Treo 600 at the Five-Month Mark
I've had several e-mails in the past week from people who are considering buying the Treo 600 and all wanted to know how I like mine. So I thought I'd post an update.

Overall, I absolutely love it and go into fits if I realize I've left the apartment without it or without all the functions in working order. It's so small I can take it everywhere - even when joging in the park. That said, there are some definite drawbacks.

The functions I use most are the e-mail, web and camera functions. I like to take pictures and e-mail them (via Buzznet and Blogger) so they show up on my Web site less than a minute after I've taken the picture. I still can't get over how cool that is. I can also e-mail those images to people immediately -- the highest value is e-mailing my in-laws pictures of their grandson while we're still at the park. Bridges the distance in a very neat way.

However, the camera is a weak beast. No flash and quality is mediocre. You can take pictures in the subway, but usually not in a restaurant, or even of the skyline at night. About an hour before dusk, you're basically done for the night. Conversely, bright days are also a killer. So bright it might as well be night. You have to hold the camera still longer than with a normal camera, and there is something of a delay after you click -- so you have to anticipate the shot before it happens.

Web access. Very slow connection speed. But it does work, and it seems like it might be a tad faster than it was even a few months ago. Then again the whole phone's functionality slowed tremendously when the temperature dropped below 30 this winter. ... There are some pages that just won't load - I suspect due to their design. Some sites refuse to let me enter my username/password (at first none did, but I got that figured out eventually.)

E-mail. It comes with SMS but I prefer to stick with my Yahoo account, which I have a shortcut for. I could get to my other (main) e-mail account if I need to through mail2web.com. That is, if I know the password for my main e-mail account. One of my smart tech friends has suggested I install Verichat, an IM-type program, I think -- but I haven't used it yet. He says it's better than the SMS.

Unfortunately I'm not yet using it to post text to the Web. (Though I think Jeff Jarvis has been doing it frequently - even from church.) At first I was posting pictures via Blogger, but Sprint keeps adding crap to the Picture Mail file, so my Web page would wind up not only with an odd-sized picture and a mega-Sprint ad, but also my cell phone number. Posting text with Yahoo would leave my Yahoo account details up on the post. I'm sure there's a way around this, but I haven't bothered yet, since I can easily attach some text to the pictures as they come in through my Buzznet feed (But you'd still have to click on the picture at the top of the page to see the text.)

Cell phone talkie stuff. You should probably know I really don't like cell phones. I don't like people calling me on my cell phone unless you are my husband, or if I'm en route to meet you somewhere and you're late or the location is changing. That's about it. If you call me on my cell phone before trying my home line first, I'll probably be very mean to you. That's how much I hate using the cell phone. So as you can guess, I don't use the talk-talk function much so I'm not that bent out of shape that the sound quality is pretty scratchy. I find myself doing that whole annoying "What? What did you say?" cliche thing way more often than I had to on my Star-Tec phone. ... The speakerphone and headset work just fine.

Ooh, you know what else I use it for a lot? Vindigo. I swear, all you New Yorkers with a Palm Pilot even - I don't know how you get along without this. It's about $25 a year and I'm telling you, I use it every time I leave the house to double-check addresses, walking and subway directions, to jog my memory on which of my favorite restaurants are in the neighborhood I'm meeting someone, etc. When people on the street ask me for directions I'm not totally sure of, (and I'm in a good mood,) I can get it for them in a couple of taps on the screen. Vindigo has loads of other cities besides NY - I've used it for Portland, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Long Beach and London while traveling -- though not all have as useful as a database as NYC. Even the Brooklyn file is missing a lot of key shops, bars and restaurants.

Other basic stuff: If I'm out taking loads of pictures and sending them with e-mail, I find the battery gets eaten up pretty fast. A few times I get home at the end of the day and was surprised how low my charge was. But on a typical day, it recharges very rapidly. (I don't pay attention but I'm guessing it's well under an hour.) I don't use any of the games, so I couldn't tell you about that. They do have a couple nice inoffensive ring tones (along the lines of Mozart) which is far less embarrassing when your phone rings in a crowded room.

The keypad is actually very cool. It looks like it would be way too tiny for grown-up hands, but that's not true. I make very few typos with it. However, just in the past week or two, I've noticed the shift key has lost it's tackiness that all the other keys have. Tackiness probably isn't the right word. Normally, when you press the key it has a certain feel and it makes a nearly inaudible "tick" sound -- so you know you've pressed it. But the shift key no longer does that. I don't know if that means it's going to stop working, or if it means nothing.

Another thing - they sent out a software update in a couple months ago that totally screwed up my Treo until I figured out how to uninstall their "fix" and reload all the software from scratch. It ate all my contacts and everything in my notepad, though I'm guessing it may still be buried in one of my backup files. Just haven't found it yet.

Sprint's support is useless of course. But I've found the message boards at TreoCentral to be pretty useful though not conveniently searchable.

And as for price -- I think you can pay as much as $500, but most cell phone companies have specials where you can get at least $100 knocked off that if you sign a one-year contract with them. I pay Sprint $35 a month for 300 anytime minutes plus $15/month for unlimited Web and picture-sending access. Plus all those taxes.

Overall: great device. It's making me think in new ways about communication. If you work in media, I think it's a must-have. But I'll definitely want to upgrade once they get better Web capabilities and a better camera -- though I'm guessing that's a good one or two years away. And I'm no longer sold on Sprint so next time will definitely ask around to see which company offers the best coverage in NYC.
- posted by Amy @ 3/25/2004 12:21:00 PM