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There have been a few attempts at a combined PDA and mobile phone, but the results have generally been uninspiring. Now it's Handspring's turn with this combined dual-band GSM phone and Palm OS PDA.
At first glance the Treo 180 looks very much like a traditional Palm PDA. Measuring 11 x 6.9 x 1.8cm, it's a little larger than a deck of cards and is reasonably light at 147g.
The unit is powered by a 33MHz Motorola Dragonball processor. There's also 16Mb of memory for storing programs and a decent 160 x 160 pixel mono touch-sensitive display.
The first big departure from other Palm OS devices is the replacement of the Graffiti handwriting recognition pad with a mini keyboard.
There is a model available with the Graffiti pad, the Treo 180G, but Handspring reckons that the keyboard version is going to be more popular with the average phone user.
The keyboard has a traditional Qwerty layout with numbers and symbols accessed by holding down a special blue function key and pressing the corresponding letter. It's reasonably easy to type on, considering its small size, but it's more suited to writing SMS text than emails.
The four quick-launch buttons at the bottom of the screen have gone through a slight transformation, and now point to the phone application, calendar, web browser and SMS inbox.
There's also a rocker switch, similar to that on the Sony Clie, on the left-hand side of the unit. Above this you'll find the mini jack for the hands-free kit that is bundled with the unit.
At the very top of the phone next to the antenna lies the power button. Pressing it once turns on the unit, while pressing it and holding it down turns the GSM side of the device on and off.
Next to this there's the infra-red port and a switch to turn the ringer on and off. At the back of the device is the holder for the SIM.
The Treo 180offers dual-band 900/1800 GSM support, which limits you to download speeds of between 9.6Kbits/sec and 14.4Kbits/sec. GPRS isn't catered for currently, but Handspring says this will be available in a couple of months as a free download for existing customers. This could give you speeds up to 28.8Kbits/sec.
Things are less rosy when it comes to battery life. Handspring quotes a talk time of 2.5 hours, which is rather meagre compared to today's handsets.
The Treo borrows from Motorola's clamshell design in that you have to flip up the screen cover to use the device as a standard phone. The ear-piece is located at the top of the cover and the microphone nestles at the bottom of the PDA.
We found the stretch from the earpiece to the microphone slightly too far to be comfortable, with the result that you find yourself constantly shifting the phone around to try to get a good talk position.
It's also just too large to hold to your ear without looking like you're auditioning for a bit part in a Star Trek movie. However, most people will probably opt for the bundled hands-free kit.
Obviously one of the benefits of having a phone integrated into a PDA is the ability to surf the web and pick up email, and Handspring has preloaded the Blazer browser on the Treo.
It's probably the best browser available on the Palm OS platform and does a fine job of resizing web pages to fit the restrictions of the device's screen. You can also load the Onetouchmail application from the bundled CD if you want to be able to pick up Pop3 mail.
However, despite its strong feature list the Treo has a number of significant flaws. First, Palm OS isn't as transparent as it should be when you're using the keyboard, and functions can seem clumsy when they're keyboard driven compared to how easy they seem when using a stylus.
Then there's the issue of GPRS and battery life. At present the phone's battery life is pretty short compared to a standard handset but, with the additional burden of always-on GPRS, it can only really get worse.
It's not that the Treo is a particularly bad device - far from it. It does a lot of things very well but, unfortunately, it suffers from the same weaknesses as its main competitors.
Price: £299 (£254.47 ex VAT) on contract from BT Cellnet.
Contact: Handspring 020 7309 0134
www.handspring.co.uk
See also:
A compact palmtop computer and mobile phone combined, the new Treo attempts to offer both portability and functionality. 01 Oct 2002
A PDA to consider if you want your friends to admire your good taste. 26 Jun 2002
The big daddy amoung the Psions, the Series 7 is a cross between a PDA and a sub-notebook. With a large colour screen and an equally spacious keyboard, it will please those who need to key in lots of data on the move. 01 Mar 2002
All Palm PDAs
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