Palm Treo 800w (Sprint)

The world may still be all abuzz with iPhone 3G talk, but believe it or not, there are other smartphones out there and Sprint has just landed a pretty darn good one. Today, Palm and Sprint unveiled the Palm Treo 800w, a Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone targeted at business users.

Now, we’ll admit we’ve given Palm its fair share of criticism over the years for being behind the times and lacking innovation, and while the Treo 800w doesn’t offer anything earth-shattering, it offers enough to shut us up for a little while. Updating the classic Palm Treo formula with the newest hardware and Windows Mobile operating system should be a no-brainer, and in most ways the Palm Treo 800w really works nicely.

Most of our pleasure with the device is thanks to Sprint’s impressively fast EV-DO Rev. A network and the long-established pedigree of Windows Mobile as a proven office-centric smartphone OS. In other words, it isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done, especially in terms of handling calendars and contacts, as well as office documents.

Unfortunately, we had some strange issues with our review unit, some of which were obviously isolated issues (with GPS hardware and tethered modem support), but some are clear missteps on the part of Palm and Sprint. Windows Mobile 6.1 gets none of the recent visual upgrades we liked in WinMo 6.1 Standard edition, and that’s too bad because it would have simplified the Today screen immensely.

There is a lot going for the Treo 800w, and it’s nice to see Palm release a device that’s current with the latest hardware and software. This should satisfy Palm fans on the Windows Mobile side of the family until the next version of the Palm OS comes along. You see, the Palm Treo 800w is the first Palm smartphone to finally offer integrated Wi-Fi and not only that, but GPS as well. It’s also the first Sprint smartphone to ship with Windows Mobile 6.1 and EV-DO Rev. A support out of the box.

All these features finally put Palm on the same playing field of HTC and Samsung. Palm has also revamped the design to make it smaller (all while still keeping a touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard) and easier to use and navigate, making it a nice alternative to the bulky Samsung SCH-i760 and the Verizon Wireless XV6800. We’re still conducting some performance tests, but we’d say the Treo 800w promises to deliver a well-connected and powerful smartphone for mobile professionals. We’re just slightly worried about the battery life,

When it comes to design, the Palm Treo 800w takes a little bit of the old and a little bit of the new. The overall shape falls more along the lines of previous Treos, but Palm has definitely trimmed it down and given the Treo 800w a more modern look. The smartphone measures 4.4 inches high by 2.2 inches wide by 0.7 inch deep and weighs 5 ounces. It may make for a tight fit in a pants pocket, but the Treo 800w is really quite a compact smartphone, especially considering it has a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard. The smaller size and attractive slate blue color really adds much to the appeal of this device. Plus, the back features a soft-touch finish to give it a rubberlike texture.

Palm sticks to form in their newest Windows Mobile 6.1 device, the Palm Treo 800w. The device is not an exact replica of the Palm Treo 750. Side-by-side it would be easy to see the differences, though it would not be apparent which is an improvement over the other, as the changes are mostly cosmetic and not functional. There are a few extra buttons, including e-mail and calendar shortcut keys, new to the Palm Windows Mobile lineup. Up top, a Wi-Fi button hints at changes under the hood. The phone takes microSD cards, an improvement over the miniSD of the last model, and in a major coup for accessory hounds, Palm has finally given up the HotSync cable in favor of simple microUSB. Huzzah!

Below the display you will find two soft keys that are designed to work with Windows Mobile. The soft keys are the same color as the device casing and blend into the device to give it a cleaner look, IMHO. Below the soft keys are buttons for Start menu, OK, Calendar, and Messaging. You can also program Option>Send/Start/OK/Calendar/Messaging for 5 more actions so you have a total number of 10 actions/programs that can be assigned to hardware buttons that further reduces the need for stylus usage. The send and end keys are on the outboard side of these 4 buttons with a very nice directional pad and action button in the middle. The directional pad has Palm etched into it and is quite large and highly functional. Palm makes a lot of effort to help ensure users can manipulate the device with the 5-way Navigator and Center button so it is important to have a well designed layout.

The QWERTY keyboard can be found below these buttons and is well laid out and very similar to that found on the latest generation Palm Treo devices. The number keys are arranged in a traditional phone keypad manner on the left side of the keyboard and all alternate characters are clearly visible with the backlight on or off. The space bar is also about 3 keys wide and the shift key is about 1.5 keys wide so it is easy to hit as well.

The screen is the same familiar size, but now Windows Mobile users get the benefit of Palm’s 320 by 320 pixel screen, long in use on the Palm OS side of the family. This is thanks to improvements in Windows Mobile 6.1, which we were excited to see on the device. However, Windows Mobile 6.1 is something of a letdown on devices with a touchscreen. The Standard edition found on non-touchscreen phones(check out our screenshot gallery here,) like the Samsung BlackJack 2 got a visual overhaul recently that transformed the Today screen into a series of useful panels. On the Professional edition found on the Treo 800w, the Today screen is a jumble of information. Without much effort, our Today lineup ballooned to 12 items, including location-based search, Web search, contact list search, news, weather and Dow Jones. Much of this extended off screen, requiring a tiny scroll bar to find the rest. This isn’t convenience, this is excessive.

