To appreiciate the Handspring Treo 600, one must be in need of a cell phone AND a Palm PDA. It also helps if you had experience with a Palm before. Both of which describes me best.

I hated having to carry a Palm IIIxe with my Nokia 3390. I usually end up only carrying my cell with me, while leaving the PDA behind (either in the car or at home). This makes the PDA pretty useless for reminding me of appointments. The Nokia was hard to enter data for daily use as a PDA (it had a Calendar function).

Also, having a bad memory doesn't help situations either. With a cell phone in one hand, I usually tend to live a simple and forgetful life. I decided early on I wanted a PDA phone, but just entered a contract with T-Mobile. I didn't like their service (no free nights, just weekends - data service is not unlimited), and decided to switch to Sprint. I've been eyeing the Treo 600 and Sprint for a long time now, and wished that Sprint was a GSM carrier instead of CDMA, as it would have been nice to have a unlocked (and universal) Treo 600. Unfortunately, that is not the case, so the CDMA Treo was the only way to go.

Signing Up
Working at Best Buy has it's perks. I got the phone discounted (reg price $599, $425 discounted). However, I learned later that I was also eligible for 15% off the service, too! I used the number portablility that I heard so much press about. I was getting ready for the worst. However, it went almost flawlessly. It turned out that it was the phone that wasn't programmed correctly (which I had to do it myself). It was all rosey on Sprint's side.

So far, the Sprint service was pretty good. I'm not sure if it was the the phone or service, but early into the service, I was having problems with callers not reaching me (phone not ringing), so they kept going straight to voice mail. So far so good, now. The plan I have selected was 300 mintues, free nights and weekend, and 2 months free PCS Vision (Sprint's data plan, or internet, pretty much). I plan on keeping PCS Vision, which costs $15/mo, while my puny 300 minutes plan was $35 (finally free nights AND weekends!). I also paid an extra $4/mo to cover my very expensive ($425) Treo 600.

Handspring Treo 600: You paid WHAT!?
I was contemplating on both, but decided on the Treo because the i500 did not have a SD card slot, nor a camera. Both costed the same. The Samsung has two things going for it: it didn't look dorky (looked like a regular flip fone), and it was slightly smaller than the Treo (when the phone is closed up). It does not have a speaker phone, either, so there was no audio system for MP3 playback.

The technical aspects of the Treo may not be as impressive as stand-alone Palms at the same price: a 144 Mhz CPU with 32 MB of built-in memory (about 24 MB usable). The SD Card slot is also an SDIO slot as well (however, most users report that it does not have enough electrical power to power a WiFi or Bluetooth card). The 160x160 screen resolution doesn't help either. However, once you start it up and start using it in your daily life, you'd forget all the tech specs and just gawk at the ease of use.

The Handspring Treo 600 is one of the most easiest to use PDA phones, and one of the smaller ones (Samsung i500 being the smallest). If you have used a Palm Pilot, or the PalmOS before, then you will instantly fall in love with the Treo. No longer do I have to carry BOTH phone and PDA. The SD Card slot helped in adding programs without needing to sync (just copy the .prc files over to the card using a card reader). The screen is in color (I got used to the B&W screen on the Palm IIIxe). There is a camera! And, with a program called pTunes, I was able to play MP3 and OGG files! I didn't even expect it to play MP3s, and was giddy when I first heard "Nine Inch Nails - Closer" over the small speaker. Yes, it's in mono, but the phone supports stereo playback via headphones (you need a 2.5" to 3.5" minijack converter, however).

The formfactor makes it hard to find a case for it, AND hard to find a good way to carry it with me daily. I bought a Sedio plastic holster that holds on to the sides of the Treo where there are small indentations. Acording to reviews in TreoCentral.com, it was suppose to hold up very well. However, the phone can rotate upside down and eventually slip off. It happened during a bowling game, where the Treo slip 'n slided through the oiled lane, got pushed into the gutter by the bowling ball, and stopped near the end of the lane! Twice it fell onto the concrete floor of sidewalks, where I also lost my PNY 256 MB SD Card.

Despite that the SD Card slips and gets "locked in" with spring-loaded action, you can still pull it out with your finger nails or a small flathead screwdriver. That also means that it will pop out when your phone falls. I found that you may need to Scotch tape the card in if you want it in there permanently. It's also easy to pop the card out trying to get the phone out of the holster, or if you just grab the phone, as the SD Card protrudes just a bit - enough for you to de-activiate the spring load, poping the card out. The place holder SD Card is flush in with the phone's body. So only 2 solutions have come up: shave the SD Card to conform to the phone's body, or use Scotch tape to secure the card. This is a pretty bad design flaw for a $600 device.

