Palm Treo 500v review

Remember Palm? Yeah that handheld company that used to make one of the hottest PDAs in the world. Well most of you might give Palm devices a miss this days considering that Palm OS has more or less died. However Palm has in recent times decided to use of all thing the Windows Mobile operating system, and to be honest, the Windows Mobile based Palms aren't that bad.
So when I got my hands on the Palm Treo 500v, I thought that maybe moving to Windows Mobile isn't such a bad idea for Palm at all. So read on to see what I thought about the Palm Treo 500v.

Palm Treo 500v Specifications

Platform	Windows Mobile® 6 Standard
Display	320x240-pixel Transflective colour screen; supports 16-bit colour (up to 65K colours)
Radio	GSM/GPRS/UMTS radio GSM bands: 900/1800/1900 UMTS bands: 2100
Bluetooth® Wireless Technology	Version: 2.0 + EDR Profiles: Headset, handsfree, EDR, serial and OBEX. Mono and stereo headsets are supported
Memory	256MB memory (150MB available user storage)
Camera	2.0 megapixels with 2x digital zoom and video capture support
Battery	Removable 1200mAh, lithium-ion Talk time: 10 days standby, and up to 4.5 hours of talk time
Expansion	MicroSD card
Connector	mini USB
Dimensions	16.5mm (D) x 61.5mm (W) x 110mm (H) 120 grams
System Requirements	Windows® XP, Vista™

The Palm Treo 500v is one of the thinnest and most lightweight Treo devices to date. At 110 x 62 x 17mm and weighing it at a 120g, the Treo 500v would fit nicely in almost everyone's hands without being too bulky, as usually the case with handheld devices with a full keyboard. It is a little more wider than the Treo 750 but now so wide that it won't fit into the palm of your hand nicely. Of course this would vary from individual to individual but for me the Treo 500v had a nice heft and feel to it.

The Palm Treo 500v is one of the thinnest and most lightweight Treo devices to date. At 110 x 62 x 17mm and weighing it at a 120g, the Treo 500v would fit nicely in almost everyone's hands without being too bulky, as usually the case with handheld devices with a full keyboard. It is a little more wider than the Treo 750 but now so wide that it won't fit into the palm of your hand nicely. Of course this would vary from individual to individual but for me the Treo 500v had a nice heft and feel to it.

The design of the Treo 500v is pretty simple and sleek. Its rounded shape makes it look different than most typical Palms and I actually liked its design. Build quality wise, you'll immediately notice that the Treo 500v is made of plastic though there isn't much bending or flexing from it and if feel quite solidly built.

Button placements on the Treo 500v was also pretty intuitive and simple, with the typical Treo buttons for volume and a side key on its side and a single power button that also acts as a quick list function button for setting sound settings and other frequently used phone functions (Bluetooth or flight mode). Function and call buttons are pretty generous in size while the QWERTY keyboard, while kind of small, was still pretty easy and to use even for a person with big thumbs like me. At the bottom of the phone lies the 2.5mm socket for the headset and the mini-USB for charging and syncing. And if you're one of those people you like to hang your phone around your neck or even hang those weird lanyards on your phone, Palm has included loophole to allow the use of these things though it'll require you to use the battery cover to secure the lanyards.
The Treo 500v comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6 standard edition which means unlike the past Palm devices, the Treo 500v is not touchscreen based. I found this development from Palm pretty interesting since till now, all their devices were touchscreen which made the Treo 500v unique. The device runs on a 400 MHz PXA270 processor which ought to have made the device quite responsive. Overall the responsiveness of the Treo 500v was pretty good though I believe (considering the processor) that it could have been much better. There were certain times when it became real laggy. This however I managed to fix by closing all the programs previously opened clearing up the memory thus making it respond faster in subsequent usages. As for storage, the Treo 500v comes with 256MB of memory with a 150MB of space for storage. Should you need more there is always the option of getting a bigger capacity micro-SD card.

