Palm Treo 750

By David Flynn, CNET.com.au on

Tags: windows, treo, telstra, qwerty, pda-phone, palm, next g, mobile phone

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1. Tony Smith16/10/2007, 03:57 PM

   rating 8/10

   Very good phone. Voice quality good. Easy to use. Good for business. Fits in your shirt pocket. Great for using as a blue tooth modem with my laptop.

   The good: As above

   The bad: Answer button sometimes slow or doesn't work first time

2. Marc Minor27/05/2008, 08:53 AM

   rating 1/10

   This wouls imply have to be the worst phone that I have used. At first I thought it was just me, until the company sales manager purchase one. after 1 week he is ready to throw it into the river.

   The good: Easy to navigate touch screen.
   Windows compatability. Diary Sinc.

   The bad: Slow to connect to incoming call.
   Phone turns off without notice.
   Will not always ring and vibrate for incoming call.
   Unreliable.

3. Justin03/09/2008, 03:55 PM

   rating 1/10

   I was recently issued a Palm Treo by the company that I work for. I would like to share some of my experiences with you.
   
   Initially, I was fairly impressed. It was nice to be able to get my email on my handheld, I had reservations %u2013 it%u2019s big, it%u2019s heavy, it%u2019s not as intuitive to use as a phone, but hey, the convenience of being able to access mail outweighed them by far. Over time however, the reservations began to outweigh the convenience, until eventually the Treo became an inconvenience, an annoyance, and a frustration. It reached the point where I told my boss that he could have the phone back, I%u2019d rather be unable to receive email on my handheld than have to deal with the moment by moment frustrations.
   
   I%u2019ll give you a quick rundown of some the problems:
   
   Initially, the interface is fairly consistent and familiar. It%u2019s Windows, after all, and I know where most things are. Hiding messaging in the start menu seems a little silly, but I could live with it. I figured out how to set up custom ring tones, and do most of the things I take for granted with a cell phone. Then I installed Good. Geez, what a mistake that was. I couldn%u2019t find anything anymore, Good had taken over. I tried for days to figure out how to set a custom ring tone, but eventually gave up when I realised that custom ring tones made the phone even slower to answer than normal. I%u2019ve given up on almost everything about the thing now, but I will try to cover as many of my unfortunate experiences as I can...
   
   I have to have the phone on silent. Permanently. Otherwise, by the time I hear or feel it start to ring the person on the other end is about to hang up or voicemail gets it. This situation is even worse with a custom tone. This is a completely unacceptable situation for a phone. My tiny little Nokia can ring straight away, it can play custom tones, also straight away. This so-called %u201CSmart Phone%u201D can%u2019t. Custom tones are not a luxury, they are a necessity - they let me know it is my phone ringing and not someone else%u2019s; they give me a hint who is calling and whether I have to answer it now or can call back later. It%u2019s the 21st century and this is basic functionality. I was going to send the phone back as faulty because it was so slow in starting to ring, but the person who sits next to me did a google and found that this is a known issue in the support web site, there is no permanent cure but I can reset the phone when it starts to happen (which doesn%u2019t help by the way) and if the problem persists I can do a hard reset. What an absolute joke. People who call me now routinely call me twice in a row because they know I can%u2019t get to the phone fast enough the first time.
   
   When I do eventually answer, it%u2019s a few seconds before the phone connects through, leaving myself and the person on the other end feeling like idiots saying %u201CHello? Hello?%u201D until the phone connects. Thanks for making a piece of equipment that makes me, my friends, and my business associates feel stupid, that is one of the things I put on the top of my list when I look for a phone.
   
   On those occasions when I do get the phone answered before voicemail takes it or they hang up, the sound quality is the worst I have ever experienced in a cell phone. The sound quality is absolutely atrocious through the handset and the hands free kits are worse, I%u2019ve had two different Palm hands free headsets and a Palm Bluetooth headset. Despite forking out good money after bad I can%u2019t use any of them, in every case I have had so many problems being understood by the people I am talking to I have had to just use the handset. I can%u2019t use the Treo on conference calls at all because it degrades the quality of the conference call for all of the other attendees.
   
