Palm Treo 700p Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on March 15, 2007 Comment on this |
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Dialing Speed (4.08)
To make a phone call on the Treo 700p, you hit the dedicated phone key (located above the keyboard to the left), then dial the phone number using the highlighted number keys and hit the green send button located above the phone key. To test dialing speed we took the average speed to dial 5 different numbers, starting with the phone in standby mode, and ending when we hit the send key. The Treo 700p took an average of 5.88 seconds to complete this procedure. This score is low, and is impacted by the small keys on the Treo 700p, plus the fact that the keypad is buried in a full QWERTY keyboard. Dialing on any QWERTY device is often a pain, and the Treo is no different.Talk and End Button (7.0)
The Send and End keys on the Treo 700p lie to the left and right, and slightly above the D-Pad, just below the screen. The end key doubles as the standby key (see above). Both keys are wide, and slender, making them easy to find by feel. However their slimness means that your finger can sometimes slip off of them and hit one of the keys located below them. Compared to other phones the 700p’s send and end keys are not intuitively placed and don’t always function as you would expect. For example on most phones hitting the send key will take you to the dialer screen or to the call history. On the 700p this functionality is assigned to a separate phone key, which is redundant.
Call Management (6.0)
The Treo 700p’s call log records your recent calls, and has plenty of room: we never reached the limits in our testing. You can sort your call log by incoming, missed, or outgoing. For each call you can see what time the call was made, the contact name if its recorded in your device, the date of the call, and whether you were roaming when it occurred. You can also save the number to your contacts. You don’t get information about call duration for either individual or total calls.
During a call you get a screen that shows you the number you are calling and the duration of the call. On screen buttons allow you to hang up, start the speakerphone, put the call on hold, switch to the keypad to make an additional call or mute the call. If you put the call on hold you get the option to add another call to the conversation. There is no option to record the call. Once a call is complete, if the number isn’t already recorded in your contacts the Treo 700p will helpfully offer to save the number in your contacts or add the number to an existing contact.
We liked the Treo 700p’s call management features, they provide an average assortment of options compared to other handsets, but are better organized and easier to use than most handsets.
Startup to Call (3.16)
The Treo 700p does not give you the option to turn the phone off completely as most phones do. Rather, hitting the end button (which doubles as a “power” key) simply puts the phone into standby. In order to do our startup to call test (which simulates making a call from the phone being turned off) we had to remove and replace the battery for each call. We did this 5 times and called a different phone number each time. We measured the total time from startup until we hit the send key. The average for startup to call for the Treo 700p was 31.6 seconds. This is quick for a smart phone, which can often take up to a minute, but slow for phones in general
Ring Volume (7.8)
We measured the loudest of the ringtones in the 700p at a loud 78db. That’s pretty loud, and should be loud enough to hear if it is in a bag or a coat pocket.
Ringtone Customizability (1.0)
The Treo 700p does not allow you to use music files as ringtones. You can, however, download ringtones from Sprint’s own online store for $2.50, plus tax.
Non Audio Alerts (6.0)
The Treo 700p’s vibrate alert is vigorous: it can easily be felt in a pocket. Conveniently, you can switch to vibrate alert simply by moving the switch located on the top of the phone. There is no specific silent mode (which turns off both the ringer and vibrate feature), but you can turn both off via the sounds application, leaving just the screen to flash when a call comes in.
We were disappointed that the Treo 700p does not support standard phone profiles, however the vibrate switch does provide a nice feature that most phones are lacking.
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