dnhoshor's Full Review: Palm Treoâ„¢ 755p Smartphone
I bought the Palm Treo 755p from my cell service provider (Alltel) a month ago, and I've found it useful. I've used a Palm PDA from the first days of the Palm Pilot so I felt comfortable choosing the another device that uses the Palm Operating System. Add to this, the convenience of combining the functions of a cell phone, and you have a winner.
The Treo 755p is a solid feeling device, and actually feels a little heavy for it's size. It's small enough that I can easily put it in my shirt pocket. The square 320 x 320 pixel display is bright and easily read even in sunlight. Alltel uses CDMA technology, and the coverage in my area, northern Ohio, is very good. Calls sound good, and I have no problem with dropped calls. Like most cell phones these days, the Treo has a built-in speaker phone, selectable ringers and alert sounds. It's a good phone.
As a long time Palm user, I was very happy with their handwriting recognition system, Graffiti. To me it feels a little awkward using the small QWERTY keyboard, but I'm making the adjustment. The Treo still uses a touch sensitive screen, and comes with a stylus, but I have to switch between using the stylus and keyboard frequently. I would have been happy to stick with Graffiti, but new users will probably like the familiarity of the keyboard. To be honest, when I'm typing on the keyboard using my thumbs, I think I'm less likely to make input mistakes.
The Palm OS on the Treo 755p comes with a calendar application, a contact manager, a memo maker, and task manager programs that are simple but versatile. For business oriented users, there's a collection of viewer and editors in "Documents to Go" included so that you can use and even create Word, Excel, and Power Point documents. The programs all synchronize with your Windows or Mac computer so that your calendar and documents are available on your computer or your Treo. It's very handy. You can choose to use the Palm Desktop, or Microsoft Outlook to synchronize your documents.
Since the Treo is a data enabled cell phone, it has a bunch of applications that use these data services. There's an email application, an SMS message program, web browser, and a very cool application, Google Maps. The phone contains an EVDO broadband data modem, and I've been able to connect it to my laptop for high speed internet access where wi-fi isn't available. These applications and the cell phone, make for a pretty useful collection of tools in your pocket.
The Treo 755p also includes Bluetooth, so you can use wireless Bluetooth headsets, Bluetooth enabled GPS units, and probably a bunch of Bluetooth devices I haven't discovered yet.
If you get bored, you can listen to mp3's and take pictures with the camera. The Treo 755p uses Mini SD flash memory so you can store plenty of music and pictures. The Treo uses a 2.5 mm plug that is commonly used with telephone equipment, and comes with a fairly good pair of stereo headphones that have a built-in microphone for wired, but hands-free calls. The camera isn't great, and has no flash but will do in a pinch.
As an aside, the Palm OS has been around quite a long time and hasn't seen many changes in recent years, however it's simple, and pretty solid. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of third party applications available for the Treo.
The Palm smart phone has integrated Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and EV-DO support, and it adds an instant-messaging app, Google Maps for Mobile...More at eCOST.com
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