Palm Treo Pro Unlocked Cell Phone Review

17 Feb

Author: admin // Category: PALM TREO

3 Different Review

Review 1

after several weeks of researching, comparing, & then waiting for its release, i was very pleased to purchase the Palm Treo Pro. this was my first smartphone & i wanted something that fit well in my hand & also had a lot of practical features. i think that i got both in the Palm Treo Pro.

design: it’s design is very (dare i say it) fashion forward. unlike previous Treo’s, its got a much slimmer profile & fits very well in either a pants or shirt pocket. i like the qwerty keyboard & the directional “palm” key works really well for moving from one field to another. i also really like that i can use the keyboard, the stylus, or even my fingertips to use the different programs & features of the device.

setup: the setup process was actually not bad at all. once i inserted my SIM card, the phone recognized the settings of my current service provider & integrated all of the network settings seamlessly w/o any issues. it comes with a decent amount of memory on the phone when you purchase it & can be upgraded to as much as 32GB of memory using micro SD.

i have found only one issue thus far. after using the device for around 3 wks i’v already broken a stylus. the styli are mostly metal with a plastic head & tip. the connection between the plastic head & metal stylus is the only thing i would suggest Palm redesigns. otherwise, i LOVE the device..

Review 2

I love my new Treo Pro. I have been using it for about 2 weeks and already plan to hold on to it for the long haul. Little, history, I have had the Origional Treo, 200, 600, and 650. This is the best of them all. I swtiched two windows mobile 2 years ago because… well the PALM OS is dead in my book. That aside, I really missed the treo. I think palm gets how to build a nice device.

Keyboard: Works great. I find for a thumb keyboard and now with some experience I can fly with it. Personally, I love the thumb keyboard. Perfect for one handed operation with little compromise.

Thin: This thing fits very nicely into the pocket and the screen guard is excellent. I dont even know I have it with me and I never accidently Dial anyone. It fits in the hand wonderfully.

Buttons.. Some devices are going away from having so many buttons. However I like the ability to launch frequent programs. The Pro is great at letting you customize. (You have many hardware buttons and some of them can also be configured to have an Option + Hardware button application bound to them)

Also, you have hardware button access to volume control and wifi.

GPS: Works great. I installed and worked right away.

Power: this device is not a power pig. With normal use I get a good run off it. Mind you, I use applications on it all day along and SMS extensively.

Camera: I havent used it. Frankly, it doesnt matter how many mega pixels any phone has, it still just a phone camera. Quality is never that good. But it is good enough for those fun quick shots.

Dislikes: well, the screen is a standard windows mobile device screen. I was hoping for a new device, especially manufactured by HTC it would have a bit more kick to it. However, its very functional and does what I want. One thing I love is how they built into the keyboard access to the brightness control. This is something all devices should have. Its really hard to increase the brightness if you can read the screen. No problem with the treo.

The ALT key on the keyboard allows you to access characters not on the keyboard, including accented letters for various languages. What I dont like is that its a little window that shows up with about 8 characters show and you scroll to see more. Well there are a lot of characters, it would be better if they just filled the screen so you can quickly find the special character you want.

Windows Mobile Phone Dialer stinks! This is true in my opinion for any windows mobile device. Its a phone, but you have to navigate often 2 to 3 screens deep just to get a phone number. For example, you start typing someones name and the dialer appears. It instantly starts searching for a name. Great! When you select a name by pressing enter, it pulls up their contact screen. (HUH???) yes, you now get to see more info about them. I just want to DIAL the phone number. Long story short, for simple dialing its more complicated than it needs to be. Second, the Windows Mobile phone dialer always seems unresponsive and slow. Its a phone… but the phone is slow. it makes no sense. This is not a critisim against the treo, but if this your first Windows Mobile device you will be a bit disappointed with this.

My Final gripe is that it uses the Micro USB Cable. I dont know why. All I can say is that about 90% of my small electronic gizmos use Mini usb and now I have a new cable standard to deal with. I am sure there is some value to it, but I dont see it. Yes, the connector is smaller, but the cable is still just as thick and just as long. So why I need a thinner (by maybe a few hair widths) I dont know.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Click Buy Great device.

Review 3

I’ve been using windows mobile phones for the last four years, for work related purposes. When my HTC Excalibur flaked out on me last month, I checked around and waited for this to come out. I’ve been using it for a few days, but so far I’m extremely happy with the experience.

The touchscreen/thumb keyboard combo with no sliding bits or bulky moving parts was the selling point for me. I use email and IM on my phones constantly, it’s important that it works and is usable. I’m happy to report that this phone does it well. The built in GPS works (ships with Google Maps loaded, but I generally prefer the Live Search application for Windows Mobile). The touch screen generally improves over the basic smartphone experience, as being able to click a link with the stylus is much nicer than navigating with buttons.

As speed and memory goes, so far they’ve been ample, and it’s noticeably snappier than other devices I’ve used recently. I’m planning to use a MicroSD card to get a bit more space, but I do that with every phone. The camera is decent, but nothing spectacular. I do like the camera software on this phone better than the software on the HTC phones.

Very minor features I do like:
- Time on screen when the backlight is off.
- Hardware switch to silent mode
- My Treo link to mobile-friendly information about the device in the start menu
- And of course, comes GSM unlocked. No carriers loading or unloading software before you get the device, things work like a charm out of the box.

Very minor annoyances:
- Everything else uses mini USB to charge, it would have been nice if Palm did too. This uses a proprietary end on a USB cable.
- It’s glossy, and black, but also very smooth. At times feels very slippery, and opening the case to get to the battery can be a pain.
- Camera button is not as responsive as I’d like for starting the camera app. Seems fine for taking pictures.