Palm Treo Pro Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls

The Treo Pro wasn't able to keep up with fast dialing and its send and end buttons are tiny, making for a less-than-perfect calling experience. On the other hand, it offers good ringtone flexibility, able to use all of our test files as ringtones and automatically making files recorded with the voice memo application as ringtones. It also has a wickedly strong vibrate mode that will easily get everyone's attention in a quiet environment.

Dialing Speed (5.21)
To see  how easy it is to dial out on a phone, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a call is initiated with the Send button using test phone numbers. On the Treo Pro, the quickest way to make a call is to simply start dialing the phone number using itty bitty keys in the embedded dial pad. The Treo Pro's average time to dial in this test was 3.84 seconds, putting it ahead of the Treo 750, but behind every other comparison phone.

Dialing a number

We feel like the Treo Pro could be faster here if the interface could keep up - we found we could dial faster than the Treo Pro could register, requiring us to wait a few moments before the Send key could be pressed since pressing it any sooner resulted in an incomplete number dialed. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Send and End Buttons (5.0)
The Treo Pro's Send and End buttons are small circular ones at the edges on the left and right sides of the phone. There are no markings whatsoever on them, but you'll be able to find them by feel alone as long as you remember that the Send button is on the left side and the End button is on the right side.

The Treo Pro's Send and End buttons and keyboard

Unlike some of the comparison phones with touchscreens, the Treo Pro does not have any on-screen equivalents at any time, so the physical buttons are you only choices for these actions. They aren't very large but they are slightly raised from the surrounding plastic and are still easy enough to hit with the pad of your thumb. They have good travel and tactile feedback, and our only wish is that they were a little larger.

Call Management (8.0)
Pressing the Treo Pro's Send button will take you to a screen in the phone application that shows you the most recent incoming and outgoing calls. Pressing the Menu virtual soft key here will show an option to bring up the Call History where information is shown in 4 tabs: outgoing, incoming, missed, and all calls. The menu shown in any tab offers the ability to save a call log number to the contacts list, filter the view, or see call timers, among others. The Call Timers option shows information for All Calls and Recent Calls and a Reset button. There are no data timers in this view.

Selecting an individual record in any tab will bring up the total history for that phone number, including the time and date of the last call and its duration. The Menu in this view shows an option to delete this record alone from the call log.

An individual call log entry detail screen

During a call, there are several options available. On-screen buttons provide quick ways to turn on the speakerphone, mute a call, put a call on hold, add a note, or go to the Contacts list. The ability to create a note during a call should be a handy feature for salespeople and business users in other fields who need to take down information for later reference. Getting to the Menu via the right virtual soft menu key offers the ability to add a call to create a conference call. As is typical of Windows Mobile smartphones, multi-tasking is possible on the Treo Pro while on a call and the Send key handily brings you back to the active call screen from any other application.

The screen during an active call

You can open the Notes application during a call and record a voice note, but it will only record your end of the conversation through the phone's microphone. This is the closest you'll get to call recording on the Treo Pro with the applications included out of the box.

Startup to Call (1.48)
Not everyone keeps their cell phone turned on all the time, so the time time it takes to turn it on to make a call right away can be an important factor to some. To test this, we time how long it takes to turn a phone on and dial test numbers, ending with the moment the Send key is pressed. However, the Treo Pro is like many of its predecessors here in that it doesn't turn off completely unless you remove the battery. So, just as we tested the Treo 750, we removed the battery from the Treo Pro and started timing the moment the battery was inserted. As is typical of smartphones, which tend to have more complicated operating systems that take more time to load at start-up, the Treo Pro averaged 1 minute and 7 seconds in this test for the second-lowest score among our comparison phones. Treo Pro users should be glad they don't have to go through this slow process often. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Ring Volume (8.54)
To test ring volume, we use a sound pressure meter to measure sound output with the device set to its loudest volume setting. The Treo Pro put out 85.40 decibels in this test, a respectable level though still the lowest among all of our comparison phones.

Ringtones (8.0)
We load test music files in MP3, AAC, and WMA formats on to each phone we test and see if they can be used as ringtones. The Treo Pro allowed us to designate each of these files as ringtones without any trouble. Additionally, the recordings you make with the Voice Memo software automatically appear in the list of available ringtones. The Treo Pro earns full points here for its ringtone flexibility.

Non-Audio Alerts (9.0)
One of the first things we noticed about the Treo Pro is that it has a very robust vibrate mode, producing that distinct cell-phone-ringing-in-vibrate-mode-on-table sound that will easily disrupt any business meeting at once. When a call comes in, the Treo Pro's screen lights up to show the caller ID information and the LED flashes. Combined with the strong vibrate mode, you shouldn't miss any alerts on the Treo Pro.

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