Customer Reviews

Palm Treo Pro Unlocked Phone with 2 MP Camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, and MicroSD--U.S. Version with Warranty (Black)

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I love my new Treo Pro. I have been using it for about 2 weeks and already plan to hold on to it for the long haul. Little, history, I have had the Origional Treo, 200, 600, and 650. This is the best of them all. I swtiched two windows mobile 2 years ago because... well the PALM OS is dead in my book. That aside, I really missed the treo. I think palm gets how to build a nice device.

Keyboard: Works great. I find for a thumb keyboard and now with some experience I can fly with it. Personally, I love the thumb keyboard. Perfect for one handed operation with little compromise.

Thin: This thing fits very nicely into the pocket and the screen guard is excellent. I dont even know I have it with me and I never accidently Dial anyone. It fits in the hand wonderfully.

Buttons.. Some devices are going away from having so many buttons. However I like the ability to launch frequent programs. The Pro is great at letting you customize. (You have many hardware buttons and some of them can also be configured to have an Option + Hardware button application bound to them)

Also, you have hardware button access to volume control and wifi.

GPS: Works great. I installed and worked right away.

Power: this device is not a power pig. With normal use I get a good run off it. Mind you, I use applications on it all day along and SMS extensively.

Camera: I havent used it. Frankly, it doesnt matter how many mega pixels any phone has, it still just a phone camera. Quality is never that good. But it is good enough for those fun quick shots.

Dislikes: well, the screen is a standard windows mobile device screen. I was hoping for a new device, especially manufactured by HTC it would have a bit more kick to it. However, its very functional and does what I want. One thing I love is how they built into the keyboard access to the brightness control. This is something all devices should have. Its really hard to increase the brightness if you can read the screen. No problem with the treo.

The ALT key on the keyboard allows you to access characters not on the keyboard, including accented letters for various languages. What I dont like is that its a little window that shows up with about 8 characters show and you scroll to see more. Well there are a lot of characters, it would be better if they just filled the screen so you can quickly find the special character you want.

Windows Mobile Phone Dialer stinks! This is true in my opinion for any windows mobile device. Its a phone, but you have to navigate often 2 to 3 screens deep just to get a phone number. For example, you start typing someones name and the dialer appears. It instantly starts searching for a name. Great! When you select a name by pressing enter, it pulls up their contact screen. (HUH???) yes, you now get to see more info about them. I just want to DIAL the phone number. Long story short, for simple dialing its more complicated than it needs to be. Second, the Windows Mobile phone dialer always seems unresponsive and slow. Its a phone... but the phone is slow. it makes no sense. This is not a critisim against the treo, but if this your first Windows Mobile device you will be a bit disappointed with this.

My Final gripe is that it uses the Micro USB Cable. I dont know why. All I can say is that about 90% of my small electronic gizmos use Mini usb and now I have a new cable standard to deal with. I am sure there is some value to it, but I dont see it. Yes, the connector is smaller, but the cable is still just as thick and just as long. So why I need a thinner (by maybe a few hair widths) I dont know.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Click Buy Great device.

I've been using windows mobile phones for the last four years, for work related purposes. When my HTC Excalibur flaked out on me last month, I checked around and waited for this to come out. I've been using it for a few days, but so far I'm extremely happy with the experience.

The touchscreen/thumb keyboard combo with no sliding bits or bulky moving parts was the selling point for me. I use email and IM on my phones constantly, it's important that it works and is usable. I'm happy to report that this phone does it well. The built in GPS works (ships with Google Maps loaded, but I generally prefer the Live Search application for Windows Mobile). The touch screen generally improves over the basic smartphone experience, as being able to click a link with the stylus is much nicer than navigating with buttons.

As speed and memory goes, so far they've been ample, and it's noticeably snappier than other devices I've used recently. I'm planning to use a MicroSD card to get a bit more space, but I do that with every phone. The camera is decent, but nothing spectacular. I do like the camera software on this phone better than the software on the HTC phones.

Very minor features I do like:
- Time on screen when the backlight is off.
- Hardware switch to silent mode
- My Treo link to mobile-friendly information about the device in the start menu
- And of course, comes GSM unlocked. No carriers loading or unloading software before you get the device, things work like a charm out of the box.

Very minor annoyances:
- Everything else uses mini USB to charge, it would have been nice if Palm did too. This uses a proprietary end on a USB cable.
- It's glossy, and black, but also very smooth. At times feels very slippery, and opening the case to get to the battery can be a pain.
- Camera button is not as responsive as I'd like for starting the camera app. Seems fine for taking pictures.

