Palm Treo 750 Cell Phone Review - Software
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Alfredo Padilla Published on March 17, 2007 Comment on this |
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OS (8.5)
The Palm Treo 750 runs Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition. Windows Mobile is one of the major smart phone operating systems on the market. Like almost all current smart phone operating systems, Windows Mobile 5 does have some stability issues. If you demand a lot from it in terms of multitasking or install many third party programs, you may see some stability issues or slowing in responsiveness. A soft reset usually addresses these issues, and most average users will not see many problems.
Despite this, Windows Mobile has come a long way in the past few years and now provides users with a range of business and multimedia functionality as well as much more flexibility than you would get on a regular cell phone. Most of the applications that we discuss in this review are standard for Windows Mobile. Some have been enhanced by Palm, and when this is the case, we mention it.
Getting around Windows Mobile 5 is fairly straight forward. Your favorite applications are listed in the Start menu, which can always be accessed by tapping on the upper left corner of the screen or by using the hardware key on the 750. Applications can be minimized by tapping on the X or OK that appears on the top left of application screens, or again by using the dedicated hardware keys. These dedicated hardware keys make navigating through Windows Mobile very simple on the Treo 750.
We award a standard set of points to all Windows Mobile devices. Any improvements that result from Palm enhancements are awarded in the specific section to which they apply.
Home Screen Score (9.0)
The Today screen in Windows Mobile is meant to be the center of your smart phone experience. Unlike many regular phones where you can only change the shortcut keys, or even a smart device like the Treo 700p where the home screen is simply a list of applications, the Windows Mobile today screen attempts to provide you with pertinent information from important applications, as well as shortcuts and other useful services. It is also very customizable, allowing you to turn plugins on and off or install new ones to meet your needs.
Palm has taken advantage of the Windows Mobile Today screen’s flexibility to add a great deal of functionality to the Treo 750. In addition to standard Windows Mobile plug-ins that allow you to view information from and access programs like you calendar, mail and tasks Palms has added several of their own plug-ins. These include a speed dial plugin that allows you to add speed dials directly to the home screen. These speed dials can either appear as buttons on screen or you can use contact photos if you have them.
Palm has also added a plug-in that allows you to dial phone numbers directly from the home screen. You can simply begin typing out a phone number or a contact’s name to look up their number. Palm has also added a search bar that allows you to easily enter in a query and launch a Google search directly from your home page. Finally, Palm has assigned the left soft key on the home screen to a menu that gives you access to several useful functions, like managing your home screen options, speed dials and opening your contacts. If you don’t want all of this functionality you can just turn off all the plug-ins and leave yourself with a clean and simple home screen.
The combination of an already powerful and flexible home screen interface via the Windows Mobile Today screen together with Palm’s enhancements make this one of the best home screens we have seen on a phone.
Extensibility (6.0)
The Palm Treo 750 runs Windows Mobile 5, a smart phone operating system that is one of the most extensible on the market today. Although different in interface, it is similar to the Nokia E62’s S60 OS and the Blackberry 8703e’s Palm OS in that there are hundreds of third party applications available for you to install. One caveat however is that the Treo 750 uses a square screen, while most Windows Mobile devices have traditionally used a 3:4 orientation screen. While many programs have now been updated to work on the square screen, you may find that some older programs have not. You will also find that fewer games are available for square screens. We also noted that Palm choose not to include a Java midlet manager, meaning that you will not be able to download and use Java games and programs such as Opera Mini or Google maps.
Despite these limitations however, the Treo 750 is head and shoulders above regular phones in terms of extensibility. The catalogue of applications that will work on the Treo is still larger than the total number of applications available for the Blackberry platform, albeit not as large as the total number of Windows Mobile 5 applications.
