Palm Treo 750 Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on March 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported Email Services (6.5)
The Treo 750 is a messaging device, as you would expect from the included QWERY keyboard. The included Pocket Outlook offers the ability to use most email accounts, including standard POP3 and IMAP4 accounts. The email client also attempts to configure your email automatically. However, when we tested this feature with a Yahoo, Gmail and AOL account none of them could be set up automatically. Windows Mobile 5 on the Treo 750 also includes pocket MSN, which allows you to easily set up a hotmail account for use in Pocket Outlook. This is a nice extra since free Hotmail accounts do not support POP3 or IMAP4 so most cell phone email clients do not support it. Pocket Outlook is a solid messaging client that will give you access to almost any type of email account you need, we just wish that its automatic configuration feature worked better with popular services.
Push Email (4.0)
The Palm Treo 750 comes equipped for both Exchange push email and Good. Other popular push email options like Blackberry, Seven, and Intellisync are not available out of the box, but you can likely find a client like Blackberry Connect that will support them. Whatever your push email solution, it’s likely that the Treo 750 will be able to support it, either out of the box or with third party software.
Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
The Treo 750 supports up to 6 different email accounts on the included Pocket Outlook. This includes an account that you synchronize with either your Outlook desktop or over the air using Exchange Server. This is not as many as the Blackberry 8703e’s 10 accounts, but should be sufficient for most users.
HTML and Attachments (4.0)
The Palm Treo 750 does not support HTML encoded email. This is an update that is provided by Windows Mobile 6, and although rumored, there is no confirmation that the 750 will be upgraded to the new operating system. Attachments are supported on the 750, allowing you to view and edit Word and Excel documents using Word Mobile and Excel Mobile. You can also view, but not edit Powerpoint documents using Powerpoint Mobile. Support for PDF is provided by the Picsel PDF Viewer. We were disappointed however to discover that zip files were not supported, although you can obtain third party software to add this functionality. The Treo 750 compares well with the Blackberry 8703e which was able to view, but not edit, Excel files as well as Powerpoint, PDF, and zip files. The 8703e however was not able to view or edit Word files, and we like that the 750’s attachment capabilities are not dependent on server side functionality.
Email Customization (0.0)
Outlook Mobile on the Treo 750 does not support any email customization options. You cannot change your font, font size, or color. You also can’t change the way your messages are displayed, for example, email height and views. You can however add signatures to outgoing emails. Still, we were disappointed by the lack of options available on the 750.
Time to a New Email Message (8.97)
To test how easy it is to send a new email message, we time how long it takes to go from standby to a new message dialogue. We repeat this test 5 times and then take the average as our score. The Treo 750 took only 2.23 seconds on average to get to a new message dialogue. This is an excellent score, faster than both the Treo 700p’s 2.7 seconds and the Blackberry 8703e’s 3.04 seconds. The Treo 750 is helped significantly by the fact that the email application is assigned to the left soft key on the Today screen, and that the new message command is assigned to the same key in the Outlook Mobile. The speed with which you can get to a new message dialogue reflects the 750’s capabilities as a messaging device.
Email Usability (10.5)
Outlook Mobile on the Treo 750 is a very usable program. Most functions can be accessed using the controls. Messages are organized in a chronological list by default. You move up and down this list using the D-Pad and pressing in on the action key will open the message in a new window. You can then use the OK key to minimize it and go back to your message list. Switching between accounts is equally easy, simply hit left or right on the directional pad while in the message list and you can move to the next or previous email account. This is easier than the Treo 700p where you can only access new accounts through the menu system.
You can filter your views using a drop down menu in the top right that is only accessible using the touch screen. Filters include message type, from, received and subject. Accessing a different folder is also done using the touch screen as there is a drop down list in the top left. Both of these functions can also be accessed through the menu system that is accessed via the left soft key, however, the functions are buried two menus deep.
A new message can be started using the left soft key in the message list. When you are composing a message, you can easily move between fields using the D-Pad. You are placed in the To: field by default, but Cc and Bcc fields can be accessed simply by moving the cursor up. Overall, we were very pleased with the ease of use of Pocket Outlook. Although it is a more complicated interface then the Blackberry 8703e where everything is accessed using a scroll wheel’s up/down action, it is intuitive and almost as quick.
