Bringing the Palm OS back to the top of the Treo ranks, the Treo 755p surfs Sprint's EV-DO network and features some improvements to the Palm OS. We compare the new Palm to our favorite smartphone, the Treo 700p.
I wouldn’t recommend Palm Treo 700p owners drop their devices and run out to buy this phone, unless you have that kind of budget, but I would highly recommend this phone to anyone who has considered buying a Palm OS phone. An underrated OS that remains simple and straightforwared, Palm didn't have to improve much to stay ahead of Windows Mobile, as WM6 is still playing catch-up to many features the Palm has had for months. Still, heavy competition looms, and we wonder if the lack of media features and GPS will keep this phone from being a contender. With fast networking and superior messaging, Palm has a lot to offer. Since we already own a Treo, though, we're more interested to see what they come up with next. Release: May 2007. Price: $300.
Pros: Excellent call quality. Slick update to the Treo look. Easy-to-use Palm interface. Quick networking speeds. Best-in-class messaging options and handling.
Cons: Still have to pay extra for features that should be included, like voice commands and WMA playback. Palm interface showing its age. No GPS.
Poor
Mediocre
56% GOOD
Very good
Excellent
Full review of the Palm Treo 755p:
We haven't had our hands on the Palm Treo 755p very long, but we're intimately familiar with the Palm OS, since the Treo 700p is one of the phones we own and keep around for comparison testing. Therefore, when we heard about the 755p, we were most interested in improvements to the OS, though we couldn't help but find the sleeker, antenna-less shell, in soft-touch crimson paint, enticing.
Design – Very Good
It's pretty. It's also thick and bulky, and the keys are a little too small, but we really like the paint job. It basically feels like the Treo 680, which fit the hand a bit better than our older 700p. The antenna is also gone. But there are no real design improvements. There is no scroll wheel, or trackball for faster navigation. The 320 by 320 inch display has always been a bit better than QVGA, but Windows Mobile 6 promises some really high resolution screens.
Palm's OS is as easy to use as ever, and is basically unchanged from the version on our Treo 700p. Icons are clean and direct, and there is little graphical flourish, but the Spartan interface keeps the phone moving from application to application at a happy clip. Overall, the phone's new design may please current Treo owners most, since it is basically the most sleek Treo yet, but there are some slim business phones on the market, and the Treo is still one of the thickest of the bunch.
Calling – Very good
The Treo 755p makes calls that sound as good as any phone we've heard. When speaking to a good land line phone, calls sounded perfect. While the dialing pad is still too small for our tastes, unchanged from our older 700p, the new shape of the phone is a bit easier to hold during conversations. The phone still includes all of our favorite calling features, including Bluetooth, a speakerphone, conference calling, and speaker-independent voice-dialing, but there are a few caveats. First, the neat new icon-based conference calling features we saw on last year's Treo 680 on AT&T didn't make the cut for the 755p. We're guessing that may be due to the different ways CDMA and GSM networks handle conference calls. Second, we're still disappointed that Palm makes you buy speaker-independent voice dialing as a third-party software app. Palm needs to buy a company that makes one of these products and offer it for free, as Windows Mobile has far surpassed Palm in on-board voice controls out of the box. Palm's contact list remains best-in-class, with live, while-you-type searching available from pretty much everywhere.
Messaging – Very good
Long our favorite aspect of the Treo, the 755p's messaging capabilities are even better than the 700p's. Finally, the Treo gets its own IM client, with preloaded settings for Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, and the ability to have conversations on each network at once, using a tabbed interface. VersaMail is still a great e-mail client, handling our Exchange accounts through ActiveSync as well as POP3 and IMAP4. We've recently switched to Good for Push e-mail, and the Palm comes with a Good link on the main Applications page. The Palm OS also retains some of its innovative features from the 700p, including SMS messaging options when you ignore an incoming call, and threaded SMS messaging, both of which will be emulated in upcoming versions of Windows Mobile. And finally, we like that everywhere you can send a message, you also get live, while-you-type searching from your address book, which cuts down on menu digging by a few steps.
Productivity – Very good
The Palm Treo 755p is just as good a productivity tool as the 700p, simply because little has changed. The calendar, to-do list, and office document handlers are all pretty much the same, if not incremental updates. We're a bit disappointed, we've seen some interesting innovation in document readers from Picsel, and we'd like to see a graphical update to the calendar. Still, Documents To Go is an able document editor, capable of performing real editing tasks, just like Windows Office Mobile. The scheduling app isn't as in tune with Outlook as it could be, but we're using Good Mobile right now anyway, which has a style all its own.
Multimedia – Good
Perhaps Palm is aiming this phone squarely at the business crowd, or simply at squares, but it could use some multimedia support. Oh, we know, Sprint TV is on there, which is to say you'll get a large collection of 30-second clips, and they look very good on the phone, which handles streaming media smoothly. Still, the square screen wreaks havoc on aspect ratios, requiring letterboxes of just about every video. The phone also lacks any real advanced multimedia features, like a compelling media player, or A2DP support. You can play MP3 files out of the box, but for WMA files you have to pay to expand the capabilities of the player. Blazer is still the browser of choice, and it works just fine, handling complicated and image-laden pages like our infoSync World homepage without a sweat.
Laptop sidekick – Very good
It isn't the fastest tethered modem we've used, but when we tied the Treo 755p to our Dell D420 laptop we got Megabit download speeds consistently. The phone uses a proprietary connector, similar to other Treo devices, but still charges via USB, so you can leave a cable at home. You could probably leave your laptop at home, as well, but if you tote it along the Treo provides good network connectivity. We don't miss the lack of Wi-Fi on this phone because we were so impressed with the networking speeds that we didn't need a more direct internet connection.
Odds and ends
So, the big question is what's missing. Besides the better conference calling from the Treo 680, we're disappointed that the Treo lacks a built-in GPS sensor. Google Maps might cut it for other companies, but what's Palm's excuse, that they were trying to save space? Hardly. The lack of better multimedia functions wouldn't bother us if this phone wasn't among the priciest on Sprint's lineup, and it certainly outclasses many less expensive competitors, but a top-of-the-line phone should pack some advanced media capabilities. Instead of competing with Windows Mobile, we'd like to see Palm take some cues from Nokia's N-series phones about what a high-end phone can be. Oh well, at least Palm has Slingbox.
Price and availability
The Palm Treo 755p is available from Sprint for $300 with a contract. A mail-in rebate of $100 is available, when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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