Pocket PC Dubai

The Palm Treo Pro has been one of the most anticipated devices of 2008 thanks to its radical design change (from its predecessors) and current (almost) industry standard hardware specifications. It is one the first devices from Palm that is actually moving along with the times as opposed to it’s previous iterations such as the Treo 750 and the likes. The Treo 750 was by far one of the best devices that I had ever used; however it’s biggest drawback (for me) was the lack of WiFi and GPS.

Well, this time around Palm has decided to go in fully equipped and ready to wage war against its competitors. In this review, we are going to take a detailed look at the Treo Pro, to analyze if it’s got what it takes to bring its competition to their knees!

Before we actually start the review, we’d like to thank the wonderful folks at ITEME who are the distributors for Palm’s offerings in the UAE. Thank you for your co-operation everyone!

So, without further adieu, let’s begin!

Video Unboxing and Hardware tour

Un-boxing and hardware video review embedded below:

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Design

The Treo has heavily taken inspiration from the Palm Centro, which has been one of Palm’s most successful devices till date. It is manufactured by HTC, which is evident from its well-built and minimalist design. The device is all black and glossy which can be a turn off for those Type A personality people requiring them to carry one of those cleaning cloth’s that are supplied with your spectacles (you’re going to need it!). I also found it to be rather slippery so using a case might be a wise thing to do.

The front of the device is the main focus of interest since it has a full QWERTY keyboard, 4 customizable shortcut buttons and a unique circular D-pad. The reason I say that the d-pad is unique is because it has an LED notification light (beacon) built in that illuminates when there is a pending voicemail waiting in your mailbox. I tried to look for settings to see if this feature could be extended to other notifications but was disappointed that it wasn’t, hence making this quite a limited feature to be honest. The 4 shortcut keys are programmable and definitely improve the quick usability of the device. 

Button mapping

The Call answer and end buttons are easy to use and one fact worth mentioning here is that pressing the call end button from the home screen locks the device to prevent those accidental key presses while in your pocket or purse.

The screen is 320x320 pixels in resolution and is flush with the bezel obviating the need for you to remove your stylus or use your long nails (if you have them!) to tap those hard to get to corners. I for one am glad that flush screens are becoming a standard since I used to find it extremely frustrating, trying to press the “X” button in the upper right corner with my finger! Also, there is a discrete LED notification light on the top left corner of the device, which illuminates when charging.

 

Back

The back of the device is very minimalist with just the 2 MP camera and an external speaker grill. The entire back comes off giving access to the battery, micro-sd card slot and ofcourse the SIM card slot (beneath the battery). Btw, taking the back cover off can be a little frustrating at times and isn’t easiest task to perform!

Left Side

The left side of the device has the volume rocker and the camera button (press and hold to activate camera).

Right Side

The right side of the device has the WiFi on/off switch and surprisingly an IR port! That’s correct, the IR port is still alive and something that I haven’t seen for a while on Windows Mobile devices. The WiFi switch is a tad frustrating to use as it is recessed and requires you to press in with sufficient effort to activate WiFi. Functionally, this makes sense as you wouldn’t want to accidentally turn WiFi on and have your battery life depleted, but whether this trade off is worth actual usability is debatable.

Top

The top of the device has the classic Palm ringer switch which instantly switches profiles to and fro between vibrate and general.  This is one of the features that I’d like to see as a industry standard as it is absolutely ridiculous to have to turn on the device (and navigate through settings at times) to put the device in vibrating mode. I always appreciate features that aim at reducing steps required to perform simple tasks as they show a clear commitment to understanding the consumer’s needs. Moving on; the on/off switch is located on the top left of the device (when held in hand as opposed to what you see in this picture).

Bottom

The bottom of the device has a Micro-USB port which I have to criticize simply because I hate when ODM’s deviate from industry standards. Now, what was wrong with Mini-USB? Was it not small enough or is it that they want to begin a micro-USB revolution? Personally, I hate having multiple cables around and the thought of having an extra sync/charger cable is irritating as it is, rest aside actually having to use one! However, kudo’s to Palm for using a 3.5 mm headset jack as this gives us the opportunity to use our own headsets as opposed to the sub-standard 2.5 mm headsets provided with most devices. Right next to the headset jack is the mic port. Extreme right is the stylus, which is rather short and non-telescoping and thus feels rather inadequate when used.

Comparison shots (with other QWERTY devices):

Left to right are the i-Mate Ultimate 8502, Palm Treo Pro and the Blackberry Curve 8310. Click on thumbnails to see the full images.

Specifications

Please visit this link for a complete list of Specifications.

Network, Processor, Memory, WiFi, GPS, Camera

The Treo Pro is a WM 6.1 device running on a Qualcomm MSM7210 chipset and a 400 MHz processor. It is a Quad band GSM (800/850/1800/1900) and Tri-band 3G (850/1900/2100) device with 802.11 WiFi b/g, 802.1x (EAP-PEAP, EAP-TLS and EAP-TTLS), BT 2.0 + EDR and GPS (with AGPS).