Overall, very high marks :)

I have been a Palm OS user for years, and I finally decided to switch to windows mobile given the beautiful design of the Treo Pro.
The phone itself is great and I have no complaints, it is true that the back cover is a little hard to open, the first time, I'm a 7 month pregnant woman and have no problem opening it, once you follow the instructions in the manual and learn the trick it`s fairly easy. The wifi is fast, the design is great, many people complain about the small keyboard, but I find it perfect, maybe my nails and slim fingers help, but I really have no complaints, it is a phone not a keyboard after all.

Windows mobile on the other hand, has it`s advantages but in my opinion is way too slow, I`m an engineer used to speed and efficiency and I really miss the fast performance of Palm OS, besides, it takes to many steps to do something you could easily perform in a couple of clicks before.

It's taking my mind more time to create the habits to perform basic activities, since they take so many steps, to send a message used to take me 30 seconds, and now 60 or 90, I know 30 seconds may not be much, but it is double what it used to take me, and frankly to much for me.

It has given me some small glitches like no rings for a couple of hours, and I have to soft reset it to get the sound back, but nothing major or frequent.

If you get the SPB mobile shell software you will miss the palm os less, and get more productivity, this program is definitely a must.

I strongly recommend to see the reviews in treonauts to choose software and freeware such as skype, skyfire, opera, etc to enhance the experience.

I'm happy with the phone, but I surely wish it was a new version of palm os instead of Winmo.

after several weeks of researching, comparing, & then waiting for its release, i was very pleased to purchase the Palm Treo Pro. this was my first smartphone & i wanted something that fit well in my hand & also had a lot of practical features. i think that i got both in the Palm Treo Pro.

design: it's design is very (dare i say it) fashion forward. unlike previous Treo's, its got a much slimmer profile & fits very well in either a pants or shirt pocket. i like the qwerty keyboard & the directional "palm" key works really well for moving from one field to another. i also really like that i can use the keyboard, the stylus, or even my fingertips to use the different programs & features of the device.

setup: the setup process was actually not bad at all. once i inserted my SIM card, the phone recognized the settings of my current service provider & integrated all of the network settings seamlessly w/o any issues. it comes with a decent amount of memory on the phone when you purchase it & can be upgraded to as much as 32GB of memory using micro SD.

i have found only one issue thus far. after using the device for around 3 wks i'v already broken a stylus. the styli are mostly metal with a plastic head & tip. the connection between the plastic head & metal stylus is the only thing i would suggest Palm redesigns. otherwise, i LOVE the device..

I bought this treo after my phone and PDA died almost simultaneously. I had avoided a treo mainly due to the smaller screen compared to my Palm Tungsten but needed a device with a keyboard and wasn't interested in RIM products.
I initially bought an iPhone but gave it to my wife due to 1. Poor phone functionality 2. Crippled sms (message forwarding, MMS, file attachment; Apple?) , crippled Bluetooth and lack of a hard keyboard.
I was initially wary of buying a windows mobile device due to prior poor experience with pocket pc software. I have been pleasantly surprised by this device.

1. Speed-very fast overall, the only slowdowns I experience is with notes for some reason. I've accumulated 100's of them over the yrs but this is no excuse as my 7 yr old palm could speed through them

2. Call quality is crystal clear much better than the iPhone's in my area.

3. Bluetooth-this phone is compatible with Audi's car kit and the voice quality is stellar. Palm's site states it does not download contacts to the car but it did download some of them in my case. All the BT protocols of a 21st century device are supported unlike the iPhone's 20th century implementation.

4. "Proper" GPs-not that iphone wannabe gps. Quick signal locks and 1 month free trial of TeleNav turn-by-turn is nice. I've heard TomTom's software works pretty well with this device.

5.Battery life is so so, with email downloading in the background it will last about 2 business days. With a lot of websurfing it will barely last the day. I would say it's better than the iphone, not by much though.

6. Touchscreen-finger friendly, I only use my stylus to write ink notes or use Epocrates.
WM 6.1 although it looks ugly compared to the iPhone OS, is a true multitasking OS, actually feels like a portable computer. I can wait for a satellite lock loading, go to another program and return back to the GPS as it finishes.

7. Form factor- love the size, overall dimensions are nice and its quite thin, great job on the design. Keyboard key material is fine for me a Treo newbie.
Overall this phone is a keeper, the combination of hard keyboard and touchscreen is great, while the addition of some apps (SPB, skyfire, kinomaplay to name a few) make it a truly superb device.

