The Treo is the brainchild of Handspring who are the main force behind the Palm handheld devices and the Palm OS for pocket digital assistants and the 600 is a mobile phone  built on the Palm OS and in fact most of a Palm organiser. It's mobile credentials are fairly good with  quad band, full GPRS always on data support and SMS / MMS and its battery should be good for 6 hours of talk time and a 10 day standby presuming you don't use the PDA features too heavily. The PDA functions call upon the 144 MHz ARM processor and uses the inbuilt  32 MB of memory to store data and run the applications  (24 MB available), this can be further augmented using the SD / MMC slot which will support up to 1gb of extra space.

The device measures 112 x 60 x 22mm and weighing 168 grams which makes it a shade heavier than your standard phone and its a bit bigger too but then it's comparable to the O2 XDA or any of the other PDA / Mobile combo's available.

But the Treo 600's main selling point is the qwerty keyboard which allows for very fast data entry and makes sms messaging simple, the buttons are a bit small and even a little stiff but their bevel makes them easy to find and make sure you are pushing the right key. Perhaps those with very big fingers might find it a struggle but compared to the predictive text input of most phones this is a joy to use.

The real key to the phones ease of use is the navigation pad which sits above the main keypad, this 4 way rocker pad and central acknowledgement button are used to navigate the phones functions and is almost the only input you need for the majority of browsing and application surfing. A good example of its use is that of accessing speed dials, on LP's current Sony Ericsson phones its a cumbersome operation needing to remember which number they are behind or using the stylus, but here you can press once to call up a scrollable list of numbers which are selected with a second push.

And that is possibly the best selling point of the Treo 600 no need to reach for a stylus or master some ancient graffiti wiring script you get a simple and fast navigation method and a full qwerty keyboard.

So what do you do with all this easy navigation and control, well we found that the organiser abilities of the Treo were 1st class, sure it's not pocket PC class with pocket outlook and word, but the contact list and calendar are easy to use and powerful enough for when you are out and about. The email application allowed us to access the Lordpercy.com email accounts with ease through the pop 3 client and using the blazer browser we were able to login and get today's stats.

Perhaps the ability to lock down the Treo 600 will be a winner with corporate, until now they have been limited to that pocket calculator look alike the Blackberry. The Treo boasts enough functions to help secure access to the corporate WAN meaning you can have something stylish provided FOC (should your boss agree).

The VGA camera is ok, now we never expect much of a VGA resolution camera anyway but the Treo's one is a bit lacklustre and struggles in low light, plus it is soon to be outclassed by phones with cameras in excess of 1.2 mega pixels.

So what's missing, well the regulars may have noticed that we haven't looked at connectivity, sure you'd expect bundles of ways to connect on an executive phone at this level right? err well no sorry. Sadly the Treo has IrDA and a cabled hot sync to a PC or Mac but no WiFi or even Bluetooth, this seems like a serious oversight on a phone of this calibre, wifi would be great but BT is essential.

 We managed to add an SD Bluetooth card and wifi ones are available too but we didn't expect to have to use the expansion slot on the top of the treo to provide something that is now part of the fixtures and fittings on almost every new phone.

Overall this is a competent phone with a fantastic interface and easy to use when out and about, there are lots of little extras like the speakerphone facility and the facility to work with over 17,000 palm applications but without some form of wireless connectivity the £399 Treo 600 will need an immediate upgrade of about £70 - £100 to add the Bluetooth of WiFi SD card.

Would we do it? well yes its a lovely piece of engineering and worthy of a recommendation but sadly its unlikely to sell in big numbers in the UK which might just prove to be its attraction to those techies who want to stand out from the crowd.

Applications included -

Contact List; Calendar; SMS; MMS/ Photo Messaging; Blazer Web Browser; Camera software, including photo viewer; To Do List; Memo Pad; Advanced Calculator; CityTime world clock; Desktop synchronization: Palm™ Desktop 4.1 for Windows and Macintosh; HotSync® Manager; Link to Microsoft Outlook (Windows only); Email options: POP3 email client included

More Smartphones -

[ Up ] [ Treo 600 ] [ Nokia 6630 Smartphone ] [ iMate PDA2K Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P910 ] [ Nokia 7610 Multimedia Phone ] [ iMate Jam Review ] [ Asus P505 ] [ Nokia 7710 Review ] [ iMate SP5 Review ] [ Nokia N80 Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P990i ] [ Nokia E61 Review ] [ Blackberry 7130g Review ] [ Treo 680 Review ] [ Nokia E60 Review ] [ Smartphones ] [ O2 XDA Exec Review ] [ Sony Ericsson M600i ] [ iMate JasJar Review ] [ iMate Kjam Review ] [ Nokia 6670 Review ] [ iMate SP3i Smartphone Review ] [ Sony Ericsson P900 ] [ Treo 650 Review ]