Sony's T665c is one slick piece of hardware, with features galore. But upon closer inspection, Larry Garfield isn't as impressed as he would like to be.
Sony marches forward with new Palm OS handhelds, with the current upper-mid range device being the svelte little CLIE PEG-T665c. It is one nice piece of silicon, unfortunately a few key problems keep us from recommending it for everyone.
The T665c measures a small 12.1 x 5.1 x 1.3 centimeters and weighs in at a mere 139 g, making it a comfortable fit for pocket or purse. Tucked away inside the stylish, brushed aluminum body is a 66 MHz Dragonball VZ processor, 16 MB of RAM, 4 MB of Flash ROM for the OS, an mp3 decoder chip, and a dedicated graphics chip. The screen is a standard Sony 320x320 square 16-bit TFT display, which looks fantastic in any lighting. Color saturation is good, even on reds, which were a problem for its predecessor, the T615c. Sadly, it still has a silk-screened Graffiti area.
 | The T665c screen can handle rich reds and blues far better than its predecessor.
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The power switch is a nice large dimpled button on the bottom right of the front face, making it easy to hit deliberately but harder to hit by accident. The four application buttons, however, are extremely thin. Each pair, left and right, are flush against each other, which in action games makes it possible to hit the wrong one by accident. There is ample room for larger buttons, as the application icons are etched into the metal above the buttons, but Sony still went with the thinner buttons.
Even more of a problem is the directional switch. It cannot be properly termed a rocker, as it does not "rock", but is more like a two-way joystick with a pointed top. The scroll wheel on the left side of the case is an absolute necessity, as the front directional control is extremely difficult to use, and in games that require its constant use becomes painful after a short while. It may be attractive, but form should follow function, and it does not in this case. A small, round dot-button on the left side just below the scroll wheel serves as a back button, and a Hold switch, to turn the device off while the mp3 player keeps playing, is located just below that.
The T665c's speaker is placed in back at the bottom left, directly opposite the power switch. Like several of Sony's newer devices, the speaker on the T665c is excellent, even providing decent playback for converted WAV files with spoken words. Between the crisp screen and high quality sound, action games take on a completely new dimension. (If only the buttons did not get in the way.) The T665c also includes Sony's standard Memory Stick card slot on top, protected by a small swiveling door. There is also a small "active" light next to the slot to indicate that the card is in use, a nice touch that more manufacturers should emulate.
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