For this Treo veteran -- dating back to when it was still Handspring -- the Treo Pro is good and bad news.

Good: Slick, elegant, light, compact, great touchscreen, every bell and whistle modern smartphones should have. Keyboard smaller than previous Treos, but still easy for my large fingers to use. Retains the unique Palm switch to silence ringtones. (I find it a mystery why other cellphones ignore this simple convenience. Of course, switches have only been around since electricity was invented, so they may not have noticed yet). A nit to pick: The stylus has inexplicably moved to the lower-right corner, where it's hard to see and remove. Really stupid. Fortunately, with the good touchscreen, it's not needed much.

Bad: Windows Mobile 6.1 is a shock. "Microsoft Modern" -- clumsy, slow, layers and layers of menus, confusing, inscrutable, given to freezes, crashes. Worse than even Blackberry, which is compatible only with itself and almost as clumsy as Windows. Unfortunately, these two are currently the only choices. (Did I mention that I don't care for either?)

But Help Is On The Way! Spb Mobile Shell 2.1 is a software user interface that's what Palm would be had they continued the creative energy that produced its original operating system. Mobile Shell is astoundingly capable, flexible, and fun. (Did I mention that I love it?) A 15-day trial of Mobile Shell can be downloaded at handango.com. Purchase is $[...]. This is the greatest value for the dollar since sliced bread. For those who haven't visited handango, they've got lots of other cool Treo software.

Summary: The Treo Pro with Spb Mobile Shell 2.1 is a 5-star almost-ideal-smartphone. With Windows Mobile 6.1, I'd be pressed to give it a 3. Wonderful hardware; disasterous software. BUT....(see above)

I was switched from a Blackberry to the Palm Treo Pro by my organization, so I'm a pretty captive audience. Two weeks in, I'm on my third one (replaced twice). The inconsistency in quality is very frustrating. I suspect that many of the issues are Windows Mobile, but I have to rate the entire package - they don't offer it with anything else.

Pros:
- Form factor is nice.
- WiFi works well (but drains battery).
Cons:
- Battery life - will not last longer than a day if you do anything with the phone.
- Quality - As I said, I'm on my third one. Different problems each time.
- Finish - shiny black should look cool, but it picks up fingerprints, dirt, etc and looks like you ate lunch off of it after 15 minutes. (can't blame this just on me - 50 other people using this model have the same result). I purchased a case that reduced this.
- Windows Mobile - It is beyond me that this still is still being released as a phone os. I used it 4 years ago and it was very painful. I mistakenly hoped that 4 years of customer feedback and testing would have improved it. Nothing has changed!
- Now power off or soft reset - I have to remove my batter once a day to reset the phone back to working condition.

Annoyances:
When you're on a call the "text message", "missed call" and "voice mail" notifications go off at full volume in your ear. Ouch.
Windows Mobile "ok" key is sometimes "ok" and sometimes "cancel" and sometimes "save" and it's not really obvious.
You cannot reprogram many of the external buttons by default (I'm not sure if a third party app will do it). Other windows mobile phones have a key for voice dialing, or allow you to hold down the Send key to activate it. This one has not such key, and you can't program the Send+Hold, or the Camera or the WiFi keys, so no obvious solution there.

History:
The first phone I got wouldn't hang up. Not with the End button, not with the soft button, nothing! I had to take out the battery to hang up.
The second one started "losing" contacts randomly, even though the Phone History would still have information showing. Eventually the phone froze up. After removing the battery, the phone radio was out, so I could no longer place calls. (I couldn't open Contacts or other things). Could be windows mobile memory corruption. I had to remove my Blackberry battery twice in two years. I've done it 18 times with this phone in two weeks. And even that won't fix the problems.
The third phone I now have is having random software issues. Setting will not stay and it will not allow me to install any software. It says things install (simple things like a ebook reader), but they don't show up (but memory has been taken up).
Boy, oh boy... I miss the Blackberry (8830) trackball. That's the only way to navigate!!

I've been a Windows Mobile phone user for years now. Before buying this phone, I tried a Nokia E71 and then an HP Ipaq 910. Both phones were not bad, but still lacking in many areas and just not worth their price tag. This Treo Pro is worth every dime.

Pros:
- Very slim and light form factor. I said "wow" the minute I opened the box.

- Windows Mobile runs lots and lots of software. Syncing with Windows PCs or Exchange servers is a breeze.

- 320x320 display is bright and crisp.

