Palm Treo 650 (Cingular) Cell Phone

Feature rich, but spotty phone implementation

By Timothy  May 4, 2006 | 33 out of 37 found this Palm Treo 650 (Cingular) review helpful

Pros: Excellent Exchange Server integration, brilliant screen, lots of features, lots of 3rd party apps

Cons: OS not stable compared to Blackberry. Form factor makes typing more difficult. Phone coverage inconsistent...at best

I am a SF Bay Area native, have lived and worked in the East Bay for decades. I am a Blackberry user for several generations, and have subscribed to all of the major cell phone providers at one time or another. Was given this Cingular Treo 650 by... employer, and was greatly looking forward to using for the sake of free (to me) phone usage. I like the thinner form factor vs. the Nextel Blackberry 7510 I also own. It rides smaller on the belt, fits nicer into a coat pocket. The backlit color screen is far more brilliant and attractive than the BB as well. Working in low light is much easier. The included calculator supports financial (i.e., HP10c) functions out of the box, another plus. Most importantly, integration with MS Exchange Server is very good and feature rich (w/o requiring a separate BB server). QWERTY keyboard implementation, however, is really substandard compared to the Blackberry. The thinner form factor means thumb-typing is not nearly as intuitive as the BB, and shortcuts, auto-text, auto-cap and other features I'd gotten used to on the BB have no equivalent on the Treo. Also, reliability is wanting. There's a reason the Palm device has a "reset" hole under the battery cover - and the BB doesn't. I've lost count of how many times a day I have to reset the Treo...and the BB has never, never, ever, ever crashed after several years, OS upgrades and dropping it on the pavement during a hard bike ride. But most importantly, phone coverage is very poor...which degrades both connectivity with Exchange (to sync the phone with email) as well as basic phone coverage. I really tried to like the unit for the better part of a month...after all, what part of FREE PHONE SERVICE doesn't anyone understand? But after chronic failures to sync with Exchange (typically, requires so many multiple attempts, I cannot rely upon the Treo to accurately reflect the timing of email), daily resets, often after failed attempts to sync with email, and most importantly, habitually dropping phone coverage in the middle of important calls with clients (where the Blackberry maintains perfect coverage and sound quality), I've had to kick it to the curb. I realize this may have to do with geography, my drive corridor, and all the other caveats. But I'm back using the Nextel Blackberry, despite having to pay for it myself. Why? 1) It doesn't drop phone coverage 2) Email reception is immediate To summarize - Bottom line is I can rely upon the Blackberry as a business tool. This Treo is a fancy toy by comparison. Read more Less