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Handspring also did well with the indicator LED next to the power button as well. When on AC power and charging, the LED will glow red. When fully charged, it glows green. When off AC power, if the radio is active the LED will flash green every few seconds. It's surprising how many companies are unable to built decent LED feedback systems, so it is nice to see that Handspring knows how to build one.
 | The Treo includes a well-integrated, well-featured Phone Book/dialer application
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The Treo 270 ships with a USB HotSync cable that doubles as a charger. The cable itself has a HotSync button on the plug. Unfortunately, the power adapter is still a wall-brick style, common to many handhelds. It also includes a monaural earpiece. The microphone is on a knob in the cable, which also includes an answer/hang-up button. Audio quality through the earpiece was as good as through the phone directly.
The software
The Treo 270 runs a highly customized version of Palm OS 3.5.3, including extra software and dramatic retooling of some of the built-in software. Most notably, the Address Book application is now Phone Book.
Whenever the user opens the Treo while it is turned off, it will automatically switch to the Phone Book application. The Phone Book includes 3 views, the first of which, the one that shows up when the phone is opened, is a Speed Dial selector. There are up to ten speed dial buttons per page and five pages. Each speed dial button is accessible via the jog wheel on the left side of the device or is large enough for finger-tapping. The edit button function ties into the Phone Lookup function, making it easy to add anyone in the address book to a speed dial button. By default, the bottom two speed dial buttons on the first page are replaced with the current date and time. Pressing the Phone Book button will switch to the second form, a finger-friendly dial pad, and again to the traditional lookup screen.
The phone lookup screen is based on the traditional Palm Address Book, with a few new features. Instead of the traditional list view, each contact has each listed phone number below it. The jog wheel lets the user scroll through the list and select any phone number, which automatically dials that number. Pressing a character on the thumb board jumps to and filters by contacts that start with that letter, so in a few taps with one hand the user can dial anyone in the address book. Or rather, anyone in the current category. There is no way to change categories without going to the category selector on the top of the page. The keyboard and jog wheel make it feasible to just leave it on "All" continually, however.
When in a call, the program shows finger-friendly buttons to hang up (closing the phone will do the same), put the caller on hold, or toggle the speakerphone. There is also a call time readout. At all times in the Phone Book app, there is both a battery meter and a connection indicator. They are not system-wide, however, and only applications that choose to display them will do so. Most of the built-in telephony applications from Handspring do, including the Launcher and the SMS client, but Handspring's Blazer web browser only includes a connection indicator, not a battery meter.
We had a few issues getting GPRS support from our service provider, but once that was done the data connection worked fine. Like most such devices, the Treo uses a Class B GPRS radio so users can use either a voice connection or data connection but not both simultaneously. However, the user can use the phone at the same time as any other application on the device, except for programs that use the GPRS connection. The GPRS connection will also shut itself down if unused for a long period of time and reactivate automatically as needed.
The Treo does not include support for web clipping PQAs, which is unfortunate as they are a very good design for limited-bandwidth usage. PQAs, short for Palm Query Applications, are highly compressed mini-web sites that appear to the user as an application, making it easy to look up specific information from a specific site, such as weather or movie listings. PQAs were introduced by Palm with the Palm VII, but have never fared well in the general market due to the need for a proxy server. It also does not include an email client, as does almost every other connected handheld.
Conclusion
The Treo 270 tackles a difficult task, making a device that is both a good handheld and a good phone at the same time, and comes out fairly well. Users interested exclusively in a phone should look for something smaller while users interested exclusively in a wireless data handheld should look at one of Palm's offerings, but users interested in a combination device would be well-served to consider the Treo 270. We'd like to have support for web clippings and better support for the handheld side with a dedicated Home button, but it's still a solid contender for the hybrid market.
The Treo 270 is available now through GSM carriers or Handspring's web site for $499 USD with service activation.
- What's positive: Good integration, nice feature set
- What's negative: Weak software bundle, no dedicated Home button
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Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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