I'm not exactly a big fan of the Windows Mobile operating system in whatever form, but I found that WM6 with the Treo 500v was pretty easy to use. Memory hogging aside, the interface of WM6 SE combined with the well planned interface buttons of the Treo 500v made the phone easy and quite enjoyable to use. Of course most normal Palm user might feel that it's a bit weird using a Palm device with no touch screen capabilities but I found that the shortcut keys available in the system more than made up for it. It also beats having an extra accessory that you have to use just to use the phone.

One complaint I have about WM6 though is it inability to copy and paste, which is pretty ridiculous for a Windows based device. I mean what is a Windows device without the ability to copy and paste. However other than that, interface wise I didn't really find much to complain about WM6 SE on the Treo 500v.

As for battery life, I was pretty impressed with the Treo 500v. With a 1200mAh battery, the phone was rated with a 10 day standby time. In my test though the phone didn't really hit the 10 day mark, it did have a pretty impressive 4 day battery life over normal usage.

Camera and Display

I've always loved the quality of the Palm cameras and the Treo 500v is no exception. It comes with a 2.0 Megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom and video capture functions. The 2.0 megapixel on the Treo 500v is a step up from the previous 1.3 and 0.3 megapixel cameras of the previous Palm devices. As such picture taken on the Treo 500v were pretty good for a camera of its level though the quality is still best for mobile phones.(refer to the sample pictures I took below). Don't expect to throw away your normal point and shoots though as the camera still has a lot of limitations like the lack of a LED flash or light source.The shutter speed of the camera is pretty slow though as I found that the camera had a 2 second delay before pictures were taken. This resulted in some pretty blurry pictures especially since I don't have very steady hands for picture taking.

Video recording is pretty good to though the video resolution are optimised for phone viewing (at 320 x 240 resolutions). Framerates were smooth and sound qualities of the videos were pretty good and clear too.

The display screen of the Treo 500v comes with up to 65000 colours and I found that the image quality on the phone was crisp and clear (well for its size). This made video watching no problem at all and the best part was when you head to the bright outdoors, the images are still visible on the phone.

One aspect of the Treo 500v that I liked was the fact that it was widescreen. Admittedly it's a pretty small widescreen but this meant I could watch my widescreen videos on the phone in full screen without having to see to big black bars on top and at the bottom of the video. As it is the screen is pretty small so if the device were to have the typical square screens of the Palms, let's just say that video watching wouldn't have been as enjoyable.

Connectivity and Audio

Of course the most important thing to a smartphone like the Treo 500v is its connectivity. So I was a bit disappointed that it didn't come with HSDPA and WiFi support. It did have a GPRS and 3G support though and tests together with our Celcom 3G line found that the Treo 500v was did pretty well with as a general data phone. I was really disappointed though with the lack of WiFi as this would have given the Treo 500v an alternative source for data connections whenever there isn't a 3G or GPRS signal available.

Palm has also upgraded the Treo 500v to Bluetooth 2.0, which was much better than the previous Palms. This made Bluetooth data transfers faster than before and also gave an added advantage of A2DP which allows the phone to be used with most Bluetooth stereo headsets. Considering that the Treo 500v can also function as a pretty decent media player, this was a pretty handy addition. And speaking of Audio, you'll find that sound quality over the mono speakers of the Treo 500v was pretty decent though I felt that it could have been a bit louder as sometimes I couldn't hear the phone ringing, especially in really noisy areas

Overall

The Treo 500v by my standards is an ok smartphone. My prejudice for Windows Mobile based devices notwithstanding, as a smartphone, the Treo 500v doesn't really crash and burn. It could be way much better though but still kudos to Palm in coming up with a phone that doesn't fit its typical device profile and doing a pretty decent job of it to. For a data phone, you'll find that the Treo 500v isn't very expensive as it retails at around RM1,588. I've seen far more expensive WM devices with the same functionalities as the Treo 500v. So if you are looking at a WM6 SE device, you can always consider the Palm Treo 500v.

this article create by Nigel Yap