Customizability (8.0)
As a smart phone the Treo 750 has a range of options available to customize your experience on the device. You can change the look of the phone with themes, 3 are available on the device by default but many more can be purchased or downloaded for free from the internet. You can also globally change how large text is, although you cannot change the font type. As we’ve discussed, you have a multitude of options for changing the look and functionality on your home screen. You can also use any photo on the device as a home screen background.
If you don’t like the programs that are listed in the Start menu by default, you can change those. You can change which sounds are played or not played for most events on the phone, and you can change your regional settings if you live in a different part of the world than the United States. Finally, because Windows Mobile 5 is an extensible operating system, you can install third party programs that can significantly change the look and feel of the device. Compared to regular phones, the options to customize the look and feel of your Treo 750 are much better. Even compared to smart devices like the Treo 700p or the Blackberry 8703e, the 750 is slightly ahead due to the customizability of the home screen.
OS Responsivness (6.0)
Windows Mobile 5 on the Palm Treo 750 does OK in terms of responsiveness. For the most part, you will not notice significantly lag, but you will notice small pauses the first time a program is launched or if you have many applications running at the same time. This can become even more noticeable if you have processor intensive tasks like video running. Compared to the Treo 700p running Palm OS and the Blackberry 8703e running Blackberry’s OS, two of the most responsive smart phones we have ever used, the 750 does lag behind a bit. We did find though that it performed slightly better than other Windows Mobile devices like the Cingular 8525. We are not sure if this is due to hardware issues or a result of Palm’s enhancements, but we did notice that the 750 had more free RAM than we would normally see on a Windows Mobile 5 device.
Gaming (4.3)
The Palm Treo 750 ships with Bubble Breaker and Solitaire. These are fully featured versions of the games, which we appreciate and are distracting enough that you can kill an hour train ride by playing one or the other. As we mentioned above, the range of games available for the Palm Treo 750 is less than other Windows Mobile 5 devices due to the square screen. That being said, we were still able to find 149 games for the Treo 750 on Handango.com. Unfortunately, due to the lack of a Java midlet manager you will not be able to install and play Java games. The controls on the Treo 750 are average for gaming. The large directional pad and soft keys make moving around and accessing functions fairly easy. Many games for Windows Mobile require you to interact with the touch screen, and in this case, the smaller screen resolution on the 750 does make for a slightly more cramped interface. Overall, we felt the 750 was an average gaming platform, nowhere near the functionality available from a Nokia N-Gage but better than the Blackberry 8703e or the Razr V3m.
Browser Features (8.0)
Internet Explorer Mobile on the Palm Treo 750 offers good functionality for a mobile web browser. It supports WAP and HTML, as well as Javascript. Images, encryption, frames and cookies are also supported. You can save images found on web pages to your device; however you cannot save an entire web page. More advanced features such as automatic RSS feed management, password management, and auto fill for fields are not available in Internet Explorer Mobile. Neither is Flash, although a plug-in is available free from Adobe. Although we were pleased with the range of functionality available, Internet Explorer Mobile does not offer many of the advanced features available from the excellent Series 60 web browser or third party products like Opera.
Browsing Interface (6.5)
Internet Explorer Mobile on the Palm Treo 750 offers a good range of interface options. Web pages can be rendered in three different ways, desktop lets you view the pages as you would see it on your desktop, but requires a significant amount of scrolling to get around. The default view organizes information from the web site into columns, while single column view organizes information into a single column that fits within one screen width. You can choose from five zoom levels that change the size of text on your screen. You move around the screen using the directional pad, which moves from link to link. You an also use the scroll bar on the touch screen to move up or down. One Palm optimization is that holding down the option key and pressing up/down will page up and down. Option left will move you to the top of the page, while open right moves you to the bottom.
You history is organized into a simple chronological list of the web sites you have visited. History is saved between sessions and you can set how many days of history are saved in your options. Bookmarks can be organized into folders and edited after you have created them. One small issue that we noticed is that unlike the smartphone version of Windows Mobile 5, you cannot change a bookmark’s folder once it has been saved. Bookmarks are organized alphabetically, and you can jump directly to a letter by hitting the appropriate key on the QWERTY keyboard. You cannot search through your history or bookmarks.
