Palm Treo Pro Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality

The audio received by the Treo Pro is very good, and incoming calls should be clear without any choppiness. The audio sent isn't quite as good, and audio in lower frequencies may sound choppy periodically on the other end of the call. Side tone, the amount of your own voice intentionally piped back to you through the speaker to help you determine how loudly you're speaking, is pretty high and may cause you to speak far more softly than necessary.

General Audio
Smartphones these days can do everything from keeping your calendar in order to reminding you to finding the name and artist of a song you hear in a store at the mall, but how well they work to make and receive calls is still important, in which audio quality is a critical component. We test performance in three areas - the audio you hear while on a call, the audio sent from the phone, and how much of your own voice is piped back to you, called side tone, which is how you gauge how loudly you're speaking. We test and evaluate audio quality using guidelines defined by international audio experts and testing equipment and software that cell phone manufacturers use themselves. We use a head and torso simulator (HATS) made by Bruel & Kjaer and the SoundCheck software by Listen, Inc. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (9.09)
In this test, we focus on the quality of the sound received by the phone, and our testing equipment and software examines how well the phone transmits the voice of the person with whom you're speaking. The software does this by transmitting a set batch of known sounds through the testing equipment at specific frequencies in a test call and analyzing what is heard through the phone's speaker. On the chart, the outer limits that a phone should not surpass are prescribed by the red lines, and ideal performance would manifest as a smooth curve through the middle of the area defined by the limits.

The Treo Pro's Sound Receive Frequency response chart

As you can see in the Treo Pro's Sound Receive Frequency Response graph, the Treo's received audio fluctuates throughout the frequency range prescribed by the limits, but stays well within the limits for the most part. If the results line hits and/or surpasses the limits at any point, sound will be cut off, resulting in clipped speech received by the phone. The Treo Pro's results indicate that there will be minor volume fluctuations at different frequencies, but sounds should not come across as choppy or clipped at all. With this performance, the Treo Pro earns the highest score in this area among all of our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Palm Treo Pro	T-Mobile G1 (on T-Mobile)	HTC Touch Diamond (on Sprint)
Score	9.09	8.98	8.24
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	Nokia E71 (Unlocked)	Apple iPhone 3G (on AT&T)	Palm Treo 750 (on AT&T)
Score	7.55	8.13	8.24
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Sound Send Frequency Response (8.26)
This test focuses on the sound sent by the phone during calls. Our testing equipment and software evaluates this by transmitting a known range of sounds through the phone's microphone on a test call, and then evaluating how the sounds are actually transmitted by the phone. As with the sound receive frequency response test, the red lines show the outer limits which should not be surpassed, and ideal performance would be a smooth cover through the middle of these limits.

The Treo Pro's Sound Send Frequency response chart

In the Treo Pro's Sound Send Frequency Response chart, you can see that its performance does come close to the upper limit in frequencies up to 1,000 Hz. Sounds up to this point may be clipped, resulting in choppy sound to the person with whom you're speaking. Beyond 1,000 Hz, performance smooths out and there should be no problems with the sound sent by the Treo Pro. While not as good as its performance in our sound receive frequency response test, this still earns the Treo Pro a respectable score, only slightly lower than the HTC G1 and iPhone 3G.

Cell Phone	Palm Treo Pro	T-Mobile G1 (on T-Mobile)	HTC Touch Diamond (on Sprint)
Score	8.26	8.42	7.01
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	Nokia E71 (Unlocked)	Apple iPhone 3G (on AT&T)	Palm Treo 750 (on AT&T)
Score	8.26	8.34	7.89
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Handset Side Tone (5.30)
Side tone is the amount of your own voice piped back to you through the phone's speaker, meant to help you judge how loudly you're speaking. If a phone's side tone is too high, you may think you're talking too loudly and adjust accordingly, and the person on the other end of the line may have a hard time hearing you as a result. If a phone's side tone is too low, meaning less of your voice is piped back to you than the ideal level, you'll think you're talking too quietly and may end up speaking louder than you need to as a result. The ideal side tone level, as defined by audio experts, is 18dB.

The Treo Pro's side tone is a bit high, coming in at 22.7dB, the highest side tone level among all of our comparison phones, and thus the lowest score as well. As long as you're mindful of the high side tone and what it may cause you to do by reflex, you could avoid the issues that would ordinarily result from a side tone level this high.

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