Walter Hutchens’ Blog

Well, I’ve taken the plunge and ordered an unlocked Treo 650.

I placed the order with a vendor on eBay. The price directly from Palm is $700. With overnight shipping I paid $600. The seller has literally thousands of transactions resulting in positive feedback, so I feel confident the unit will be “new and factory sealed” as described.

Most US mobile service providers offer the Treo 650 at a reduced price with a one or two-year service plan, but I expect to be in China a lot from now till August 2006. Thus I don’t want:

1) a long-term service contract or

2) my phone “locked” to one vendor.

If mobile phone hardware were normally sold separately from access to mobile networks, life would be better. It seems the U.S. is exceptional in keeping, at least from the average consumer’s perspective, hardware and service yoked together.

Anyway, I look forward to receiving this phone and trying it out. My brother has already had a Treo 650 for several months, and he loves it. His office Lotus Notes calendar pumps data out to Microsoft Outlook, which is then linked to his Treo in real-time. If he makes a change to his calendar while using his computer or while using the phone, the change instantly appears on the other device. He doesn’t have to synch the devices through a wire or even a Bluetooth connection. I want to learn that trick.

I am also interested in experimenting with moblogging.

Several things influenced my decision to buy this device. My brother’s enthusiasm for his Treo 650 was a major factor. It will be fun to have the same phone as him and compare notes.

Besides his endorsement, I had read several online or magazine reviews that raved about the Treo 650. The consensus seems to be that the 650 is the best PDA/phone merger yet.

My dissatisfaction with Windows Mobile was also a key driver of the decision. I’ve never recovered my affection for “Pocket PCs” (the name borders on fraud, I think) since my HP iPAQ 4705 lost all its data and a lot of programs I’d installed after a hard reset (which could be brought on simply by letting the battery run down).

The handwriting recognition in Windows Mobile isn’t that great, either. On a long plane ride back from Asia I determined that trying to write anything lengthy with HWR in Windows Mobile will produce a major headache, literally. During a brief experiment with a Blackberry, I concluded that for me thumb-keying is faster and more accurate, at least for short notes (and as I say, writing long notes on a PDA or smart phone is uncomfortable and inefficient). Plus, the Treo’s keyboard means when I misplace my stylus (as I often manage to do) I won’t have to use my fingernail to tap on a tiny on-screen keyboard.

Finally, the specific Pocket PC I’ve been using–variously branded as an O2 xda II mini or an iMate Jam–hasn’t thrilled me. It is I believe the world’s smallest fully functional Pocket PC (which is a kind of oxymoron). If I were to actively use the Pocket PC features, I might appreciate it more, but I don’t. Also, it is hard to operate it with one hand, and one-hand operations turns out to be a really important with phones (there is a little rocker button for one-handed operation on my current phone, but the software just doesn’t work with it very well). I’ve tried using the 650 with one hand and found it much better.

Originally I had hoped to use my O2 mini for GPS navigation. I purchased a Bluetooth GPS receiver, and I did get it working with the O2. But the O2’s screen is too small in my experience to be useful for navigating (at least with Microsoft Streets and Trips). I could never see enough on the map to help me get my bearings; the few blocks I needed to see wouldn’t fit on the screen. If I zoomed out to see more, because of the screen’s dimensions everything became too tiny to be discernible. Perhaps if I’d tried other mapping software I would have been happier, but I don’t often drive more than a few miles from campus and so haven’t bothered to experiment again. The Treo’s screen is actually smaller than my current’ phone’s, so even thought the Treo has Bluetooth I think I’ll be using my GPS receiver with my Sony T from now on.

Soon I will sell my O2 xda II mini (aka iMate Jam) on eBay. Somebody with different tastes than me will love it (or perhaps somebody like me may want to try it!).

I’ll post more about the Treo 650 as my experience with it unfolds.