Does Sprint's new Treo Pro finally get Windows Mobile right, or should fans wait for the next big thing? Find out in our Palm Treo Pro review.
Review summary of the Palm Treo Pro (Sprint):
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_it00.jpg) With the Palm Treo Pro, Palm has created a competent piece of Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional hardware, but we're less enthusiastic about WinMo 6.1 every day. The Palm Treo Pro on Sprint seems an anathema to the ease of use and simplicity that Palm has always championed. Where Sprint got involved, adding trial programs and bloat by the handful, things are confused and redundant. Where Microsoft took over, with the underwhelming Internet Explorer 6 and the Windows Mobile interface, the phone is unreliable and sluggish. It wasn't all bad. The phone looks great from the outside, and we enjoyed the fast networking speeds and GPS performance. For pure business purposes, Windows Mobile is still tops for scheduling and productivity. That said, even Microsoft acknowledges that Windows Mobile 6.1 is behind the times, and if the Palm Treo Pro was the last Windows Mobile phone Palm produced, we would be satisfied closing the door on this chapter in the company's history. Release: March 2009. Price: $200.
Pros: Nice, sleek design. Fast network speeds.
Cons: Lousy interface. Poor call quality and calling features. Confusing mish-mash of additional, third party apps hurts almost every feature. Internet Explorer 6 doesn't live up to expectations.
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Full Palm Treo Pro (Sprint) Review:
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Design - Good
As we said when we reviewed the unlocked version of the Palm Treo Pro, the phone looks like a Palm Centro that grew up and got a real job. From the outside, it's a sleek black pill, a nice departure from the thick and chunky older Palm Treos. The keys seem a bit smaller than they did on the older device, but the phone is so sleek and glossy, it would be a pleasure to produce for spectators at a business meeting. It's a much cooler looking phone than Sprint's BlackBerry lineup, with a more sleek appearance than the popular RIM BlackBerry Curve 8330, it's closest competitor on the carrier.
The Palm Treo Pro uses Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, but unlike HTC and Samsung, Palm has not made any changes to the OS in order to support finger-touch. We suspect that Palm has been focusing its efforts on making an entirely new Linux-based OS called WebOS that supports finger-touch, which will make its debut on the Palm Pre for Sprint in the first half of this year.
On the Palm Treo Pro, there are shortcuts for the dated looking calendar app and mobile Outlook e-mail app, but that's about it. There is a Wi-Fi button on the side, and you better find it immediately because you'll be pressing it often. To save battery life, the Palm Treo Pro simply turns off Wi-Fi when it isn't in use. Thankfully, the Palm Treo Pro uses standardized microUSB and 3.5mm headphone ports.
Calling - Good
Calls made on the Palm Treo Pro suffered a bit, possibly due to the poor reception we got in our area. We had absolutely no bars of Sprint service on the Treo Pro, hovering just a hair above roaming. The Treo still managed to connect just about every call we made, and the data network never failed us, so this wasn't too much of a problem. Calls had a bit of static on both ends, and could sound a bit fuzzy at times. This was disappointing, because usually we use Palm Treo devices as a benchmark for audio quality. Certainly the Palm Treo Pro didn't live up to the good experience we had making calls on the Palm Treo 800w. Battery life was pretty good though. We managed a call that lasted more than 6 hours, which exceeds the 5 hours Palm promises.
Windows Mobile has a good address book, so we had no complaints there, except that we wish it looked much prettier. Still, it was easy to find contacts by typing names directly into the Today screen. The Treo Pro started searching as soon as we started to spell them out. We'd like a more visual contact list, though. We're fans of the 'Brady Bunch' grid style of contact page, where all the faces are tappable speed dial shortcuts.
For calling features, the Palm Treo Pro on Sprint was a surprising disappointment. Speaker-independent voice dialing is present, but we had a frightening experience with Microsoft's Voice Commands app. When we tried to voice dial a number starting with 917, the Treo Pro tried to connect us to 911 emergency services instead! This happened every time we tried to voice dial a 917 number. Then, the sluggish Treo Pro barely let us end the outgoing 911 call in time to avoid serious trouble.
Conference calling is strangely absent from this phone, we couldn't find it under any menu or key shortcut, and there is no mention in the user manual. The speakerphone was adequate, and the speaker is well placed near the side of the device so you can talk with the phone in a supine position on a table.
Messaging - Good
Another great Palm innovation that made its way to the Palm Treo Pro is threaded SMS messaging. Text messages line up to form a conversation, just like an instant message chat. For instant messaging, there are 3 separate IM clients. One for MSN Messenger, one for Windows Live (isn't that the same thing?), and one aging client from OZ that includes MSN (again), AOL and Yahoo. Perhaps instead of 3 options to connect to a Microsoft service, we could have a Facebook or Twitter client instead?
The keyboard on the Palm Treo Pro seems uninspired. We liked the bubbly shape of the keys, but they lacked the rubberized grip we enjoy on our Palm Centro. The keyboard overall felt a bit small for our taste, and we often made some simple mistakes. Mostly, we missed the "V" and "B" keys and hit the space bar instead.
