Reviewer : Chris Leckness
Vendor : Palm and Cingular
Price : $399.99 after $100.00 Rebate
Rating : 91/100

The flip flop begins. Just about every review I have done starts out with my current stance on the Smartphone vs. Pocket PC Phone dilemma. No reason to stop that now, especially since it continues on. With the Cingular BlackJack, I was finally won over to the Smartphone side of the argument, but with the Palm Treo 750, the playing field changes. I have always been an admirer of the Palm Treo form factor, but for me personally, there have been problems. The first problem was the fact that the Treo 650 and earlier models run the Palm OS, not that it's a bad OS, it's just not for me. In 2006, Palm and Verizon rocked the world with the first Treo running Windows Mobile. This was music to my ears, but there was a second problem... It wasn't a GSM phone that would run on the network I use, Cingular. Sprint followed suit with a better version of the Treo form factor with t he Treo 700wx. Next up was the Treo 750v over in Europe. This one was GSM, so we are getting closer! Finally at CES 2007, Cingular and Palm announced the Palm Treo 750. Except for a few days where I was testing other phones, I have been using this phone as my daily driver since then.

The Palm Treo 750 is sexy, works great, and is GSM. What else do I need? Oh, getting a touch screen back is a big bonus too. It took me a week or so to start using it again. The Treo 750 does so well with one handed operation that since I was used to the BlackJack, I seldom reached out to touch the screen. After more than a month of use, I am using the touchscreen more often, again.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX

• Treo 750
• Rechargeable Lithium ion 1200 mAh battery
• Wired stereo headset
• AC charger
• USB sync cable
• Stylus
• Getting Started Guide
• Getting Started CD

Unboxing

THE DESIGN
The Cingular Palm Treo 750 is just a bit lighter than it's older brothers. When you pick up the Palm Treo 750 for the 1st time, two things stand out immediately. The first is the lack of an antenna and the other is the color. The antenna is gone with the Treo 750 and that is a double edged sword for me. I like having it gone as it makes the device look so much sexier, but I miss using that big old antenna to pull it out of my shirt pocket. Aside from the Palm Powered Treo 680 series, all the 750's brothers have the same look and feel. They all have that outdated (but not unpopular) grayish metal look and plastic feel. The Palm Treo 750 has that rubberized feeling that many newer phones are getting. From a distance, the color looks black, but closer inspection shows that the color is more of a dark, almost metallic blue.

Taking a look at the front of the Palm Treo 750 you will see the familiar 240x240 screen and keyboard. I can deal with the screen just fine, but I wish I had a little more vertical real estate for today screen plugins without having to scroll. Fortunately, SPB Software House has a great new product called SPB Mobile Shell that helps give me more info on my screen. Starting at the top center of the front of the 750, you will find a speaker underneath that cover. Just underneath, you have the 240x240 QVGA Touch Screen. Now comes the one handed magic that Palm pulls off, the button scheme. Right below the touch screen are two buttons, the left and right soft keys.(Palm calls these action buttons) These keys line up directly under software controlled labels that you press these soft keys to enable (you can also tap the link on the screen too, but with the soft keys, you don't have to pull out your stylus) below the left soft key are the send button and start buttons. The start button eliminates the need to tap the start button, located at the top left of the screen to enable that drop down menu. Instead, you can use the start button and the dpad to navigate through the drop down menu. Under the right soft key, you will find the OK button and the end button. The OK button is a blessing. With the OK button, you can leave your stylus in the silo even longer since it is mapped as the same function as tapping the OK or X in an application. Between all these wonderful buttons that Palm adds to the value, is the dpad. This is probably one of the easiest dpad's to use. There are very few mistaken center button presses than other devices employing the same methods.

Next up is the keypad. This keypad is not one of the best out there, but its not really that bad either. I have had more fat fingered mistakes with the Treo 750's keyboard than I did with the Cingular BlackJack, but with practice it is not too bad. The keys perform great and have a nice rounded feel to them. I can run my finger over them without resistance when tracking to the next press.

Moving to the bottom of the Cingular Palm Treo 750, you have from left to right, the headset jack, the sync/charge connector, and the microphone. I am really impressed with Palm's choice to leave good enough alone and allow the connector to remain constant over several model releases. Dell didn't do this with the Dell Axim line and it caused me pain and grief having multiple cradles on the desk. With the Palm Treo 750, I can use my cradle for the Palm Treo 700w.

On the left side of the device, you will see the volume up/down buttons as well as a customizable button beneath it. This button can be programmed to do nearly anything the Treo 750 can do. I like having it set up for Voice Command, but I am sure it would be nice for the camera application for others. One thing the Treo 750 has that is quite refreshing is... The lack of many, many buttons on the sides. As I mentioned earlier, you can do a ton with the buttons on the front, like the start and OK buttons.