The 5-way navigation directional buttons was hearld as the best alternative to the stylus. However, I find it hard to depress the center button. The "down" button is also hard to activate, since it may hit "left" or "right" as well. This inaccuracy can cause problems when you quickly navigate to where you THINK you are, and hit the center button to activate the selected item.

As well praised the domed keyboard was, I found it a bit mixed. Although it's quicker and easier to use than I thought, it is not the same as a well-trained Grafitii stylus user. If you, too, are used to the writing pad, stylus, and Grafitii, then the Treo 600 may be awkward to use for a while. However, once you get past this, you are able to do most of the navigation and use of the Palm OS without the stylus. What little buttons you have to hit on screen can be done with your finger or finger nail. Also, it's pretty hard to type if you have finger nails. Time to trim your nails!

The color screen is absolutely perfect, despite the low 160x160 resolution. It is bright enough to be used in the sun (at the brightest setting), and can be lowered so you can read the screen at night. However, you have to go thru the hassle of going thru Pref to change your settings. Extra steps! Even at it's lowest brightness setting, it can light up a small room, and can be used as a flashlight. Most color screen phones can, nowadays. Don't try this at home, kids, but using the Best Buy display, I tried to see if the screen is prone to breaking (we can alway replace the display - large corps have their ways!)... I pushed down as hard as I could, but all I got was a distorted screen for about 5 seconds! No damage. I decided that maybe if I use the stylus and poke at it REAL hard... same results! I don't recommend doing it to your own, but at least you'll know that it'll be okay if you accidently sat on the screen, or had your keys jammed into the screen while it was in your pocket.

The speaker phone is pretty loud, but can rattle at it's highest setting. I find that two notches down from the highest gives the best results. This problem also persist when listening to MP3s (Pocket Tunes required to play MP3s and OGGs). Having the speaker on the back is a very odd design, however. Think about it... you are looking at the screen, and the speaker is AWAY from your ears! Same when you listen to MP3s and work on your calendar. And if you put it on a table, you'd probably most likely put it with the screen facing up - covering the speaker! There were some users who report that the speaker would distort even worse over time, and eventually stop working. It is not hard-wired onto the PCB (printed circuit board). It is only using spring-loaded contacts to connect the speaker to the PCB - which means that if the contact is not very good (and over time, it would deteriorate), your SOL. Vibration is the suspected cause of this potential problem. I have yet to experience this problem, but then again, I only had it for about a month. One user actually soldered a small length of wire from the speaker contacts to the PCB contacts to fix this problem for good.

The camera can only take pictures with it's highest resolution at 640x480, and does not take very good pictures. It's still pretty good for a quickie, but don't expect any details to show through. The pictures it takes are spotty at best (literally!). There are lots of blue dots all over the picture if lighting is not good (or the camera is in the middle of changing white balance). Other times, it can take real good pictures when there is enough light. When I say "real good", I mean as good as a web cam! In all seriousness, the pictures resembles that of a snapshot from an inexpensive web cam you find at Wal-Mart. You can save it to your phone or to the SD Card. You MUST save the picture to the phone if you plan on emailing it or sending it via PCS Picture Messenging, because it cannot send it if the picture is on the SD Card.

Using the Phone
The phone application is very well designed, with options tucked away in the menu system - just like a typical Palm application. You can set the ringer tones (midi files), volume of the ringer, etc. You can only access your Contacts here. There is no seperate app or button on the device to go directly to your Contact list. Hitting the Center button on the main screen will provide you with a list of previous calls you made, as well as the Call Log. The Call Log is pretty much the same call log you'd find in a typical cell phone.

The 5-way navigational button helps here. It's labeled on the screen which button will do what function, but to do a quick run down - "Left" goes into the Web, "Right" goes into Pictures (lets you take snapshots), "Up" goes to your Favorites, and "Down" goes to your Contact List.

All of them are pretty much self explainatory except for "Favorites". No, it's not your Favorite web sites (ala Internet Explorer). Since you will be spending most of your time in this app (and not on the app selector in Palm), the Favorites give you a place to easily access your programs within the app (and so no need to hit the "home" button). Consequently, the "home" button is hard to reach now, as it is not one of the four main buttons, nor is it available on it's traditional location - the Grafitii pad. Because there is no pad! So it is moved to the bottom-right of the keyboard, which is hard to get to when you are holding it one hand. Trying using your thumb and your phone will fall, because you will have no leverage to hold the phone in place. The Favorites will allow you to create shortcuts to the programs (such as Calendar, PocketTunes, your favorite games, URLs to web sites, etc).

