Palm Treo 750 Cell Phone Review
By Alfredo Padilla
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
August 15, 2007
The Palm Treo 750 provides excellent business and multimedia functionality, but the limited battery life may scare off the business users it is targeted at. The Windows Mobile-based 750 is Palm’s first hardware upgrade since the venerable Treo 650. Gone is the external antenna and new is a soft touch finish. However, anyone familiar with Treos will immediately recognize the trademark QWERTY keyboard and square screen. The Treo 750 is currently an AT&T exclusive, and it is available for $299.99 with a two-year contract.
Palm has made many modifications to the standard Windows Mobile software. One of these is the ability to dial a phone number or search for a contact directly from the home screen, with matches appearing as you type in the name. This feature allowed us to dial a number in 4.25 seconds, faster than the more than 6 seconds we found on the T-Mobile Wing and HTC Mogul. As a Windows Mobile device, the Treo 750 provides powerful applications to manage your contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes. All these can be synchronized with a Windows PC or corporate Exchange Server.
The Treo 750 did well in our tests that measure the quality of audio sent and received by the phone. The only minor issue is a slight exaggeration of the high frequencies in the sound sent by the phone, that might make your voice sound a little trebley. We saw some more issues in the phone’s side tone (the small amount of your own voice injected into the phone’s speaker so you can hear yourself speak); this was a little lower than we would have liked, which means you may end up talking louder than you need to in order to make yourself heard.
The 750 has a 1.3-megapixel camera built in, and the photos taken were fairly good, with decent resolution and better than average color reproduction. Video capture left a lot to be desired, despite the fact that the 750 can capture video at slighter higher than normal resolution. Music and video playback are handled by Windows Media Player Mobile, which provides good functionality for organizing your media. The 750’s square screen is a lower resolution that most Windows Mobile devices at 240 x 240 pixels, which means it does not provide as much detail when watching video. You will need to invest in a MiniSD card to store music and video if you want to use the 750 as a multimedia device.
As we’ve come to expect from Windows Mobile devices, the 750 does a very good job of handling e-mail, with support for multiple accounts and the ability to receive real-time push e-mail from Exchange servers. Another of Palm’s upgrades is the presence of a separate application to handle text and multimedia messaging. This application presents your messages in threaded format, much like a desktop Instant Messaging client. This makes it much easier to keep track of your conversations and will be appreciated by heavy texters. While speaking of texting, it’s important to mention we were able to type a speedy 43.8 words per minute on the 750’s keyboard.
Windows Mobile devices like the 750 allow you to install a wide variety of third party applications to expand the phone’s capabilities. Internet browsing is handled by Internet Explorer Mobile, and although better than the browser on most cell phones, it isn’t as good as the modern browsers found on the iPhone or Nokia N95. The 750 is Palm’s first device to support AT&T’s high-speed 3G network, but it does not support Wi-Fi.
The 750’s unimpressive talk time of 3 hours and 58 minutes is the result of a smaller battery and support for battery-draining 3G networks. We saw far better performances from other smart phones like the BlackBerry 8800 and T-Mobile Wing. Business users who spend a lot of time on the phone will probably need to carry around an additional battery or stay close to a charger to make it through the day. The same factors led to a poor 3 hour and 3 minute Web browsing time. Media mavens, however, will appreciate the 750’s excellent music playback time of 15 hours and 23 minutes.
The Treo 750 is a very well-rounded smart phone that will appeal to many users. Palm has improved on the already solid Windows Mobile platform with its own enhancements. Many will be excited about the 750’s support for AT&T’s 3G network, however you should be aware that use of this network has a serious impact on battery life. Those who use their phones extensively should consider an extra battery or look into phones like the BlackBerry 8800 or T-Mobile Dash, which provide significantly better battery performance.
|
|
