Smartphone Challengers Fail to Displace the Treo 650

By Rob Pegoraro
Sunday, June 4, 2006

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.

On a Mac, Palm Desktop is even more useless -- Mac OS X includes good address-book and calendar software, but Palm's software doesn't talk to those applications at all. Apple's free iSync software allows only limited synchronization to OS X's Address Book and iCal; Mark/Space's Missing Sync software works far better but costs $40.

Motorola's Q, unlike the 700p, isn't about to confused with any earlier models. It's just half an inch thick and weighs a tad over four ounces, with a color screen bigger than, though not as sharp as, the 700p's. It's the sleekest, lightest smartphone I've ever used; a Treo looks distinctly plump next to it.

Other smartphones also look pricey next to the Q: Verizon sells it for just $200 with a two-year contract, even if its required voice-and-data plans start at $80 a month.

The Q connects to Verizon's EV-DO data service and includes Bluetooth wireless for linking to nearby devices; Verizon says a software update later this year will allow the use of the Q as an external modem.

As a pocket-sized phone, Web browser, e-mail reader, camera, address book and calendar -- all the basic functions of a smartphone -- the Q worked quite well. (The Q's included, Windows-only ActiveSync software synchronizes it with Microsoft Outlook; if you don't own a copy, the ActiveSync CD includes Outlook 2002, not the current Outlook 2003.)

The Q's talk time on battery wasn't as long as the 700p's -- 3 hours and 41 minutes versus 4 hours and 12 minutes -- but was still perfectly acceptable.

For anything more than basic use, however, the Q ranks as a disappointment.

First, the Q's limited, phone-oriented edition of Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5 operating system doesn't allow for touch-screen control. You can only operate this device with its keyboard (marred by a backspace key inexplicably exiled above the rest of the keys), a five-way controller below the screen and a jog-dial switch on the right. That bogs down your Web browsing, since you can't just tap the link you want and instead must tip-toe toward it by pressing buttons or flicking the jog dial.

Second, the Q ships without any way to jot down your own thoughts. There isn't even a notepad here, much less the miniaturized versions of Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint available on regular Windows Mobile devices. And because the Q can only run programs designed for the phone edition of Windows Mobile, you're going to have a hard time finding third-party replacements for those applications.

Motorola or Verizon could add a note-taking program with a software update. Ideally, that update would also silence this device's loud start-up theme and could lock its keys automatically after a set amount of idle time, instead of asking users to invoke the Q's key-lock function on their own.

That could very well happen -- the odds of it certainly seem better than the chances of Palm providing a meaningful improvement to its software.

In the meantime, there's still the proven, widely available Treo 650.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.