Once you are talking to someone, you can switch back and foward to the speaker phone or to the regular speaker that requires you to hold your ears up to it. I find it weird to do this, as I keep missing the speaker to my ears - and the speaker MUST be by your ears to hear, or you'll hear NOTHING! The button to switch modes is on the screen. The interface is very intuitive. You can use the screen to dial the buttons (since the number pad is on screen), or you can use the buttons on the keyboard.

Using the Web
With Sprint PCS Vision, you can access the web without a hitch. The Blaze browswer is amazingly easy to use. You can enter URLs and have it display it via wrap-around ("Optimized Mode"), or in "Wide Mode", where it would appear like it would on your home PC, so you have to scroll around to read the entire page. I find that you may have to switch between the modes for different sites. Most sites can be easily read and navigated using the Optimized Mode. If you can get away with this mode, GREAT, because it would mean you won't have to worry about scrolling left or right - just up and down. However, in Wide Mode, you will be scrolling MUCH MUCH more!

You can bookmark sites just like you can in Internet Explorer. And if you click on extentions that either end in .prc or .mid, Blaze will automatically download it and ask you if you want to "install" or "copy" it. Other extentions, it would refuse to download because there is no viewer for it. So if you have Pocket Tunes installed, MP3s and OGG files can be downloaded, too!

When you first connect, it will sign on Sprint PCS. It takes a while to connect, but if you keep the connection active, it will not disconnect, and you won't have to sign on again - even if you exit the browser! You can tell if you are connected by the green arrows by the signal bars. You can still get calls when you are connected to the net, but you must NOT be transfering any data. If someone happens to call you when you are sending or receiving data, they get booted into your voice mailbox. So if you are streaming from Shoutcast, expect your phone to buzz to warn you that you have voice mail (which you can still recieve when your data exchange is active).

Once you get into Blaze, you will start out at Sprint's "Vision Home" page, where you can access Messagging (AIM and Yahoo), Downloads (ring tones, screen savers, etc), News, Weather, Sports, Entertainment (you can look up movie times), MOney, Find it (search engines, such as Google), Portals, and My Account (minutes used, plan info, etc). Of course, it's a good idea to keep this as your home page because it's mostly text, so it is quick to load. Plus, it has links to most of the places you wan to go anyways! In other words, it acts like a WAP enabled phone (even though this is full-on web site that you can access on a PC, too).

Web access is quick - downloads (at my guess) were at about 80 kbps, faster than a speeding 56k modem! I was able to stream a shoutcast station (online radio stream) using Pocket Tunes and, for the most part, it was skip-free! The stream was at 64 kbps! It did not fare well at 112 or 128 kbps, however. You don't have to stick with the built-in Blaze browswer to access the web. The very popular AvantGo works just as well! AvantGo actually started out as a way to download web site content that you subscribed on your PC, then when you sync your PDA, it would be transfered to your PDA. You get the latest news and content, provided that your PC is connected to the net, and you sync your PDA. But this means that your content is offline. The AvantGo software now allows PDAs with access to the net to download content using the PDA's own abilities, without needing to sync. It also allows you to browse traditional sites that you can browse on a typical PC as well.

Other applications (such as a POP mail app) can be used to do great things once you are connected! A POP mail app, a Shoutcast streaming player (Pocket Tunes), internet-enabled Palm games, chat, IM, etc.

The Camera
Not much can be said about it, really. The little quip I made about it earlier pretty much sums it up! No extra options - just sending it via SMS/email (costs extra with Sprint). I did not use it because I don't have it on my plan. However, it DOES save it as jpg files on the SD Card, and follows the same directory format as a typical digital camera (DCIM). That means you can also stick the card in a pritner with a card reader and print it directly from the card as usual.

Overall
It does a whole lot! If you know how versatile a Palm is, just think about what potential you can hold in your hand! And being a phone as well, you will always have it with you. The only thing better would be a Linux-based phone/PDA (like the Sharp Zarus PDAs).

It certainly has flaws, and not perfect, but it has fixed alot of earlier shortcommings. I recommend it to people who own a Palm and a cell phone, and looking to get rid of one more device to carry.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 425
Recommended for: Business Executives - Powerful and Professional