Palm's Treo Pro Ready for Business
Gary Krakow
08/27/08 - 12:24 PM EDT
Back when
Apple's (AAPL Quote) iPhone and most other modern-day cellular devices were merely a gleam in their designers' eyes, a company called Handspring melded its PDA technology with a cell phone to create the Treo. They called it a smartphone because of all the smart things it could do.
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Handspring is no more; the company, started by the founders of
Palm (PALM Quote), was eventually sold to Palm. The Treo, however, lives on. It has since slowly evolved into the new Treo Pro.
Taking cues from its wildly successful small Centro phone, Palm's shiny black Treo Pro is slimmer and sleeker than its predecessors but loaded with nearly every modern-day smartphone feature you could think of.
Palm Gets Down to Business With Treo Pro |
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The phone seems to be sculpted from the now ubiquitous Centro/Treo form factor, but it's larger than the Centro at 4.69 ounces and with dimensions of 2.36" wide by 4.49" long and 0.53" deep. However, because the Treo Pro's beautiful 320x320-pixel thin film transistor (TFT) screen (a type of LCD display) is flush with the case, it's not as large as it may appear.
Treo Pro is a quad-band GSM world phone that uses tri-band UMTS/HSDPA cellular technology. It should work everywhere on the planet where there's a signal. It's got 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS built inside. That's a lot of radio receivers in a small package.
The device also contains a 2-megapixel camera (stills and video), a microSDHC memory card slot, a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack and a tiny microUSB sync/charging port. I prefer the larger miniUSB connectors -- but I understand these new little ones take up less real estate on small, portable devices. MicroUSBs are rapidly becoming the industry standard. The removable, rechargeable battery pack is said to be good for up to five hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby.
The Treo Pro runs on
Microsoft's (MSFT Quote) Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition operating system, which gives it mobile versions of Microsoft Office programs such as Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Internet Explorer is also included as well as software for handling PDF and ZIP files as well as email accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.
Like Treos before it, the Pro has both a touchscreen and a full QWERTY keyboard. A clever Wi-Fi button on the side allows the user to turn that feature on or off instantly -- a nice power-saving idea. Palm also has added its own little touches to Windows Mobile -- such as the Google Search option on the phone's Start screen.
In the U.S., Palm's Treo Pro will be sold as an unlocked phone. That means it can be bought from Palm retailers but not one of the four large U.S. cellular providers. Because it's a GSM phone, it won't work on the
Verizon (VZ Quote) or
Sprint (S Quote) networks.
The Treo Pro will work on T-Mobile's 2.5G network but not its new 3G network (because they use different frequencies). The upcoming HTC/Google/Android handset will be T-Mobile's first big 3G smartphone.
The Pro will also work on
AT&T's (T Quote) 3G HSDPA system -- but AT&T won't be marketing this phone. The iPhone takes up a lot of AT&T's retail resources and time.
I've been using the Treo Pro on AT&T's 3G network and can tell you that it is extremely fast. When it's turned on, the phone quickly ramps up speed through EDGE, then UMTS then HSDPA. Email and messaging also prove nearly instantaneous. Streaming audio and video via the phone's Windows Mobile player is excellent.
Palm's new Treo Pro will be available from
Vodafone (VOD Quote) and O2 in Europe, Telstra in Australia and in an unlocked version through the Palm online store as well as select Internet, retail and enterprise resellers for $549. Add your own SIM card, and you're on your way.
Overall, the Treo Pro is a winner. Despite the fact that neither AT&T nor T-Mobile picked up the Pro for retail sale, it's a terrific smartphone and a great choice for business users.