The navigation array below the screen is similar to the one found on the Palm Centro, while the full QWERTY keyboard is decidedly Treo. You get Talk and End buttons, a Start key, an OK button, shortcuts to your Calendar and in-box, and a five-way navigation toggle with a center select key. There are also two soft keys right below the display. We found the layout to be fairly roomy and didn’t run into too many problems; though if anything, the Talk and End buttons could be bigger. The soft keys were particularly helpful for making the device easy to use with one hand.

Given that the Treo 800w is larger than the Centro, the QWERTY keyboard isn’t as small and cramped. However, we didn’t find it particularly roomy or easy to use either. There isn’t a whole lot of spacing between the keys, so users with larger thumbs may experience some mispresses. We thought they also felt a bit stiff. With time, though, we think you should be able to click away easily.

On the left side, you’ll find a volume rocker and a customizable button, while there’s a stylus holder, an infrared port, and a microSD expansion slot on the right side. One very minor complaint is that the stylus was really flimsy, bending very easily under pressure. The top of the unit holds a Wi-Fi shortcut and ringer on/off switch. And unlike previous Palm devices, the Treo 800w now comes with a microUSB port on the bottom, rather than a multiconnector. This is where you’ll connect your USB cable, power cord, and unfortunately, your wired headset. We say unfortunately because this limits you to using the included earbuds, which leave much to be desired, or you can get an audio adapter. Finally, the camera lens, self-portrait mirror, and speaker are located on the back.

As for GPS, the Treo 800w works with Sprint Navigation, which offers turn-by-turn text- and voice-guided directions, traffic updates, local search, and more. Sprint Navigation’s cost is free the first day, but afterwards, you will have to pay $2.99 per day or $9.99 per month for unlimited use. Of course, you can download other third-party navigation software. The smartphone also includes some navigation shortcuts. For example, the GPS integrates directly with your contacts list, so you can navigate to an address right from your phone book and you can search from points of interest right from the home screen with a preloaded map app.

The Treo 800w is also the first Sprint smartphone to ship with EV-DO Rev. A support out of the box. The Rev. A boosts download speeds from the 400Kbps-to-700Kbps range to 600Kbps-to-1.4Mbps range, while upload speeds will average about 350Kpbs to 500Kpbs (compared with EV-DO’s 50Kpbs to 70Kbps). In short, you’re going to get faster Web browsing, e-mail, and downloads–that is, if you’re lucky enough to live in a coverage area. According to the carrier, the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network is available in 13,453 cities and 1,321 airports with a “vast majority” of that network upgraded to EV-DO Rev. A. You can check for your city on Sprint’s Web site (Click the “Data, Email, and Multimedia” tab; Sprint Mobile Broadband Network areas highlighted in orange).

We’re going to give Palm the benefit of the doubt when it comes to GPS. Our review unit had serious problems with its GPS sensor. It never found us, neither among the tall buildings in Manhattan nor the hills of suburban New Jersey. Also, we were locked out of Sprint Navigator for the duration of our testing trial, though we have plenty of experience with that TeleNav-developed navigation app. What we can say about the GPS experience on the Palm Treo 800w is that Palm has tried to integrate GPS into other features on the phone. For instance, there is a local search feature from the Today screen that searches a point-of-interest database for local businesses and landmarks. Also, the contact list can jump right to the Maps program to map a contact’s address.

While the Treo 800w is aimed at business users, there’s plenty of fun to be had with the device’s multimedia features. In addition to the standard Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, which lets you tune into your favorite AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, and WMV music and video files, and TV shows recorded on your Windows Media Center PC. The device supports Sprint TV so you can watch short clips from a variety of channels, including CNN, Fox Sports, E!, and the NFL Network, and you can listen to live streaming music and talk radio from Sirius, VH1 Mobile, and MTV Mobile. Sprint TV is offered as part of the Sprint Power Vision pack, which ranges in price from $15 to $25 per month. Interestingly, support for the Sprint Music Store was left out, though it’s something that could be added in the future. The Treo 800w has 128MB program memory and 256MB user memory (170MB user available); the microSD expansion slot accepts up to 8GB cards.

Call quality on the Palm Treo 800w is very good, and Windows Mobile 6.1 provides some great calling features. We like the live, while-you-type searching of the contact list from the Today screen, and we love the way Windows Mobile attaches call times to contact list entries, so we know the last time we spoke to someone. Unfortunately, while many other manufacturers are taking strides to improve the contacts and calling experience, Sprint and Palm have done very little with the Palm Treo 800w. We would have liked a visual speed dial, like you’ll find on the HTC Touch on Sprint, and other visual enhancements. Nonetheless, conference calling was easy and intuitive, and the speakerphone was acceptably audible, though not impressively loud.

