I’ve had the Treo 700w for a few days now and I thought I’d post my early impressions of the device. I typically write full reviews but this time around, I’ll probably post bits and pieces over time until I have something big to write about.  

The Order Process

When Palm and Verizon Wireless announced the availability of the new Treo 700w last week, I quickly ordered one through the Palm website for $399 (which included a two year agreement). It didn’t matter whether you ordered through Verizon Wireless or Palm – the price was the same. (On the initial announcement day, the Treo 700w was listed as $499 on the Verizon Wireless website with a 2 yr agreement – they have since lowered it to match Palm’s $399 promotion).

Over the next few days, I received nearly daily emails from Palm providing updates to the online order. The order process is somewhat lengthy mostly because Verizon Wireless puts you through a credit check before authorizing the new account. My order was also complicated by the fact that I was porting my phone number from Cingular Wireless over to Verizon. More on that later on.

The Drum Roll…. 

So the weekend came and went and finally on Tuesday morning, I received a package at work that came from Palm – it was my new Treo 700w. The packaging for the 700w was actually smaller than I had expected.

 

I sure didn’t waste any time attempting to set up the 700w. I opened up the box, installed the battery and turned on the phone. If you’re familiar with PocketPC devices, you’ll be familiar with the initial setup routine which forces the user to calibrate the touchscreen.

Here are pictures of the front and back of the Treo 700w. One of my coworkers had a Treo 650 which allowed me to compare the physical sizes of the two PDAs – I honestly could not tell if there was any form factor difference between the two handhelds.

From afar, the Treo 700 certainly does look like past Treos. The button layout is similar and the screen sizes are identical to the 650. However, upon closer inspection you’ll immediately notice some of the buttons have changed in terms of functionality – this is to be expected since it is running Windows Mobile and not the Palm OS.

The following are pictures of the front, top and bottom portions of the 700w including their functionality. The pictures came from Treo’s website page here.

One slight change to the buttons – they are more square now as opposed to the rounded ones in prior Treos. The buttons also are backlit the minute you start using them to type things out.

Here are pictures of the sides of the unit:

The GUI..

As you well know, Palm customized signifcant portions of the Windows Mobile GUI for their purposes. You’ll immediately see these changes right when you turn on the phone. As typical with all Windows Mobile devices, you’re presented with the Today screen – however, this is a slightly different today screen. The Today screen is typically a summary of calendar events, notes and items that are coming up within the next day or so. Palm added an text box field at the very top of the display which is used for looking up contacts or dialing numbers directly.

After the text box is a field specifically for speed dial buttons. If you have pictures associated to your contacts, the pictures can be displayed here also.

After the speed dial buttons, you’ll get the typical list of calendar items and to do items coming up.

 Finally, there’s a text box field specifically for searching keywords on the Internet using Google.

Unlike other Windows Mobile devices, there are no specific buttons to bring up the Calendar or Messaging applications. You can bring up the Calendar application through a combination of two buttons but it’s not a simple single button feature. If you’re used to that, then you might find the Treo somewhat annoying. Of course you can always reprogram your buttons if you really don’t like the way things work.

So how do you launch your applications? You get to them via the Start menu (which does have a button associated to it). Once you bring down the Start menu, you can use the navigation keys to select the application that you want to start up. Of course the Start menu can only show so many applications, so you’ll probably need to get into the Programs folder to see the rest.

There are several other enhancements that I can get into but I’ll stop for now since these are my initial impressions.

I would like to address the usability of the GUI though. If you’re used to the Palm UI, then switching to any Windows Mobile device is difficult. It is generally true that it takes more clicks or actions to perform tasks on a Windows Mobile GUI than it does on a Palm GUI. Having said that, if you are coming from an existing Windows Mobile device, then operating with the Treo 700w will be fairly easy for you. As I mentioned before, there are some subtle differences that may throw you for a loop – particularly with button layouts and how you navigate through applications. Overall, working with the Treo 700w is like working with any other Windows PDA – only better.

The changes that Palm made to the GUI are definitely commendable. The Today screen shows the most improvements which clearly show their emphasis on usability. Unfortunately the user experience does vary from screen to screen but that really can’t be helped. Interesting enough, I do prefer the regular Smartphone interface to the Windows Mobile OS as opposed to the Pocket PC interface which is what you really do see here on the Treo 700w. The Smartphone UI has several features that are designed for single action sequences. Oh well!

Applications

The Treo 700w ships with your standard array of Pocket Office applications including Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. There are other applets such as Tasks, Notes, and Messaging and really these all belong with Outlook in general.

You’ll also find Windows Media Player 10 and a Pictures and Video applet which manages your digital stills and video files captured from your camera.

The Network

I’ve been loving the network my friends – both voice and data. Let’s start with voice – reception is clear and constant. I haven’t witnessed any drop calls at all here in the Los Angeles area. Heck, I walked into an elevator and went up 12 floors and still was able to communicate on my phone. Nice job.

Now comes the data network and having EV-DO rocks. Browsing the net using the Pocket version of Internet Explorer is a breeze. I loaded up all of my favorite sites in a matter of no time. I suspect I’m not getting the full speeds that the network is capable of but that’s ok – it’s still way faster than my old Cingular data network.

Bluetooth

Here’s my early Bluetooth observations. I managed to pair my Motorola headset with the Treo 700w without a problem but I can’t do voice dialing.. I believe that’s the case with the 700w but I need to do more research.

How about ActiveSync over Bluetooth? No go for me. I’ve installed the Bluetooth plugin onto my home system which uses a Logitech diNovo setup and also on my Toshiba Qosmio laptop which includes an integrated Bluetooth receiver. No go for both setups. Again – this is something that I’ll have to do more research in but the Bluetooth issues are indeed annoying.

That’s it for now. I’ll be posting more over the next few days. There’s definitely a lot to write about so stay tuned! If you have the Bluetooth issues licked, please make sure to let me know.

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