The 700p brings speedy 3G data access to the Palm OS line of Treos, along with wireless modem capabilities, Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and even live TV. Ben Patterson gives this long-anticipated smartphone the once-over.
Review summary of the Palm Treo 700p:
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 The Palm Treo 700p certainly isn't perfect: we wish Wi-Fi were supported, some basic calling features could use some shoring up, and the Palm OS is in sore need of a refresh. That said, with its vivid display, wireless modem capabilities, superior e-mail handling, and better-than-expected picture and video features, the 700p easily ranks as the most satisfying Treo to date. Release: May 2006. Price: $250.
Pros: Bright, vivid screen; speedy EV-DO access; wireless modem support over Bluetooth or USB; great personal and corporate e-mail support; impressive multimedia options
Cons: No Wi-Fi; no voice dialing; so-so conference calling; Palm OS needs updating; Menu key deserves to be up with the other navigation controls
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Full Palm Treo 700p Review:
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Competition
Find out how well the Palm Treo 700p competes with similar business phones:
Palm Treo 700p vs. Palm Treo 700w vs. Palm Treo 700wx
Back in January, Palm finally brought high-speed EV-DO support to the Treo with the 700w, which happened to be one of the first smartphones equipped with the relatively new Windows Mobile 5.0. While we were certainly impressed by the 700w's speed, it came saddled with a lower-resolution screen, as well as a somewhat bigger problem: Windows Mobile itself. While unquestionably powerful (the 700w packs in the Pocket PC version of WM 5.0, rather than the easier but more stripped-down smartphone edition), the new Windows Mobile OS makes for a confusing thicket of options compared to the more elegant Palm OS. Now comes the 700p, the first of the EV-DO Palm OS Treos, and we're happy to say the wait was worth it. Armed with a razor-sharp 320 x 320 display, a streaming video player, and wireless modem capabilities (supported by both Sprint and Verizon Wireless), the 700p packs an impressive punch, despite its unfortunate lack of Wi-Fi.
Tweaked keypad
At first glance, the Treo 700p looks just like the previous Palm OS Treo, the 650, although on closer inspection there are a few key differences. Palm has swapped the Home and Menu buttons (which used to flank the five-way navigation control) with the Talk and End keys, restoring the four lower function keys to the old Phone, Calendar, Mail, and Home configuration, while the Menu key is now relegated to the bottom of the keypad. In addition, the thumbboard keys are slightly flatter and more rectangular before. Overall, our fingertips were happy with the new keypad, although we found reaching down for the Menu key to be annoyingly awkward.
Measuring 4.4 by 2.3 by 0.9 inches and weighing in at 6.4 ounces, the 700p is exactly the size of the 700w and 650, although at 6.4 ounces it's a bit heftier than the 700w. Along the left edge of the phone are the volume controls, along with a one-touch voice memo button. On top next to the stubby external antenna is a ringer switch that vibrates when you turn the ringer off (a nice touch), along with the IrDA port and the MMC/SD/SDIO expansion slot (which supports SD cards up to 2GB in size).
The 700p’s 65,000-color, 2.5-inch LCD looks gorgeous. With a resolution of 320 x 320 – up substantially from the 700w’s 240 x 240 display, a Windows Mobile-imposed limitation – the 700p’s display looked rich and vivid, with snapshots and images in Web pages practically jumping off the screen, with barely a trace of pixel lines. Well done.
Speedy EV-DO, but no Wi-Fi
Wireless options on the 700p are impressive – with a glaring exception. Besides Bluetooth and IrDA, the phone's EV-DO support makes for speedy browsing on Sprint and Verizon Wireless' new 3G networks. Testing the Sprint-branded 700p in New York City, our surfing on the revamped Blazer browser (which comes with improved caching and Javascript support, among other changes) was impressively fast, as were file downloads and over-the-air PIM synching. Even more enticing, the 700p marks the first EV-DO Treo that works as a wireless modem for your PC, either over USB or Bluetooth (although you'll have to pay for a separate DUN data plan, which goes for about $15-30/month). Missing from the mix, sadly, is an integrated Wi-Fi radio, and the 700p isn't compatible with Palm’s Wi-Fi card. That said, the phone's more-than-adequate EV-DO service went a long way toward sweetening the no-Wi-Fi pill.
