Not long ago, I carried a Dell Axim x50v and a very capable Motorola e810 cellular phone. These two pieces of technology were as fundamental to my life as my wallet and wristwatch. I realize that many now forgo wearing a watch altogether given the extreme accuracy of even a basic cell phone’s timekeeping, but wearing a wristwatch is comforting to me and I’m not about to abandon what is really my singular piece of jewelry for any technical achievement. I began looking at my friends and clients Treos and other Smartphones and thought it might be a real simplification to combine my phone and PDA needs. In short, I wanted to join the “smartphone revolution” which wasn’t such a smart idea.....

To be fair, the reasons for my disappointment are not the fault of Palm, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, or Verizon’s service. All three companies share in making this solution far less capable and useful than it should be! The form factor of the Treo itself is looking a bit tired. The newer Motorola Q, Pearl Blackberry, not ot mention the still untested Applie iPhone, have better form factors and interface designs than any of Palm’s current Treo line. What’s more, Palm has chosen to cripple the 700W with a screen with less resolution than its sister product, the 700P. Looking at the 240 X 240 color screen you get about 50% less information than the 320 X 320 screen offered on the 700P. The color and saturation on the 700W screen is also markedly inferior. If this compromise is a cost cutting move, it is ill advised. After all, anyone willing to pay $500 for a smartphone is intending to spend a great deal of time viewing the screen and if this component isn’t adequate, you create a constant “billboard” showing your product’s faults. By itself, the screen wasn’t a reason to eliminate the 700W.

My admittedly personal experience reveals other hardware manufacturing issues which should at least give Palm shareholders pause. The first Treo I obtained through the local Verizon shop failed to pair with my aftermarket bluetooth Motorola car kit. I use this great add in all the time for its safety and convenience. The kit itself was purchased and installed through Verizon. I never left the store parking lot before attempting to get my new Treo 700W to “see” this device. After two techs tried to get this ‘phone to pair with the showroom car ket model, they pulled out another Treo, configured it for my account and bingo! the phone found the car kit in the showroom and my car. Only then did I find another shortcoming of this “SmartPhone.” Unlike my trusty Motorola e810, you cannot issue voice commands via the handsfree kit! I presume this is a shortcoming of Windows Mobile. Why disable an unquestionably convenient and safety enhancing feature from your state of the art SmartPhone? This feature worked faultlessly with my old Motorola-- in fact the voice recognition built into Motorola’s firmware appears superior to Windows Mobile even given the presumably superior input gained by forcing Treo owners to use the handset directly when issuing voice commands.

My second Treo last just a few days before half of the built in keyboard failed. Literally, half of the keys on the Treo’s normally highly functional keys stopped responding. Back to Verizon. To this company’s credit, they swapped out this Treo for another without complaint. However, there is no way to transfer the myriad changes which must be made to customize this phone between models! Owner information, bluetooth settings; additional softwoare, wifi links; speed dials, and much more, has to be reconfigured manually. This process takes a significant amount of time. Why can’t Microsoft offer some kind of Settings Migration Wizard? The company has had something similar with Windows XP for years. How hard can it be?

Of course your contacts and other information can be resynched with Outlook using ActiveSynch. Anyone who has had to replace a traditional cell phone and lost their address book knows how important backing up this information is. Using Activesynch and Outlook for this process was a driving consideration in my choice of this phone and operating system platform.