Smartphone Challengers Fail to Displace the Treo 650

Apparently, history in the smartphone business stopped in late 2004. It's not that manufacturers haven't come out with anything new since then. But none of these hybrids of cellphone and handheld organizer has had the appeal of Palm's Treo 650.

You could call the 650 the iPod of phones, except that Apple's music players have evolved dramatically over the last year and a half -- while the Treo has not. So why have competitors had so much trouble hitting this stationary target?

Two new Treo rivals help explain why. One comes from Palm itself, while the other comes from Motorola, whose Razr phone has come closest to a Treo level of buzz.

Palm's 700p (available from Sprint and Verizon Wireless for $400 with a two-year contract) might seem the obvious successor to the 650, but it's not. Instead, it's an alternative for people who need faster Internet access.

Aside from an unnecessarily rearranged layout of buttons, the 700p looks much like the 650 -- from its sharp color screen to its ingeniously condensed keyboard. But it adds support for Sprint and Verizon's fast "EV-DO" wireless data services. Where the 650, limited to 50 to 70 kilobits per second, is best at grabbing discrete bits of data like weather forecasts, baseball scores or driving directions, the 700 can easily clock 500 kbps, allowing you to browse at length.

Palm upgraded the 700p's Web and e-mail software to do a better job of rendering pages and messages on the Treo's compact display. It also added software to turn the 700p into an external modem for a desktop or laptop computer, connected with a USB cable or the 700p's Bluetooth wireless.

All that will cost you, however. Both Sprint and Verizon require buying an unlimited-use data package in addition to a voice plan to get a 700p at the advertised $400 price. Sprint's cheapest data/voice bundle is $45, while Verizon's is $80. Both charge extra for modem use -- $25 a month at Sprint (with a 40-megabyte data quota; removing that adds another $15), $15 a month at Verizon. The 700p's SD Card expansion slot remains incompatible with WiFi adapters, so forget about using free WiFi.

The 700p also features a higher-resolution camera and a few software updates which mainly provide functions already available with third-party software. For instance, you can record a voice memo, answer an incoming call with a text message, and view Portable Document Format files.

Unfortunately, the software on this handheld that most needed an upgrade -- the Palm operating system itself and the Palm Desktop software that links the 700p to a desktop or laptop -- didn't get any.

The 700p's data capabilities expose the Palm OS's major weakness, its lack of multitasking. While it's easy enough to browse Web pages written for desktop computers and download attachment-laden e-mail, you can't flip over to another program while this data streams in; you have to sit and wait.

Palm Desktop, meanwhile, still doesn't tie into any e-mail program's address book, forcing users to keep separate contacts lists.

If you run Windows and Microsoft's Outlook, the 700p can sync to that program instead-- but then you'll have to put up with Outlook's far greater complexity. And in that case, devices running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software (for instance, Palm's Treo 700w) provide a closer match with Outlook.