Handspring Treo: An end user review
 
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Sure, talking about Handspring's Treo as it relates to the enterprise network is exciting enough, but what you really want to know is whether it's cool, right? You've come to the right spot for that.
I was fortunate enough to receive an evaluation unit of Treo, and was able to test it for a few days. Is it cool? You betcha. Will throngs of your end users be rushing out to buy them? Possibly. Will it solve the problem of making your employees more productive while they're out on the road? It depends on your perspective.
Phone features
But before we get there, let's look at Treo. The first thing you notice is its fliptop, which includes a clear plastic window. When the phone rings, you can look through the window to see who's calling (as long as the caller ID is recognized). Answering the phone is as easy as flipping up the lid, or you can push the scroll button to immediately send the call to voice mail. The whole design is very Star Trekkian, as the size and the way you talk into it will remind you of Captain Kirk talking to his tricorder.
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If you want to use the provided headset with the phone (it's a standard earbud-style headset, with a one-ear headphone and hanging microphone), you can use the phone without flipping the lid. To do this, you would use Treo's jog dial to navigate through the screens while looking through the fliptop's window.
Of course, the phone works better when you flip up the lid and get access to Treo's software. If you don't want to use the headset at all, flipping the lid makes Treo look more like a cell phone, where you can listen via the tiny speaker at the top of the device and the small microphone at the bottom closer to your mouth. Of course, talking this way can limit the sound quality of the phone; if you're in a crowded room it's probably better to use the headset.
The second thing you notice after flipping the lid is the thumb-style keyboard (the Treo 180g model has the traditional Graffiti style interface), which looks just like the keyboard on a RIM two-way pager. In addition to letters, the keyboard has a numeric keypad printed in blue numbers that are activated by pressing the blue "shift" button. The numbers are on the right side of the keyboard, so if you're right-handed you can hold the Treo in your hand and dial a number with the phone. Fortunately, the phone software can recognize when you're trying to dial a phone number in this manner, so you don't have to press the shift button to input a number. For some functions, such as entering phone numbers into the phone book, you do have to press the shift button. But if you're clearly in the phone mode, dialing with the keyboard is very cool, and can be accomplished with one hand (press the space bar to begin the call).
Searching for names in your phone book is also made easier, as Handspring has incorporated predictive text entry to narrow down the lists. The device lets you type in first name, last name or first initial and last name to help you find the name quickly. For example, if you were looking up my name, you could type in "Kei," "Sha" or "Ksh," and with each successive keystroke you would get closer to that entry. It's doubtful that you would ever need to type more than three or four letters for each name in your database. Furthermore, the search lets you see all the phone numbers for that contact, for contacts with multiple phone numbers.
Populating the device with your phone numbers is very easy, as the device lets you transfer your contacts and appointments from Palm Desktop, Microsoft Outlook and a number of third-party personal-information-manager applications. Connecting to the desktop PC was very simple via a Universal Serial Bus-enabled cable (no cradle) and charger. Because there's no cradle it may look awkward on your desk, but it's going to be in your pocket so that's not a big deal. If you still like HotSync-ing with a serial cable, you'll be able to buy one separately.
One area of concern is battery life. The Treo box says that you can get up to 2.5 hours of talk time, and up to 60 hours of standby time. In reality, if you're going to use this phone on a normal basis, you're going to eat up the battery life pretty quickly (I used the phone and PDA functions for a good 90 minutes and noticed about half my battery power was used up). If you use this on the road, the travel charger is definitely going to be needed. The phone does have some battery-saving features, such as automatic shut-off after periods of nonuse, but keeping the wireless phone part on does eat into battery time.
Wireless data features
On the data side of things, Treo comes with features such as Short Message Service, so you can send text messages to other SMS-enabled phones or any e-mail address. Again, having the keyboard greatly improves the chances that users will take advantage of SMS, as opposed to trying to type out their messages on their phone's keypad.
For Web browsing, Treo comes bundled with the Blazer browser, which does a pretty good job of condensing Web site data onto the smaller screen to give the same kind of "wired Internet" surfing that so many of us are used to. The big problem here, of course, is that the GSM network is limited by slow connectivity, so doing any heavy-duty Web surfing will be agonizingly slow. With GPRS network upgrades that should improve.
The same is true for e-mail capabilities. Treo bundles the One-Touch mail application, but it only works with POP3 e-mail. Handspring says later this year it will have an e-mail application that will be able to redirect corporate e-mail to Treo devices, such as BlackBerry devices do.
So right now, if you're thinking of using Treo to get all of your corporate e-mail, you're going to have to rely on third-party applications. This is the one caveat I mentioned above, about whether Treo will make mobile professionals more productive.
Finally, you can still download a whole array of Palm applications to the device, as Treo runs on Palm OS. After having dabbled with other devices, I had forgotten how easy it was to install a Palm-based application. It's just as easy with Treo. Again, for heavy-duty applications such as customer relationship management, integration with third-party applications will likely be necessary to ensure data security.
Pricing/availability
Treo 180 and 180g will be available for purchase through Handspring's Web site beginning this month. Next month, expect to see them in retail outlets, and soon thereafter carriers (look for GSM carriers such as Cingular and VoiceStream) will likely be selling them at their retail locations. Treo 180 and 180g will sell for $399 with wireless activation and $549 without activation. What this means is that a current GSM phone user does not need to sign up for a new service contract, and can use his current SIM card in the device, but have to pay the higher price tag for the Treo device.
And coming later this year will be color-screen versions of Treo, which will cost $599 with activation and $749 without. Monthly service plans, of course, will be up to the carrier to determine.
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