October 2005

as many of you may know, i have been using the palm treo650 for a few months now as my primary cell phone/pda/etc. device. however, a few weeks ago, i decided that i had had enough of the treo 650’s “quirks” and switched to the blackberry 7100t directly from t-mobile.

i know what you are thinking. am i not the one who talked smack against locked devices tied to one carrier? did i not spent extra money and get the unlocked treo 650 to avoid this exact trap? the answer is, of course, yes. as i have used the treo these last months i have come to realize that its a great device that does many things but none of them particularly well. plus, i have decided that despite some spotty coverage in LA, t-mobile has been a good company to work with and i don’t mind giving them my money (at least for one more year).

one of its major weaknesses of the treo 650 is the phone. i have come to realize that the phone part of a device like this is one of the most important parts. i need the phone to work and work as much of the time as possible. i understand network dead spots and all that and i can live with it. what i can’t live with is a device that after losing connection with the cell network, needs to be completely reset before it will send or receive calls again. this doesn’t happen all the time with the treo 650, but it does happen enough so that it became quite annoying.

the blackberry, in contrast, does not have this problem. it works well as a phone and gets reception in places i never had a signal with the treo 650, even with its external antenna. so, kudos to the blackberry on this score. also, if i am ever in a place with minimal or no reception (which happens very frequently here in LA) the blackberry doesn’t freak out and need to be reset. it simply waits until it has a signal again and then goes about its business without complaint. i like that in a device. i want to be able to use the device for what it is intended to be used for and not have the device get in the way or hinder that use. that’s a major reason i use a mac instead of a windows pc.

plus, the email functionality on the treo 650 is marginal at best. in order to improve it, i ended up having to install a third-part application called snappermail and not use the included versamail application (which sucks big time). now that i have been using the blackberry for a couple of weeks, i know what all the fuss is about. if someone sends me an email, the email comes to the blackberry. i don’t have to launch an application and call for the email and download it to the blackberry like i do with the treo. it simply is “pushed” out to my blackberry when it is sent and i have it. that’s a great feature that i didn’t know i wanted until i had it. now, i will never go back.

there are many other ways in which the treo falls short of what it was intended to do. it’s a great idea for a device that was poorly realized. the palm os simply isn’t robust enough to handle the demands put on it by a device like the treo 650. palm feels this way as well, i think, or they would not be putting out a windows mobile version of the treo and perhaps a linux powered one as well. i, of course, would love to see an osx mobile smartphone/pda/ipod but i won’t hold my breath for that one. although, it could happen. and i would be right in line to get one.

so, anybody wanna buy a slightly used unlocked treo 650?