The right side has much of the same. Not alot. I like this as it makes for a sleek device. There is the MiniSD cover, which houses the MiniSD Slot and the reset button and above that is an IR port. When I was in Las Vegas for CES, I attended a dinner with Palm and asked the product manager why Palm went with MiniSD rather than MicroSD and it all boiled down to cost. Cost for the consumer and for the manufacturing cost. I was slightly disappointed with the use of Mini, I have far more MicroSD cards than MiniSD. I am glad to see that the card is accessible with the device still powered up too. I really don't like cards hidden under batteries, etc.

Here, on the top of the Palm Treo 750, is the coolest feature of all, the ringer on/off switch. Have you ever been in a meeting and forget to turn your phone off? Someone calls halfway through and you have to pull it out and fumble with the settings to get the dang thing to shut up. Well, that is over with this switch. Just slide it to ringer off and poof, no more rings. Instead you get a nice hearty vibration! That's it, that's all you get on top of the Treo 750. Not even an antenna!

The back of the device houses the a vanity mirror, a 1.3 megapixel with a 2x digital zoom, a large speaker, and the battery cover. Underneath the vanity cover, you will find a 1200mah battery and even deeper (under the battery), a simm card slot.

Comparison Shots

Some Popular Size Comparisons

Technical Specs

• Weight: 5.4 ounces
• Dimensions: 4.4 x 2.3 x.8 inches
• Talk Time: Up to 4.5 hours GSM; 2.5 hours UMTS
• Standby Time: Up to 15 days
• Samsung 300 MHz processor
• 128 MB ROM / 64MB RAM - 60 MB user available
• MiniSD(TM) expansion card slot - supports up to 2 GB
• Bright 240 x 240 65K color touchscreen
• Microsoft Windows® Mobile 5.0 operating system
• Tri-band UMTS, upgradeable to support HSDPA in 2007
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE - 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
• Security features include remote device wipe and S/MIME

FEATURES
The Cingular Palm Treo 750 has basically ever feature that most of us want in a "Smart Phone". The most important feature of the Treo 750 is the phone. It is quite apparent that making a good sounding, quality call is the most important feature for Palm. There are some issues with dropped calls in 3G coverage areas that have given some users problems, but a) they will most likely be fixed with a patch and b) doesn't appear to happen to all. I used the phone in three different 3G areas without a dropped call personally.

Phone
As I mentioned above, the phone function of the Treo 750 appears to be the most important to Palm. I can't say I blame them. I like having a phone with the added value of a PDA rather than a PDA that has the added phone function. In the month and a half that I have been carrying this device, I have gotten rave reviews on the voice quality of the call. One person asked me how I had my home phone show my cell phone's Caller ID data. He thought I was calling from a landline.

Palm makes using the phone a snap. Using one hand, you can get into your call history, your contact list, and the dialer as well as many other phone related tasks. If you call a lot of the same people, the last 10 are in a handy list by pressing the talk button. You can scroll to who you want and right press on the dpad to select other numbers for that same contact.

Bluetooth
It works, that's all you really need to know, right? I paired the Treo 750 up with 2 different Bluetooth GPS receivers and 3 different Bluetooth headsets without a hitch. I am sure some of you want to know about that little problem that the BlackJack has so here you you are. The Palm Treo 750 can make Voice Command calls via Bluetooth headset.

WiFi
No WiFi here. I don't need it, but I do see why others would. Even though I get my data as fast as I need via my unlimited data plan, some of you may not want to drop the minimum $29.99 for a data plan. I can see that and for those reasons, I have to gig the Treo 750 for not offering this.

Camera
Just a camera. The Treo 750's camera is nothing spectacular, but it works. They threw in a 2x zoom for you guys, but its still just a camera in a phone. The camera is a 1.2 megapixel camera with a decent software package for taking and managing the photos. You can shoot a short video, use burst mode, regular snapshot mode, or a timer mode.

Multimedia
With the small 240x240 screen, you can't expect much out of the Treo 750. You do have the processing power to do some video, plenty for music, and games that will run well on the square screen, run just fine. Out of the box, you get Windows Media Player 10, which is all most need for their audio fix.

Sound!!! There is a sound problem that must be addressed with the Palm Treo 750. There are two issues that might both be related, but one is somewhat critical. The first trouble is one where the sounds have a pop that sound as if they could blow the speaker physically. When a call comes in, the 1st note of a ring has an overdriving pop to it. I can live with it if it doesn't end up damaging the speaker, but I would love to see a fix for it with a patch. The other problem could also be related, but 2-3 times in the last month, I have had to soft reset the 750 to get any sound at all. I have seen this trouble with both my own Treo 750 and the review unit supplied by Palm. Other than these two troubles, the sound is amazing. The volume is very loud if you want it to be. The speaker phone booms, the sound from the earpiece is more than adequate. I really like the sound, but want to see my little issues fixed asap.

