My 2 cents on the Palm Treo 750 - Treo Forums

Warren1 · 11-08-2007, 10:04 PM

Hi all, I am new here and as such I thought as an amateur but very interested non technical person I would share my views on the Palm Treo 750 handset that I purchased a few months ago.

Previously I owned the old Palm Tungsten plus a Nokia phone. Like many people I wanted to consolidate my PDA and phone as carrying both around with me was a pain. I have to say that overall, I love the 750. Here are the

Advantages

1 Syncs beautifully with 2 computers - home and work. (the old Palm Tungsten OS was a terrible sync with Microsoft Outlook often giving me duplicate tasks, notes, calender items, contacts etc.) Occasionally it doesn't like to Sync but this is quite irregular and simply requires taking the sync cord out and in again. I use all the functions on outlook - tasks, notes, calender and contacts. Recurring entry calender for birthdays, meetings etc works nicely. Very happy running on the windows operating system.

2 Phone is excellent - especially the loud speaker which is important to me especially when driving. Very easy to use, good reception, user friendly, I like the ability to be able to make calls with one hand. I love the ability to be able to know how long your on the phone for and the ability to go to notes, tasks etc whilst on the phone. Often I need to give someone details from the calender and notes whilst speaking to them. Very easy to do. Best not to be driving whilst attempting this. ;)

3 Emailing for sending and receiving and picking up attachment is excellent. I mainly use an external email which gets picked up through the "3" (my service provider) pop server and it then finds its way into my handset at a quick speed. Very few dramas. Sending emails is also very easy. I have it set so that I manually ask for any emails...works well

4 Internet is very good. The odd niggle as a result of trying to get the web page to fit into the small screen but overall I'm very happy with it.

5 Look, size and feel, very good. I thought it would be too big but that hasn't proven a problem. Nice to be able to do everything with one hand. Something more difficult with other windows handsets like the Dopod or O2.

6 Very easy to swap a sym card from one network to another. In the odd situation where "3" doesn't work I simply put a Telstra pre-paid sym card in and it works fine.

7 The camera whilst only a 1.5 mega pixle is easy to download the pictures on to the computer/send as email/send as text.

Disadvantages

1 Short battery life - I have dealt with this by purchasing an off market thicker battery. This makes the back of the phone bulkier but well worth the $60 I spent. It restricts covers you can use to only the silican one.

2 I found Blue tooth a nightmare. Didn't work, couldn't be bothered changing the phone from blue tooth on and off each time to save battery life. The reception was very poor. Confusing to use and I couldn't be bothered charging the blue tooth ear piece every week or so. Decided to stick with the cord ear piece and loud speaker. Very happy with that no headache option.

3 When you have the internet going, it is a pain to shut down. You need to go to start - settings - system - memory - running program - and stop to close internet down. Too difficult and something that should be corrected in the next update.

4 It would be nice to have a better silent/non silent/vibrate/non vibrate option. As it is, all you can do is choose between silent and non silent. Occasionally I would like silent with vibrate, silent without vibrate, one beep rings etc. Those options don't exist on this phone or are at least difficult to change the settings if you wish to.

5 The search is a bit average. It would be nice to be able to search more than simply the name. With Microsoft outlook with your PC you can search everything in the contact/notes etc. No ability to search the notes or calender. This is something I recall you could do with the old Palm Tungstens.

Improvements

As a result of the latest software upgrade I can now

1 easily go to loud speaker which was more difficult prior. You previously had to go menu - loudspeaker. Now it is simply a matter of pressing a button on the front of your screen. A big plus.

2 The sync cable now charges your phone whilst you are working. Another big advantage if you spend many hours in front of your computer.

3. When someone leaves a message it downloads as an email and I can listen to it through the windows media player. This saves me the cost of calling up my voice mail as it costs nothing to do it this way. This was an unexpected advantage.

Other issues

I purchased it when it was first released and found a lot of early niggles. Those appear to have disappeared now. I spent many hours on the phone originally to my service provider 3 (a subsidiary of Hutchinson I believe) and occasionally Palm. Very few calls of late. The upgrades have ironed out a lot of problems with the sync and operating system.

Overall I would say that 60% of the handset I would use as a PDA and 40% as a phone.

I guess you could say my "whole life is on that handset." I feel with this handset they have finally mastered the convergance of the PDA and phone.

Warren

supamanning18 · 11-08-2007, 10:51 PM

Great write up Warren!! Enjoyed the read... i too, am very happy with the 750

crayZlair · 11-08-2007, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warren1

3 When you have the internet going, it is a pain to shut down. You need to go to start - settings - system - memory - running program - and stop to close internet down. Too difficult and something that should be corrected in the next update.