   Phone reception is also hopeless. I lose signal on the Treo in places where my little Nokia has a great signal from the same provider, and my Nokia can pick up a signal in a couple of seconds when it loses it in a tunnel, but the Treo can take minutes, if it can re-establish a connection at all. I have to routinely turn the phone function off on the Treo before I enter the car park on my way home, otherwise it will lose reception underground, go into a panic and be unable to reconnect until I reset it. On numerous occasions the phone function has turned itself off, I assume this happens because it gets itself into such a frenzied state trying to re-establish a connection after being underground that the phone attempts honourable hari kiri, resulting in turning itself off.
   
   Initially I thought it was silly that the indicator light would flash to indicate no reception, but gave no indication of new messages, mail, missed calls, upcoming meetings etc, which would be very useful, leading to thoughts like, %u201COh, my phone is flashing, there is something important it is trying to tell me, I had better check.%u201D I mean, if I am in the country and have no reception, or I%u2019m in a tunnel, I pretty much know and expect the phone not to be working. Having said all this, I%u2019ve actually come to rely on the flashing indicator to inform me when the phone has decided to lose reception for no good reason, leading to me thinking to myself, %u201CHmmmm, stupid phone is having a panic attack again, I will have to reset it.%u201D
   
   The reminders just don%u2019t work. Like an idiot, when I first received the phone I used it as an alarm clock. It didn%u2019t go off at the time I set, and when I woke up on my own and looked at the phone to see the time, turning the phone on to illuminate the screen, the alarm went off. %u201CD%u2019oh,%u201D I thought to myself, %u201CI must have set the alarm wrong.%u201D As it turns out, the alarm was set correctly, but the Treo, once it goes into power save mode does not wake up for silly things like alarms, or reminders, it will wake up for email and phone calls, so if I happen to get an email or phone call within a few minutes of an alarm or meeting reminder it will buzz, but it won%u2019t buzz and remind me at the time it is supposed to. So I%u2019d like to know, who decided to build in an alarm clock that doesn%u2019t work? Who tested it? I suppose this is another known issue in the Treo KB, %u201CAlarm clock does not ring at specified time, workaround: check phone regularly to see if alarms are waiting.%u201D Yes, that%u2019s a brilliant piece of engineering.
   
   Similarly, when a song finishes in Media Player, it won%u2019t start the next song unless you turn the phone back on. I wish my IPod could do that, I hate how it plays one song right after the other without me having to press a button, do you suppose Apple gets a lot of complaints about that?
   
   I could go on for pages and pages with all of other issues, but I will cover a few highlights (lowlights?)...
   %u2022 On one occasion I sent an SMS message, and twenty minutes later I received a notification that the message could not be sent. I clicked resend it and it worked. Why was there a twenty minute delay? And if it was retrying for twenty minutes, why did it succeed immediately when I resent it manually? Simple answer, because the phone is broken.
   %u2022 It%u2019s slow. Excruciatingly slow. Slow to ring, slow to answer, slow to hang up, slow to start software, slow to make a connection.
   %u2022 The key lock is ridiculous. When the phone turns itself off and locks the keypad, I often find that when I turn it back on it immediately relocks itself, turns off, and then turns back on, but still locked.
   %u2022 When it goes into the Good security lock mode I often find that it makes phone calls from within my pocket because it seems that when the security lock kicks in, the keyboard unlocks itself to make phone calls. The whole point of a keylock is to prevent accidental phone calls isn%u2019t it? I guess not.
   %u2022 In some places I press and hold a key to get a capital letter, and in others doing that results in the key repeating. A little consistency would be nice.
   
   My new Blackberry should be delivered soon, and I can%u2019t wait. I will greatly enjoy throwing the Treo in the bin and jumping up and down on it, squirting it with gas and setting it ablaze. Oh, that reminds me of a good thing about the Treo, it%u2019s tough. It%u2019s driven me to a rage on no few occasions and despite my bashing it against walls it goes right on working. I guess that%u2019s because of the really old super tough technology it%u2019s built with. The downside, of course, is that it%u2019s heavy, and huge.
   
   Overall, there is nothing Smart or Good about this phone. It starts off dumb and bad, and installing Goodlink makes it worse. I%u2019ll be sending this message to as many review sites as I can find in the hopes that no one else, ever, has to go through all of the pain and frustration that I have gone through.
   

   The good: None

   The bad: Everything

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