Web browsing - Good
Much ado has been made about the inclusion of the new Internet Explorer Mobile 6 on the Palm Treo Pro, but the browser left us unimpressed on this device. It loaded pages that looked very good, and were usually accurate. Once we figured out how to switch to Desktop Computer mode, even complicated pages like CNN and the NYTimes homepage were rendered nicely.
The problem was actually navigating those pages. There is a basic navigation pane that opens up when you zoom out, but the Palm Treo Pro clearly had trouble handling the load here as well as when scrolling. The browser also lacked the zoom functionality of the T-Mobile G1 Android browser, or the mini map on Nokia's Nseries Web browser.
Since IE Mobile 6 also supports Flash Lite 3, we hit up YouTube to check out some videos. Unfortunately, we didn't have any luck here, as the browser window froze every time we tried loading a video.
Scheduling and Productivity – Very Good
For scheduling, Windows Mobile is a very capable business smartphone OS, especially since we use an Exchange server for our corporate e-mail and calendar. The Palm Treo Pro did a fine job synchronizing with our calendar app and scheduling new appointments, though this is one area where some innovation in the OS, at least in the Today screen, would have made the calendar and tasks list easier to read at a glance. For productivity, the phone gets the standard Office Mobile suite. This is probably more than enough for most users, and we had no trouble viewing and creating Word and Excel documents, and even running through some PowerPoint slides on the device.
Beyond the basic Office Mobile apps, the Treo Pro on Sprint comes loaded with trial versions of some other productivity apps. The Worldmate app led to a Web link, but the app never installed, and seemed to disappear after it downloaded. The Wall Street Journal app was actually a link to a trial subscription on Audible.com, and the programs are playable through the trial version of the Kinoma Play software. Adding the full versions of these apps and services might have added value to this phone. The trial versions? Not so much.
Multimedia - Mediocre
Though we'd like to give Sprint some kudos for going beyond the basic Windows Media Player on the Palm Treo Pro, in practice the multimedia experience was a confusing mess. The phone comes with Kinoma Freeplay, a trial version of the Kinoma Play software. In some respects, Freeplay seems very capable, as it links to numerous podcasts and streaming clips from sources like NPR and other popular programs. You can even check out photos on a Flickr feed from Kinoma, and play videos from YouTube. Unfortunately, the player did a poor job actually playing our media. The controls are tiny and unresponsive, and the options are few and costly. We were shocked when we tried to adjust the brightness of a video and were asked to buy the full retail version to use this setting.
Worst of all, we had trouble actually loading music onto the phone. It wasn't the internal microSD slot, hidden under the battery cover, that stopped us (though it did slow us down). We tried sideloading tracks from Windows Media Player, but they never actually appeared on our phone. WMP believed them to be there, but neither Kinoma Freeplay nor Windows Media Player on the phone could actually locate them.
Further, the Sprint Music store on this phone is a basic, WAP version of the normally impressive Sprint Music catalog. We've had a better experience when the Music Store acts more like a standalone app than a Web browser component. When we tried to play some purchased tracks, Kinoma couldn't handle them, and Windows Media player, like many apps on the phone, was hidden from view and required some tricky digging to launch.
This is all a mess. We can't give Sprint any credit for including the Kinoma player, because the player is available to any Windows Mobile users for free, and its worth what you pay for it. Perhaps the full version has real functionality, but if it won't work with Sprint's own music store, why bother? The 3.5mm headphone jack is a welcome addition, but loading and playing music on the Palm Treo Pro on Sprint is so frustrating, we wouldn't bother to break out our good ear buds.
GPS Navigation – Very Good
Sprint Navigator on the Palm Treo Pro found us quickly and tracked us smoothly. The phone uses EV-DO Rev. A networking, and this helped the Navigator load new maps quickly and reroute us when we missed our turns. The app isn't perfect, it could be more responsive as we panned around maps to check out our surroundings. But as far as turn-by-turn navigation on cell phones goes, the Palm Treo Pro with Sprint Navigator certainly holds its own.
Camera – Mediocre
The camera on the Sprint version of the Palm Treo Pro took some dismal pictures. Images came out looking like the lens had been smeared in Vaseline, though we kept it clean during our tests. Because of this, there was a blurry haze over most pictures. Colors were okay, but detail was off, and bright lights tended to flood and dominate images.
One Room Schoolhouse
The hazy blue sky seems to take over the rooftop and tree on the left of this image. At full zoom, the bricks look fuzzy and oiled. The white turret is overexposed to the point it lacks a definite edge.
Self Portrait
This photo has an oversharpened look, more like a still image from a VHS tape than a camera shot. The snow behind us is blown our and fringing bright blue.
Antique Windows
Again, on this mostly sunny day, the camera has trouble with whites, and can't keep them from overexposing.
Bricks Close Up
The red bricks and white mortar are yellowed out here and dull. Detail is completely lost throughout.
Price and availability
The Palm Treo Pro will be available on Sprint as of March 15 for $200 after a $100 instant rebate, $100 mail-in rebate and a contract agreement.
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