As mentioned earlier, an IR port is also included. Right out of the box, the device felt slightly slow in comparison to the other devices that I have used before. I’m not sure what exactly I should attribute this to, as I haven’t loaded any software to warrant the slow-down.  I believe a part of this can be explained by the fact that Windows Mobile itself is a bit of a processor hog, which explains why 128 MB RAM has almost become a standard on newer devices. What actually warrants more ROM is not the ability to run programs, but the fact that programs need to run smoothly without any hiccups or slowdowns. The device also comes with a fairly generous 256 MB ROM (storage) with almost 100 MB free after a hard-reset.

One thing to note is that the Qualcomm MSM7201’s recommended clock frequency is 528 MHz, which leads us to believe that Palm deliberately under clocked the processor to get optimal battery life. Nevertheless, we’d like Palm to include faster processors in the future devices even if it does mean having to sacrifice slight battery life.

Another particular aspect that I found quite interesting was Palm’s WiFi manager settings. With most Windows Mobile devices, when you connect to WiFi and then enter standby mode, resuming from it automatically starts WiFi again. However, the Treo Pro’s default setting leaves WiFi off despite having it turned on before going into standby mode. I’m assuming this is because the Treo Pro thinks that you accidentally left the WiFi on and hence is saving battery life. Personally, I disabled this option (WiFi Communications manager settings) as I’d like WiFi to resume as soon as the devices comes out of standby mode.

Since the device uses the Qualcomm MSM7201 chipset, GPS (with AGPS) is therefore built in. A-GPS stands for Assisted GPS and what this means to you and me is that through the use of software (HTC Quickgps), which downloads satellite position data, lock on times can be significantly reduced. A lot of devices take almost 3-4 minutes to lock on in clear skies, however, with A-GPS this can be reduced to as little as one minute thereby greatly improving your navigation experience.

Camera is 2 MP without flash and autofocus and shoots images with a maximum resolution of 2 MP or 1600x1200. Video recording is however a joke! It records at 352x288 resolution with what I believe to be a frame rate of less than 10fps!!! Seriously Palm, what were you thinking? This might be attributed to the fact that the hardware graphics acceleration on the device has been throttled. I understand that this is a business device, but professionals do like to dabble in media and take videos and photo’s too. It’s actually surprising that Palm chose to put such a low-resolution camera on its most high-end device despite the fact that Qualcomm chipset supports as much as 6 megapixels. I’m assuming that this was done to drive costs down, but with newer devices becoming “all in one” work + media solutions, having a high-resolution camera is almost a MUST and we hope you get this right the next time around Palm.

The camera can be turned out by pressing and holding the dedicated camera button on the left side of the device which is a nice touch since you don’t want to accidentally activate it considering it’s positioning in the palm of your hand. The camera application UI is pretty simple (HTC created application) which doesn’t have much to write home about (please view software screenshots to get more details of this application). Qualities of pictures are just OK for a phone cam and there is definitely a lot of room for improvement in this area.

Software

There are a few software additions from Palm that we’d like to spend a few minutes talking about.

Palm has included a licensed version of Sprite backup as it understands the value of your data and hence recommends timely backups to avoid any disappointment. Thank you Palm; we appreciate the fact that you care

Threaded SMS ofcourse is natively supported.

There are also a few applications that Palm has licensed from HTC such as the Quickgps (to download GPS satellite data), task manager, camera utility and the communications manager.

Task Manager

Comm Manager

Camera Application

Also included was Webraska navigation, which I couldn’t get to work in our part of the world thanks to the lack of supported maps.

Another great piece of software that is included is MS Voice Command 1.6

Unfortunately, one of the ingredients of Palm’s proprietary “Special Sauce” which is the photo dial feature (from home screen) is now missing.

Another cool thing worth mentioning is the lack of a CD with Activesync software on it. The reason for this is that Palm has included a “PC Setup” utility, which basically sets up Activesync for you when you connect to your PC for the first time. Mac and Linux users are as usual left out high and dry!

The Play Factor

How does the Treo Pro stand up as a multimedia device? Well, the fact that the device has a 320x320 pixel square screen might be a deterrent to watch videos or view photos thanks to the limited screen real estate. However, for those short episodes that you missed at home or those quick photo shoots that you did, the device does an OK job. My only bone to pick here again is the very noticeable lack of graphic acceleration, which I am not sure, whom to really blame for. While viewing videos, some of them appear to slow down at times or just momentarily stutter before resuming back to normal. The chipset by itself is capable of graphic acceleration but why it was choked is something beyond me. All in all it isn’t great by any means, but it gets the job done for a device primarily intended for business use (hence the “Pro” moniker).  The inclusion of a 3.5 mm jack however is a highly welcome addition and I for one believe that this MUST become an industry standard (which I’ve voiced many, many times over). I found the audio quality to be good enough to leave home without my dedicated mp3 player. I did notice the lack of a native equalizer but that’s something that can be overlooked thanks to the myriad of software available offering the same functionality.