Reception was on par with our Palm Treo 755p, also on Sprint, at about 3-4 steady bars in our lower Manhattan office. This never affected call quality, though data was less reliable when reception dipped to a single bar. Battery life was a mixed bag. We got just under 5 hours in a single call, which was a little disappointing, but when we added data and other power-sapping features to the mix, things got even worse. With Exchange ActiveSync running continually, the Treo made it through a couple of days without a charge, though it wouldn’t have gotten through a second overnight. With Wi-Fi and GPS active, we could easily see the phone drained in less than a single day’s use, especially with an active push e-mail connection.

The Sprint Palm Treo 800w features a nice assortment of messaging options, almost everything we could ask for. SMS and MMS are obviously present, as are instant messaging clients for AIM, Yahoo and MSN. In fact, the software integrates the three so you can run one account on each service at the same time. We had no problem synchronizing the device quickly with our Exchange ActiveSync account. In fact, quick was the name of the game with this device, even in messaging. We went head-to-head against an Apple iPhone 3G downloading and opening an Excel attachment. The Treo 800w downloaded so quickly, we almost didn’t see the icon change, while the iPhone 3G took its time chewing on the 600KB file. Then, the Treo 800w opened it quickly in the Mobile Excel app, while the iPhone crashed trying to open the file.

Typing on the new keyboard was fine, though we don’t see a huge improvement over the last version of the Treo. The keys feel a bit more flat and softer, but this felt better while typing, not worse. After a couple years typing on a Treo keyboard, we were able to type on the Treo 800w without looking, a feat we couldn’t pull off on the Palm Centro or, gasp, the Apple iPhone.

Again, Windows Mobile shines when it comes to calendar and office functions. The Palm Treo 800w doesn’t bring anything new to the party, but this is still probably the best office party going. Document handling for Word, Excel and even simple PowerPoint documents worked nicely with Office Mobile, and though the calendar app for Windows Mobile 6.1 may not be the prettiest, but it packs the most features and integrates perfectly with an Outlook Exchange account. As we mentioned, downloading documents over the Treo 800w’s EV-DO Rev. A connection was a breeze, and the Treo 800w opened documents as fast as we’ve ever seen.

The network speed on the Palm Treo 800w was truly impressive, which is why the shoddy Internet Explorer Web browser was so disappointing. With this kind of speed, the phone really should have come with an Opera Mobile 9.5 browser instead, but the final release is still a few months away (check out the beta 1 version). Pages looked messy and layout was inaccurate. The browser even choked a few times on our image-intensive homepage, but was successful on most tries. Worst of all, the browser completely ignores the touch screen for navigation, while most touch phones are using fingertips to make browsing quick and fun.

The Treo 800w is Sprint’s premier smartphone to ship with Windows Mobile 6.1 out of the box. The upgraded operating system brings some minor but useful enhancements, including a Getting Started menu aimed to help first-time users configure their device by guiding you through the setup of your e-mail, Bluetooth headset pairing, ringtones, and more. That said, we couldn’t seem to find this option on our review unit. We are still trying to confirm with Sprint and Palm whether this was intentional or if the feature pulled a mysterious vanishing act. What you definitely do get is a new pan in and out function on Internet Explorer Mobile, richer Windows Live capabilities, and threaded text messages.

The other Windows Mobile staples are there. Microsoft Office Mobile Suite is onboard for editing and creating Word and Excel documents and viewing PowerPoint presentations. You also get OneNote Mobile and a PDF reader as well as other productivity tools, including a task manager, a voice recorder, a Zip manager, Sprite Backup, and a calculator. For e-mail, the Touch Dual offers Microsoft’s Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server. As usual, POP3 and IMAP accounts along with HTML format are supported. Sprint has also graciously added its instant-messaging app, which includes AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live clients.

The Palm Treo 800w is a standard Windows Mobile device, so it synchronized with Windows Media Player just fine. The media player could use a visual update, but our tracks came through okay, eventually, and retained their album artwork. Sprint also bundles Sprint TV with the device, but these short clips and streaming channels were never our preferred video service. Videos streamed smoothly once they started, perhaps owing to the phone’s speedy network abilities, but the picture was blocky and looked dull and blurry. This service won’t compete with real downloadable videos or full mobile TV services, like AT&T’s Mobile TV on the Samsung Access.

We would like to give the Palm Treo 800w high marks as a laptop companion, and it probably deserves them. The phone uses the fastest network technology we’ve tested, Sprint’s EV-DO Rev. A network. For software, Sprint and Palm have wisely chosen to use the Internet Sharing app, which connects your laptop to the internet without a piece of intermediary software. It’s the best way to connect on any phone. Finally, Palm has ditched its proprietary connector in favor of the standardized microUSB, which is a great step. Unfortunately, our test device had trouble using the Internet Sharing app to connect, though we saw blazing data speeds using the Internet Explorer browser. We suspect this is a problem with our review unit, as others have reported no such issues.

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Posted on August 20th, 2008 by admin
Filed under: GPS Device

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