Supported IM Services (2.0)
The Treo 750 supports instant messaging via MSN using the built in Pocket MSN client. It does not support any other services; however you can easily add these in using third party applications. Given that the 750 runs Windows Mobile, it is not surprising that it only supports MSN, but many phones nowadays support multiple instant messaging services out of the box. That being said, it should be noted that many instant messaging clients on phones charge you a text message every time you send or receive and IM using their built in clients, while Pocket MSN does not.
MMS Support (9.0)
MMS messaging on the Treo 750 is integrated into a single messaging client that includes MMS and SMS. This is different from most Windows Mobile phones where SMS and MMS are part of the Outlook Mobile client. We don’t like that MMS messaging has been moved to a separate application, but at least it is integrated with SMS.
We must admit however that this new application provides some benefits. For example, just like messaging on the Treo 700p the Palm messaging client on the 750 supports threaded messaging. This organizes your MMS and SMS messages into conversations as you would see on a chat client. You can easily turn any SMS message into an MMS message by opening the menu with the left soft key and choosing the “add media” function.
You can also send an MMS message directly from the Treo 750’s Pictures & Video application. Simply select the media you want to send and choose Send from the left soft key menu. Unfortunately, the 750 will not automatically resize large videos to send via MMS so make sure you use the lower resolution size. MMS is also integrated into the camera application, allowing you to send a still image directly from the preview using the left soft key and send button again.
Overall, we found MMS support on the Treo 750 to be very similar to that on the Treo 700p, which means that it is very good. We just wish that Palm had found some way to integrate the messaging client with Outlook Mobile.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (10.0)
To test smiley face interpretation, we send our phone a text message with four common smiley faces. We then see if the phone interprets them correctly. The Treo 750 handled our test perfectly, with every character smiley turned into a graphic one. The Treo 750 also supports automatic insertion of 16 popular smileys into SMS or MMS messages using at the bottom of the messaging application. Overall, we found that the Treo 750’s smiley support was just as good as the excellent Treo 700p and much better than the Blackberry 8703e which did not successfully interpret any of our test smileys.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (8.0)
The messaging application that Palm built into the Treo 750 is superficially similar in basic presentation to Outlook Mobile, which allows Windows Mobile users familiar with the interface to use it easily. Because messages are organized into conversations you do not see a list of messages, but rather a list of contacts or phone number with which you have ongoing conversations. These are arranged in chronological order, with the conversation that has the most recent message at the top. Like Outlook Mobile, the left soft key allows you to access the new message dialogue, while the right soft key gives you access to the menu.
Selecting a conversation and pressing the action key will take you to a chat like interface. The top part of the pane is a chronological listing of all the messages that have gone back and forth with this contact. The bottom of the pane is where you cursor starts and provides space for you to type out a new message. Again, turning a message into an MMS is a simple as opening the left soft menu and choosing “Add Media”. The bottom of the interface shows a character counter that tells you how many characters you have typed and how many messages it will take to send it. To the left of this are two icons for inserting a smiley or quick text. You can also access these function through the left soft key menu.
One thing we were disappointed by is the inability to send messages to groups. You can send messages to multiple recipients, but they must be entered or selected from your contacts one at a time. We were pleased to see however that like Outook Mobile auto completion is present, allowing you to search through your contacts simply by typing out their name.
Overall, we found the SMS/MMS client on the Treo 750 very easy to use. Palm did a good job of adding a messaging client that will be familiar both to users of Windows Mobile and those who previously used the client on Palm OS.
Time to New SMS Message (4.24)
To test how easy it is to send a text message, we time how long it takes to go from standby to a new message dialogue. We repeat this 5 times and report the average. This procedure took an average of 2.36 seconds on the Treo 750. Although there were multiple ways of accessing the messaging client, we found the fasts to be through the Start menu using the “M” key to launch it automatically once the Start menu was open. 2.36 seconds is a very good score, faster than the Blackberry’s also good score of 2.88 seconds, but not as fast as the Treo 700p’s excellent score of 1.4 seconds.
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