Warren

I don't have internet access anymore(too pricey for no more than I used it), but AIR all you have to do is click on the connected icon at the top of the screen. That takes you directly to the shut down screen.

Warren1 · 11-08-2007, 11:15 PM

Has anyone tried a GPS with it? How does it work. Is it worth doing or are I better buying a seperate unit not connected to the handset? At the moment I am still using the old hard copy street directory.

Warren1 · 11-11-2007, 12:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crayZlair

I don't have internet access anymore(too pricey for no more than I used it), but AIR all you have to do is click on the connected icon at the top of the screen. That takes you directly to the shut down screen.

I tried clicking on the connected item but it didn't take me there. What did take me there was simply holding down the OK key for 2 seconds. Problem fixed.

Warren1 · 11-11-2007, 04:21 PM

I just found the "search" item in the programs which I have added as a "menu" so the access is as easy as pressing the start key. I guess that ticks off another disadvantage. The search funtion does everything I would want it to do. That will teach me to read my manual in the future. On that basis, the only disadvantages I have with the phone is

1 The silent/non silent/vibrate options.

2 Bluetooth

3 Battery life.

Everything else about the phone is excellent IMO. In respect of item 2 and 3 I have thankfully found remedial solutions. (see post 1) In respecrt of item 1, you would think that the designers would have made it easier to give you more options than simply silent with vibrate on or off OR non silent with a designated ring tone. Especially when you consider that Nokia has had that option for years.

bille · 06-27-2008, 08:18 AM

Warren you mention about BT connection, I tried a Motorola H700 and people said it was hopeless, my voice sounded muffled, also it didn't feel that secure.

I spoke to the dealer who gave me a Blueant Z9 to use and it is brilliant, I've asked most of the contacts who used to complain about the H700 and they weren't aware I was even using a headset, one even said glad to hear you've binned the that bloody gadjet.

fastlerner · 06-27-2008, 11:01 AM

BT has always worked flawlessly on mine, both with headseats, ActiveSynd and Internet Sharing. I think a lot of that depends on your headset (I use a jawbone).

The whole silent/vibe thing has never been an issue either. The switch on top toggles between silent/non-silent very easily. In the sounds & notifications section, you can choose how each event should be handled in each state. If you like you can have an event vibe or not in either or both silent and non-silent.

But I see what you're saying. It doesn't support multiple sound profiles like many cell phones do, though I do enjoy the simplicity of the hard switch on top.

Warren1 · 06-27-2008, 09:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fastlerner

BT has always worked flawlessly on mine, both with headseats, ActiveSynd and Internet Sharing. I think a lot of that depends on your headset (I use a jawbone).

The whole silent/vibe thing has never been an issue either. The switch on top toggles between silent/non-silent very easily. In the sounds & notifications section, you can choose how each event should be handled in each state. If you like you can have an event vibe or not in either or both silent and non-silent.

But I see what you're saying. It doesn't support multiple sound profiles like many cell phones do, though I do enjoy the simplicity of the hard switch on top.

I have to say that after owning the phone for over a year now I have no problems with the switch on the top and do enjoy the simplicity of going from silent to non silent. As for BT - I haven't bothered with it as I found it not that great. I certainly couldn't be bothered turning it off an on with the phone every time I wanted to use it to save battery life and I didn't like the idea of having another product to charge on a regular basis. I have stuck with the old cord ear piece which is more than adequate.

As I said...other than a few niggles, (see my other long post) it's the best phone I have ever had. Where as most people would tell you that their phone would be used 80 - 90% as a phone and 10 - 20% other features. I would say I am about 70% PDA and 30% phone and I am a very high end phone user. As mentioned in the post above one of the great features with windows 6 and/or the Three service is that you can download your messages as an email and play them in windows media. Very simple to do. As easy as downloading any other email. As a result you don't have to pay to collect your messages. This probably saves me $30 a month. Hopefully that function won't be removed in the future as it no doubt costs the phone companies a fortune.

I have to admit I am a little addicted, I think my wife thinks I'm more dedicated to my Palm 750 than her at times.

bille · 06-27-2008, 10:22 PM

Warren, I'm interested in the downloading of messages as an email as I don't make many outgoing calls but get a lot of incoming business related messages and calls.

Can you give me some directions how to set this process up, I'm not with 3 but want to see if I can do it with Telstra.

Bill