Palm Treo Pro Cell Phone Review - Messaging

True to form as a business-oriented device, the Treo Pro is highly functional when it comes to email and even text messaging. Attachments are handled with aplomb and the Treo Pro scoffs at the measly challenge presented by multiple email accounts. Instant messaging leaves a little to be desired, though it does at least offer more than some of its competitors in this area.

Supported Email Services (8.0)
Like any smartphone worth its salt, the Treo Pro easily handles POP and IMAP email accounts and has auto-setup abilities for the most popular free web email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL. You can also use a Hotmail account, but you must set it up in the Windows Live application, not in the main Messaging application.

Multiple email accounts

Push Email (3.0)
Email pushed to your device means that incoming email is automatically pushed to your phone and your phone does not need to do anything to receive it. Otherwise, your phone must fetch email on a fixed schedule, and most phones offer you the ability to set the frequency with which this is done - on the Treo Pro, you can choose increments from between every 5 minutes to once daily. The Treo Pro does support push email via Microsoft Exchange Server.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Treo Pro easily handles multiple accounts, earning it the maximum number of points possible in this area.

HTML and Attachments (11.0)
The Treo Pro does not show pictures within email by default, though you can choose to show them with a link shown at the beginning of the opened email. HTML emails show up as intended, though it can be irritating to scroll around on the tiny screen in order to view large images.

Attachments in an email

The Treo Pro had no trouble with most of our attachments, showing the Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint documents with no problems, as well as the PDF and JPG files. However, it was unable to open any of the test Zip file attachments, despite the User Guide's claim that Zip received as attachments will be automatically decompressed when opened.

Email Customizations (2.0)
The only email customization possible on the Treo Pro is the ability to add signatures automatically to outgoing emails. There is no way to change font type, size, or colors for viewing or composing emails within the Messaging application.

Time to a New Email Message (5.95)
To see how easy it is to create a new email message, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a new email dialogue is ready. On the Treo Pro, one of the buttons surrounding the D-pad is designated as a Messaging shortcut by default, bringing you to the list of email accounts set up on the device, and then tapping the on-screen Menu soft key brings up a list where a New message is the first option available.

A new email dialogue

On average, it took the Treo Pro 3.36 seconds to complete this test, a score faster than only one of the other Windows Mobile device among our comparison phones, the HTC Touch Diamond. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Email Usability (10.50)
It's reasonably easy to navigate email on the Treo Pro. When viewing the inbox of one account, messages are automatically sorted by the date they were received, and a drop-down box in the top right allows you to change to sorting by Message Type, From, or Subject. Switching between different mailbox folders is as easy as tapping on the drop-down menu in the top left and selecting from the resulting list. If you have multiple email accounts set up on the Treo Pro, you can scroll between them by pressing right or left on the D-pad.

An email inbox

When creating a new email, you can simply start entering the name of someone from your contacts list and then select their email address from a pop-up box. There are Bcc and Cc fields at the very top of the new email dialogue, and the Menu offers the ability to quickly add a file, voice note, or picture to the email. Scrolling between fields is easy with the D-pad or by tapping on them with your finger or the stylus.

All in all, the Treo Pro's email usability is pretty much the same as it was on the Treo 750.

Instant Messaging (2.0)
Like the Treo 750, the Treo Pro offers instant messaging through Windows Live accounts only out of the box. Third-party applications are available to extend the Treo Pro's IM capability, however, so you're not completely stuck if you want to use a different IM account/protocol.

Windows Live Messenger instant messaging

MMS Support (9.0)
Text and multimedia messages share an inbox in the Messages application. When you go to create a new message, you can choose between SMS, MMS, or Voicemail. Choosing an SMS does not lock you into this selection completely - if you change your mind midstream, the Menu provides the option to media to turn it into an MMS. If you choose to create an MMS from the get-go, you can a nifty little template where you can tap or scroll to designated sections to insert a picture or video, audio, and text.

A new MMS - note the handy insertion boxes

If you haven't yet taken the picture or video you want to send in an MMS, you can easily select to open the camera application right from the MMS creation dialogue. There's even a handy size counter at the bottom to tell you how much of the allotted 300k your new MMS is using. Creating an MMS on the Treo Pro is easy and painless, on par with the Treo 750.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Like many business-oriented phones we've reviewed, the Treo Pro does not interpret letters and punctuation sent or received as smiley faces, also called emoticons, as graphic images. We're still puzzled by the fact that smartphone OS developers and manufacturers apparently believe business users don't need no stinkin' emoticons, as if even a little fun is completely unacceptable when sending a 160-character message.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (8.0)
The view of the SMS/MMS inbox is exactly like that of any other email account set up on the Treo Pro. Messages are shown by date received by default, and this can be changed to sorting by Message Type, sender, and Subject, just like email messages can be. Switching between different folders can be done using the drop-down menu in the top right, again just like any email account. However, new folders cannot be created to further sort your SMS and MMS messages beyond the default Inbox, Outbox, Drafts, and Sent folders.

SMS conversations are shown in a threaded view with the most recent messages at the top - this is a handy feature if you're carrying on a conversation and can't remember what the last message you received contained. When you type a reply in a conversation, your message is shown at the bottom of the screen and a counter at the very top shows you how many characters out of the maximum 160 have been entered.

A new SMS

As mentioned in the MMS Support section above, creating new messages is easy and there is smooth integration with the camera application to create new items on the fly to add to MMS messages. We really like that you can change your mind in the middle of creating an SMS and change it to an MMS. The Treo Pro does well here, particularly in comparison to the HTC Touch Diamond without any MMS capability at all out of the box.

Time to a New SMS Message (2.79)
To see how easy it is to create a new text message, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a new SMS dialogue is up. Since the SMS/MMS account resides right next to email accounts in the Messages application, we used almost the exact same process to get here as we did in the Time to a New Email test above, though there is an additional menu step to select an SMS over an MMS which did add a little time. The Treo Pro averaged 3.58 seconds in this test, which sounds fast but is only good enough for the lowest score among our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Previous    Next