Update: We finally had a chance to give the 700p's wireless-modem capabilities for a proper test, and we were impressed with the results. Setting up the 700p via Bluetooth was relatively easy; we were up and running with our Bluetooth-enabled Mac PowerBook within a few minutes. There's also a USB connection utility for the PC that is even easier to use (just install the app, connect the 700p via the USB cable, and click OK to connect; we should note that Mac users can only use the 700p's wireless-modem capabilities via Bluetooth). We conducted our first tests in Brooklyn, and we got peak downloading speeds of 484Kbps and uploading speeds peaking at 77Kbps on the PC via USB, and 360Kbps down/87Kbps up on the Mac using Bluetooth – not too shabby. Taking our PowerBook into the signal-rich environs of Manhattan, we got even better results, peaking at 541Kbps up and 118Kbps down. (Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to test the 700p’s PC/USB abilities in Manhattan.)
Under the hood, the 700p comes with an Intel XScale 312Mhz processor – the same as on the 700w – plus 128MB of non-volatile memory, 60MB of which is user-accessible (a welcome improvement over the mere 23MB on the 650). In our tests, the 700p zipped along with impressive speed, but those looking to store music, video clips or loads of documents are well advised to pony up for an SD card. Working in Palm OS (version 5.4.9) is a breath of fresh air after the feature-packed but bewildering Windows Mobile 5.0; however, we're concerned by Palm's apparent lack of interest in updating the aging OS, which means developers are slowly but surely losing interesting in creating new Palm apps.
Messaging mania
The 700p's messaging options are predictably strong, with the standard POP/IMAP support plus out-of-the-box support for a wide range of e-mail accounts, including AOL Mail, Apple’s .Mac, EarthLink, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail; unfortunately, Hotmail is unsupported for now. We set up our Yahoo Mail account in minutes, and we were soon reading and syncing with ease. The 700p's updated VersaMail app also includes Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support; again, we configured and synced our Exchange mail, events and contacts within minutes. Corporate users can also (with the help of their IT departments) access Exchange 2003 or Lotus Notes e-mail, or get true push e-mail with the 700p’s GoodLink support.
Multimedia junkies have plenty of options on the 700p, including the 1.3-megapixel camera (much improved over the 650's VGA camera, although colors still looked a bit washed out), video capture (jerky and juttery, nothing surprising there), and a pumped-up photo album that lets you add transitions and background music to slideshows. Sprint subscribers can also indulge in 50 channels of TV – including a handful of live TV channels – via SprintTV; Verizon Wireless users, alas, must make do without V Cast video. Meanwhile, the on-board PocketTunes app boasts support for streaming Windows Media-compatible video.
Update: We took a little more time to play with the Sprint TV service on the 700p, and we found the video looked about as good as the clips we’ve seen on other Sprint Power Vision phones, although the picture looked a little more blocky on the Treo’s big display. You can tap into the standard Power Vision channels, including content from NBC News, the Discovery and Weather channels, CNN, Fox Sports, plus live TV from networks such as Fox News, the NFL Network, and ABC News Now. We ran into some lip-sync problems and choppy video, but for the most part our clips loaded quickly (within 10-20 seconds) and the video rarely paused for rebuffering.
So-so calling features
The 700p comes with a mixed bag of calling features. In addition to the speakerphone, you get the new "ignore with text" feature: when you ignore an incoming call, you can send the caller a text message (either a newly composed message or a canned SMS) at the touch of a button. Pretty cool; unfortunately, there’s still no voice calling (which we’d think would be a standard feature by now), and the two-way conference calling is still shaky (you can't switch between calls, and you can't hang up on one caller without losing both calls). For a smartphone this powerful, you'd think such basic calling features would be more up to snuff.
Document handling on the 700p is as robust as ever. The included Documents to Go app lets you view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, as well as edit Word and Excel files, while PDF to Go lets you browse PDF files, complete with images and formatting.
Call quality on the 700p was decent for a PDA/smartphone combo (we had no trouble pairing our Plantronics wireless headset with the Treo), although the speakerphone was a bit tinny. We got about two days of standby time from the 700p – again, not bad for a QWERTY smartphone.
Price and availability
The Palm Treo 700p will start selling for $250 to $650 ((Sprint, Verizon Wireless)) in May 2006.
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