. It wasn't any better or worse than other Windows Mobile smartphones, but frustrating nonetheless. On a brighter note, the web browsing experience was swift, thanks to the HSDPA boost. The Treo Pro was also able to find and connect to our Wi-Fi network, and we were also able to access the web that way. As for multimedia performance, music playback through the phone's speakers sounded one-sided and lacked bass. We're pleased that Palm included a 3.5mm headphone jack, however, and we had a much better experience listening to music with a nice pair of earbuds. Watching video was fine in short spurts, and audio and images were already synchronised.
The Palm Treo Pro's 1,500mAh lithium ion battery has a rated talk time of five hours and up to 10 days of standby time. We are still conducting our battery drain tests and will update this section as soon as we have results.
Digg
Slashdot
Del.ici.ous
Stumble
Reddit