The left soft key will take you to favorites if you have just opened the browser, otherwise it acts as the back key. The left soft key opens a menu that gives you access to browser functions and settings. Inside the options, you can change you home screen, history, and security settings. You can also clear out your history, cache, or cookies manually.
More advanced features like tabbed browsing or viewing a full view of the website and then zooming in like the Series 60 browser are not supported. Overall, we found the interface of Internet Explorer Mobile to be well thought out and fairly easy to get around. One thing we would have liked to see in the single column view is the option to use up/down to move between links while left/right pages up or down as Opera Mini allows you to.
Browser Access Speed (8.0)
To test how easy it is to access the browser, we count the number of steps required to launch or website. We choose to use steps rather than a timed test because network conditions could have a significant impact on a timed test. Entering the URL is counted as one step. The Palm Treo 750 took 5 steps to reach our website. This is the same as the Treo 700p but better than the Blackberry 8703e’s 7 steps. We were helped by the fact that when we open the Start menu to launch Internet Explorer Mobile, we can simply hit the “I” key as a shortcut, rather than navigating to it with the directional pad. We were also helped by the fact that the browser launches with the address bar highlighted, ready for us to type in our web address.
Calculator (6.0)
The calculator on the Palm Treo 750 is better than that found on most regular phones, offering a few advanced features like square root and percentages in addition to basic arithmetic functions. It was able to handle each of our test formulas without problem. We liked the fact that the keypad and basic functions are automatically mapped to their equivalents on the 750’s keyboard. We found the calculators on the Blackberry 8703e and Treo 700p offered more functions however, including some advanced features like metric conversions.
Alarm (8.0)
The alarm on the Palm Treo 750 is part of the clock program You can set up to 3 different alarms, they can each be turned on or off and can go off on the specific days of the week that you assign. You can also set the sound to be used for the alarm, whether it will repeat, turn vibration on or off and set the screen to flash when it goes off. We found the alarm features on the Treo 750 to be significantly better than the Blackberry 8703e where you can only set a single daily alarm.
Document Software (6.0)
As a smart phone, the Palm Treo 750 allows you to both view and edit popular office documents. Word Mobile and Excel Mobile allow you to both view and edit Word and Excel documents, with a good range of features, albeit not as good as those found on the desktop. Powerpoint mobile allows you to only view powerpoint presentations. Windows Mobile 5 does not include a PDF viewer by default, but Palm has included the Picsel PDF Viewer to meet this need. Overall, we were very happy to see the range of office document software available, the Blackberry 8703e only allows you to view documents that are attached to emails. The Treo 700p does include an excellent document viewer and editor, which is able to edit Powerpoint presentations, however the 700p is not able to view standard PDF documents, requiring that you convert them on your desktop first.
Points are per format, 1 if the software can view that format (but not edit it), and 2 if it can be edited in a way that preserves the format of the document. Think about it this way: if the software allows you to view a file (but not change it), it gets 1. But if you can open a file, make changes and then send it back to someone so that they can see the changes and continue to edit it themselves, it gets 2
Additional Software (2.0)
In addition to the software discussed above, Windows Mobile 5 and Palm include additional software including a nice Tour that helps you get started with your device and a Terminal Services Client for those who need advanced access to their server. We decided to award additional points for two pieces of software. The first is the file explorer that comes standard with Windows Mobile 5. File explorer allows you to look at all the files on your device and manage them just as you would on your computer at home. For example, you can easily move a folder from your device to your storage card or copy a song from your music folder to the rings folder in order to use it as a ringtone. Windows Mobile 5 also includes a search function that allows you to search for files on your device. Although the interface is not as nice as the search feature found on the Blackberry 8703e or the Nokia E50, it is nice to have this available if you simply can’t find what you are looking for.
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