Web browsing can be a nightmare without installing 3rd party software such as the highly recommended and simply FANTASTIC Opera Mobile 9.5 for Windows Mobile Professional. Personally, I’ve forgotten that Pocket IE even exists anymore thanks to the likes of Opera Mobile and the fast growing Skyfire (which offers server side rendering for quick load times).  We wish that Palm had included some kind of native youtube player to complete the Internet experience.

The Work Factor

The “Pro” title lays a lot of responsibility on the device since it’s clearly targeted towards the corporate or the blackberry crowd. The main expectation from them is reliable email use, document support, telephony and ofcourse, great battery life. Straight out of the box, the Treo Pro does very well in all these aspects mainly because it was designed keeping these aspects in mind and its hard to go wrong when things are well planned and executed.

The messaging application works with Exchange 2003 and 2007 giving you always on push email access so that you never miss that important email. Considering that there’s a hard backlit QWERTY keyboard at your disposal, sending out quick emails is mostly an effortless process. I’d have liked the keyboard to offer a better tactile feedback as it’s a bit soft for my taste but that’s entirely my opinion as the firm and responsive feedback of the blackberry curve have spoiled me.

Thanks to the inclusion of Office Mobile in Windows Mobile 6.1, which is basically a suite of 4 applications (Excel Mobile, One note Mobile, Power Point Mobile and Word Mobile), viewing documents on the device is very easy. Unfortunately, functionality is rather limited in these applications so you might consider investing in 3rd party software to make the most use of the device.

The Treo Pro is very reliable in its phone functionality and thanks to the hard QWERTY keyboard; accessing your contacts right from the home screen is an effortless process. We would however have liked to maximize the use of the keyboard by permitting key (letter) based speed dial as seen on the blackberry’s. By default, rejecting a call with a text message isn’t activated; this needs to be done in the options>advanced menu of the phone application. Also, by default an option is activated which adds unknown contacts to your list at the end of your call. It’s these little things that overall improve the phone experience and we must appreciate Palm for taking the initiative to understand it’s customer’s needs.

Also, as mentioned earlier, the device is Quad band GSM and Tri-Band 3G/UMTS/HSDPA meaning that you can connect to pretty much any GSM network on the face of planet. Not only this, but the inclusion of tri-band 3G guarantees you blistering internet speeds in the palm of your hands as long as your network can support it and your wallet can afford it Overall, we love the phone aspect of the Treo Pro and hope that other device manufacturers learn a thing or two from Palm in this regard.

Lastly, battery life in my opinion is simply fantastic. The device comes with a 1500 mAh battery and this coupled with the fact that the processor is under clocked (400 MHz) and screen size is small, makes battery consumption quite less providing as much as 2-3 days of battery life (without GPS use).

Note: This is entirely subjective as every person has different needs, but the above quoted time is with mild to moderate use. With more intensive use, expect the battery life to be proportionately reduced.

Verdict

Despite all the bones we’ve picked with the Pro, we believe it to be one of the most versatile, usable and reliable devices available on the market today. If you’d like a device that just works as advertised and doesn’t require you to tinker around too much, then this might be a worthy consideration.

There are 2 categories of people that I know of:

A) Those who want a keyboard (be it front facing QWERTY or sliding QWERTY)
B) And those who don’t want a keyboard and rather prefer touch screen candy bar format devices like the Touch Diamond

Those who consider the Pro clearly fall into the first category, which can further be narrowed down to front facing QWERTY keyboard supporters. In today’s market, there are a very, and I mean VERY few devices that can be compared with the Treo Pro in terms of design, usability and reliability as a daily work horse. For now, we’d recommend the Treo Pro to the business users, but not so much to the consumers who would like an “all in one” solution. We also hope that Palm improves on a few of the negative aspects that we have mentioned in this review.

Pro’s and Con’s

Pro’s

• Great design
• True world phone (quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G/UMTS/HSDPA)
• GPS (with A-GPS)
• Great QWERTY keyboard
• Plenty of customizable shortcut buttons
• Extra software provided to improve the WM experience
• Stellar battery life

Con’s

• Shiny, slippery and a Fingerprint magnet (Type A’s beware)
• Small screen (trade off for the keyboard)
• Under clocked processor (trade off for the battery life) and lack of graphic acceleration (for videos)
• Micro-USB (why Palm why?!) 
• 2 MP camera (get with the times please!) and poor video recording capability

Bugs

Pressing the messaging, calendar and start buttons when the device is in standby mode (and locked), activates their respective functions and the screen. I’m sure this will get fixed in future updates.

No silence feature! When a call comes in, the only options we have are “answer” and “ignore”. Pressing down on the volume slider also does not silence the ringer! This is perhaps one of the silliest bugs that I have seen which simply cannot be excused for a professional device. I’m filing this in bugs for now, as it doesn’t make sense if this were to be intentional!