Palm Treo 700p Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on March 15, 2007 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
Accessing Music Software (6.45)
Getting music to start playing on your Treo 700p is fairly simple. From the main menu start up the pTunes application that is bundled with the device. Once you are in the pTunes program, simply hit the enter key to start music playing on the preloaded playlist. In our tests it took an average of only 3.1 seconds to complete this procedure. This is a very good score, and as we’ve seen in so many other places on the 700p, getting to the application you want is easy to do.Dedicated Music Control (4.0)
The only buttons on the Treo 700p that affect music playback are the volume up/down keys; to skip tracks or stop the music you have to go back into the pTunes application. Those wishing to use the 700p as a dedicated music player should reassign one of the hardware keys to pTunes. The 700p is not a media centric device, so we can forgive it the lack of hardware keys, those looking for a smart phone with dedicated media controls have several options, such as the Cingular 3125 or T-Mobile SDA.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.0)
The pTunes software that is bundled with the Treo 700p provides basic music playback functionality, but it is a pity it is not more controllable. The software allows you to play music in the background, even when the phone is in standby mode. Unfortunately the software doesn’t support things like album art, visualizations or rating your music. It does however automatically update your library with mp3 files on the phone and the memory card.
PTunes allows you to playback and create playlists as well as recognizing standard idv3 tags found on mp3 files. You can sort through your music based on artist, album or genre, but cannot search actively for titles. The 700p’s music software provides average functionality and organizational abilities. Overall, for a device as expensive as the Treo we would have liked to see a more complete music software option.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Treo 700p does not support any over the air downloading services, including Sprint’s.
Streaming (4.0)
The Treo 700p supports streaming online audio through its own player associated with the web browser (not through pTunes). This player supports streaming audio in either mp3 or wma format. It does not support aac or real. The software is sufficient for most streaming radio stations, and a step above what most phones offer, but only average for a smart phone.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Treo 700p does not have any dedicated software to synchronize, download and organize podcasts, although the built in pTunes application will certainly playback mp3 podcasts. Given how popular podcasts are becoming as a medium it would have been nice to see this kind of support on the device. That being said, you can probably add this functionality in with third party software.
Music Sync with PC (3.0)
The Palm Treo 700p allows you to synchronize your mp3 music with your PC through Windows Media Player. On a Mac you need to use the send to handheld function (iTunes synchronization is not available). Although the Windows Media Player support is nice, we have not found it to be completely reliable. Frankly the 700p is not alone in the phone industry in failing to find a reliable and easy to use synchronization solution for media. With the 700p, the search continues.
Music Formats and DRM (1.0)
The pTunes application that comes with the Treo 700p will only playback unprotected mp3 files. This means that you will be unable to use any wma or aac protected music purchased from online music stores. You can purchase an upgrade to the pTunes application that will allow you to listen to wma files (including protected wma files) for $29.95. For a device that costs as much as the 700p you would have liked to see the upgraded version of pTunes with its additional format support come standard.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Treo 700p automatically pauses music playback when you receive an incoming phone call. When the call is over it automatically resumes playback. This happens without any problems, which is a nice touch as many handsets will simply mute the background music, leaving it to run while you are on the call.
Video
Video Software Access (4.0)
The Pics & Videos application that is built into the 700p is basic, but works. We found that it took 5 seconds to go from the home screen to hitting play on a video that was stored in a playlist. And most of this was spent scrolling down the home page screen to find the photos and videos application.
Video Controls (4.0)
The video controls of the Pics & Videos application are basic, to put it mildly: the directions control moves you from one button (such as the fast forward, play and rewind button) and the center button activates the control, but you can’t fast forward through videos or change the playback speed.
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
Videos can be added to playlists, and there is an option to expand a video to fill the screen (although most still end up with black bars at the top because of the square screen). And, erm, that’s it: you can’t sort videos, categorize them or otherwise filter them.
Video Sync with PC (4.0)
Videos are converted to the 3GPP format that the 700p can deal with by the Palm desktop application. This does an adequate job, but you have to manually drag files into the right spot to be converted: it can’t automatically synch the videos you want.
Video Formats (2.0)
The 700p was able to play back files in the 3GPP video format, but it wasn’t able to play back Mpeg4, WMV or other format videos.
Video DRM (0.0)
No support is provided for video files protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) features. So, you can’t play back videos purchased from stores like iTunes.
Video Playback Smoothness (6.0)
Our test videos played back reasonably smoothly, although there was some jerkiness in the higher bitrates files, and when we expanded the videos to fill the screen.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The 700p does not support any online video downloading services.
Video Streaming (unscored)
We don’t score on video streaming, as so much of the process is dependent on the streaming service. On the 700p, streaming videos are handled by the Pics & Videos application, and it did a pretty reasonable job of handling 3GPP streaming videos. It declined, however, to play back streaming videos in Windows Media format.
| Previous Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
