Treo 650 is cool but costly

It's hard not to hit the right buttons on the Treo 650.

I pull out the PalmOne Treo 650 in a cafe and the hands come out.

"Let's look at that," my friend says, turning the shiny little thing round in his hands.

"How can you type on that tiny keyboard?" he says, then discovers it's not that hard to get his thumbs to hit the right places.

"It's a bit big," he says. Truth is, it's not that much wider or heavier than most other phones out there, and has he forgotten the brick?

I use the Treo to take his picture. It makes a satisfying thunk, as if it were a large single lens reflex rather than a digicam with no physical shutter.

Even in the low light of the Ponsonby night, the picture looks acceptable. It is certainly better than the low-res available from the camera in the Treo 600. It can also capture short video clips. Stills and videos can be recorded direct to SD card.

The screen is improved over the Treo 600 to a high resolution 320 x 320, and bright enough to see in any light.

A question comes up which no one around the table can answer. A touch of the button and the Treo is on the web, the cursor sitting in a Google window. That is the easy part. Trying to navigate around a website which has been broken apart to fit in such a small screen is not easy, but answers can be found.

While PalmOne came late to the smartphone business through its acquisition of Handspring, its roots as a pioneer of the personal digital device are paying off.

Rather than trying to fit applications on a phone, accessed through rudimentary controls, PalmOne developed a great application platform first, concentrating on non-trivial things such as ergonomics and usability.

It had some sound basic applications of its own such as calendar and contact lists, and a large third-party and partner developer community worked on other cool things which could be done on its devices.

Making it a connected device was the icing on the cake, rather than the cake itself.

The ease of finding numbers means the contact list is a tool rather than a trial, as it is in most phones.

The Treo 650 is more than a refresh of the Treo 600. Apart from the improved screen and camera, PalmOne has added Bluetooth, making connection with other devices simpler.

The battery is now removable so you can carry a spare - probably necessary if you use the Bluetooth capability a lot.

Memory is now non-volatile, so data won't be lost changing batteries or if you misplace the phone.

The 22MB of memory storage can be eaten quickly.

PalmOne has shifted the menu and home buttons for switching from phone to PDA functions from below to above the keyboard, making them easier to find.

The Treo 650 is about 10g heavier than the 600 and 1mm thicker, although the aerial is slightly smaller.

The battery spec says six hours' talk time, 300 hours' standby. It would need charging more often than today's phones, but less often than competing smartphones and Windows CE PDAs.

If you want to use the phone as an mp3 player, which can be done by loading your tunes on an expansion card, you will probably hammer the battery a bit more.

On the software side, each iteration of the Palm operating system has improved compatibility with PC applications. You can read, edit and create Word- and Excel-compatible documents and view PowerPoint attachments.

It can fit on PalmOne's wireless keyboard, if you want to give your thumbs a rest.

Tools have been included to make setting up email easier.

Syncing is fast and relatively painless, with all the third-party applications I normally carry shifting over.

Having multiple devices usually means multiple contact lists. Merging them all is a job that never seems to get done. With the Treo, I was able to put a copy of my main list in a Filemaker Mobile file and beam over the most used numbers which live in my Palm address book.

Then I discovered something in the Treo's application menu called SIM Phonebook. It turned out to be all the numbers which I have put on the SIM card when it has been in other phones.

At a recommended retail price of $1299, the Treo 650 is expensive, especially given the price in America is US$600, with deals at US$450.

PalmOne Treo 650

Pros: Leave your PDA and laptop at home, stay connected wherever you are.
Cons: Memory issues could inhibit some applications; priced for status.
Price: $1299
Herald rating: 8/10