Software
Palm has done some great things in the past to the Windows Mobile OS to enhance it. It comes with all that you have come to expect from a Windows Mobile Device, such as Bubble Breaker, File Explorer, Internet Explorer Mobile, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pocket MSN, Solitaire, and more. It also has some addons from Cingular like Good Mobile Messaging and Xpress Mail. Some of the other goodies include Picsel PDF Viewer, Palm's Quick Tour, SMS / MMS Messaging with chat view ( This is pretty neat), Voice Command from Microsoft, and Windows Media Player. There is definitely more, but these are the highlights. There are also a bunch of demo apps on the CD too.

Some Screen shots

Today Screen	Button Settings	Wired Car Kit	Voice Command	Voice Command
Today Settings	About Screen	Phone Versions	Memory Usage	Wireless Menu
Photo	Photo Gallery	Picsel Viewer	Dial Pad	Outlook Inbox
Left Action Menu	Right Action Menu	Predictive Text Dial

PERFORMANCE
The Cingular Palm Treo 750 has a 300mhz Samsung processor in it that is more than adequate for the what the device is designed to do. Besides having to do a soft reset a couple times to clear the audio issue, I have not had to soft reset once. I take time out to close out running applications that are no longer needed in the running programs tab of the memory settings manager to keep everything stable. In my day to day use, I didn't experience any lag or otherwise detrimental performace issues related to the processor or memory usage.

Battery Life
Here is the fun part. It's not as bad as you might think. I have heard reports from some that the battery life was horrible in 3G coverage areas, but I have also heard conflicting reports that say otherwise. I can only give you my experience. I normally get a good full day of use from one battery charge in a non-3G area. I do a lot with my devices through the day. On an average day, I get 100-200 emails over the air via an exchange server and I normally reply to 10-15 of them. I play games for 30-45 min a day. I also talk on the phone a good deal too. Here is an excerpt from a post I made during the 1st week of use:

From Palm's website, the Palm Treo 750 has the following battery specifications:

Removable 1200 mAH Lithium-ion
Talk time: up to 4 hours
Standby time: Up to 250 hours
Data preserved by persistent file system

That said, I really didn't experience battery woes, I actually experienced better than average life... Below are photos of 4 calls alone that got me close to the 4 hours talk time by themselves. There were a few other 15 minute calls and several 1-5 minute calls today. I spent a lot of time driving today, so it was easy to get lost in calls. With almost 3 hours of calls in just those 4 photos, I knew today was going to push the envelope.

All these are on top of data being sent constantly to the device. I received over 100 emails and replied to 15-20 of them today. With push mail, whenever the Exchange Server gets a new message, it pushes it out to my device. I have used the Treo 750 almost 500 minutes in 3 days so far. In the photos below, I show the timers. The one of the left is before I reset the calls over 1 week old and the one on the right shows the after. I have only had it since Monday so there were no old calls.

Here is my diary of use in the first days of having the Treo 750

• A long day at the office for the Treo 750 (Day 1)
• Day 2 with the Cingular/AT&T Palm Treo 750
• Cingular Palm Treo 750 Day 3 - Battery issues or not?
• Cingular Palm Treo 750 - Day 4
• Cingular Palm Treo 750 - Day 5
• Cingular Palm Treo 750 - Day 6

Conclusion

The Cingular Palm Treo 750 is one of the best phones in the past 2 years. Palm took a great form factor, added Windows Mobile and their touch to create a device that has the versatility of a Pocket PC Phone and the ease of use of a Smartphone. Despite a couple quirks, the Treo 750 is real strong performer and could be a serious asset to business users and casual users alike. Knowing how Palm does business, I expect software updates to fix most of the quirks pretty quick.

The form factor, the added software menus for the Today Screen, and the added OK and Start buttons make the Palm Treo 750 amazingly easy to use one handed. If you are walking down the street, riding the bus, or sitting at your desk, your data is easily accessible. While I am 100% sure that there are phones coming down the road that will upend the Palm Treo 750, right now there is no phone that fits my lifestyle any better.

PROS

• Form Factor is top notch
• Rubberized coating helps your grip on the phone
• Palm's added touch (Palm'
• Antenna is Gone (This is a pro and a con in my book, the added bulk is removed, but for those that keep in shirt pocket or a slip in case, the antenna was a great item to pull the phone out with)
• 3G Speeds
• Easy to Use Keyboard

CONS

• Cingular's Data Plans are too expensive. This is not a knock on the device, which is really what we are reviewing here, but it still needs to be noted.
• Sound Issues
• Antenna is Gone (This is a pro and a con in my book, the added bulk is removed, but for those that keep in shirt pocket or a slip in case, the antenna was a great item to pull the phone out with)
• The dropped calls issue. While I have not experienced this, this remains a known problem for folks in a 3G coverage area.