Phonelists find a handy home without hassle

By ADAM GIFFORD

Address books in mobile phones have always seemed to me like a good idea defeated by the limitations of the Machine.

Numbers were fiddly to put in, even more fiddly to get out.

Now Handspring has shown how it should be done with Treo, a device which contains almost all the functions of its Visor organiser with a GSM mobile phone.

The Treo could change the way you think about phones.

The first Treos hit Vodafone stores last Friday. Retail manager Andre Joubert said there was much interest in the $1799 devices but no sales on the first day.

The price was likely to drop to as low as $849 on some Vodafone business subscription plans.

Apart from the elegant but powerful operating system, what sets apart Palm and Handspring (a firm formed by the original Palm Pilot inventors) is their emphasis on designing devices which are comfortable to use.

The Treo is about the size of a pack of cards and weighs just 147g.

The cover has a clear window so you do not need to open it - and therefore answer the call - to see who is ringing.

If you do not want to answer, a quick push of a toggle button on the side will send the caller to voicemail.

Flip open the cover (which doubles as the earpiece and as a speakerphone) and you will see either a small keyboard or a Graffiti screen, for those more comfortable with the Palm writing system.

Bill Holtzman, Handspring's international vice-president, said sales were running 70 per cent in favour of the keyboard version.

The Treo lacks the Springboard expansion slot which is a feature of the Handspring Visor handheld computer.

"When we started developing this two years ago, we realised people want a small form factor. We couldn't have put in Springboard and kept it thin and under 150g," Holtzman said.

He said Handspring's thinking was influenced by the Blackberry, a mobile email device with a small keyboard which has proved popular with finance sector workers in the United States.

"The keyboard will be useful if you do lots of text."

Indeed, the thumb-driven keyboard does not take long to get used to, and makes sending a short message simple.

The lack of a physical keypad was disconcerting at first but it took no time to beam the phone list from my Palm to the Treo.

To call someone already in the system, I typed the first letters and names start appearing.

The rocker button on the side takes me to the right number, and by pushing the button the connection is made.

For other numbers, as soon as I start to enter a number on the keyboard a number pad appears on the screen, and the rest of the number can be tapped out.

If I want to look up something on the internet (bearing in mind telephone company data charges), the Treo comes with its own browser, Blazer.

This is not Wap (wireless application protocol) but a full browser connected to servers which optimise pages for the device.

Handspring

Vodafone