- Palm has added so many extras to the base Windows Mobile 6.1 platform, it's hard to list them all. There is a nice screen saver when the phone is off, showing you the time and if you have any messages or missed calls. Even though the backlight is off, the screen is still quite easy to read for this basic info. Also, if you push the red "End" button from the home screen, the phone locks the keys and goes to sleep. Why is this not a standard WM feature? I can't tell you how many times I wish there was a simple keylock feature. Turn the phone back on, and you have to hit the middle button in the 5-way pad to unlock the keys.

- The buttons around the edge of the phone are perfect. There's a power button, simple slider control for vibrate mode, a wi-fi button which flips on the wi-fi (holding it in lets you see available networks), volume control, and one more customizable button. I sort of wish there were a wheel or scroller thingy that lets you zip up and down screens with a lot of text, but oh well. There's also a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. On the down side, the USB connector for syncing and charging seems to be a proprietary Palm connector. I can't seem to find a generic USB cable to match it.

- The built-in GPS works great with Google maps. Sometimes it will pick up a GPS signal in seconds (holding the phone parallel to the ground seems to help). The built-in GPS in the HP Ipaq 910, by contrast, often took several minutes to lock onto a signal.

- The keyboard is small but quite usable after a while.

- The Treo is like lightening compared to other Windows Mobile devices I have had. Previously, I had a Cingular 8525 which had a 400mhz processor. That device was often sluggish when turning on or moving between applications. This Treo is also listed as having a 400mhz processor, but somehow it feels twice as fast as the 8525. It performs like Windows Mobile *should* perform.

- The battery life is amazing for a Windows Mobile phone. I accidentally left my charger at work on Friday, but managed to make it all through 'til Monday with a few phone calls, using the GPS a bit, plus some internet access. On my previous Cingular 8525, the battery would have been dead at the end of one day of that much use.

Cons:

- Yeah, the keyboard is small.

- Built-in camera could have a higher resolution. However, it is better than other 2mp digital camera phones I have used. Also, no flash - not that those little LED flashes really do much anyways. Indoor pics are pretty weak in medium lighting.

- The built-in Windows Media player doesn't have an equalizer or any type of tweaker. It's the 21st century for heaven's sake. This is not really Palm's fault since it's a Microsoft program, but until there is a killer media player for Windows Mobile, it will not be a true competitor of iPhone.

- The display is locked into sort of a "large fonts" mode which will stretch some older Windows Mobile applications all out of whack. This also effectively does not utilize the beautiful screen to its maximum. However, you can use smaller fonts in IE and that makes web pages look good.

- The battery cover is a little tricky to remove. Once you've done it a few times, you get the hang of it. Unfortunately, the micro SD slot is under there.

Summary:

If you like Windows Mobile, this is truly fantastic device. I just hope it's not too late for Palm. If you're on the fence about moving to Windows Mobile from something other than an iPhone, you'll probably like this device a lot. If you have an iPhone, keep it, there's no reasoning with you anyway. ;)

I have used Palm devices for years (since the first model), and I liked the Palm OS, even developed on it briefly a few years back. Beyond the phone function, I use my Treo for business. I don't buy every new model that is released, valuing dependability and familiarity over novelty. I hesitated before upgrading my old Palm 650 which has been a real workhorse for the last three years, because I have never been a big fan of the Windows Mobile platform. The choice was between the Palm Treo Pro and an iPhone. The idea of typing on a touchscreen warned me off of the iPhone, and I like the feel of the Treo Pro keypad, an improvement over the 650 certainly, so I made the right choice in that regard. The interface issues I had with the out-of-the-box Treo Pro WM have been ameliorated by installation of the SPB suite (thanks to Eimy A. R. Villamil for the tip below).

Overall, a solid, sleek, well engineered (aside from the cover removal issue noted by the one-star review, which is more difficult than it should be) unit from which I expect to get several years of service.

This is my first smart phone, and I like it. The model year is fall 2008, and it starts to be discontinued during first quarter 2010. The phone is heavily discounted right now - mainly it is yesterday technologies. I got mine two months ago for $180 (not knowing they are discounted), and since had added a 8 GB class-6 micro SD card for $21.

To keep this review short, I'm just going to talk about the facts and try to keep my opinions to minimum.

1.) Battery life is one day for heavy user like me. I check my email every 15 minutes, write short email, read news on internet, talk on the phone, use Google map to see traffic update, take pictures and upload to Facebook. I turn on Wi-fi, bluetooth, and data connection all day. By the end of the day, the battery is all drained. If I talk more on the phone during the day, the battery will not last all day. So be aware, if you are a heavy user like me.

2.) It took me some time to setup the phone to get T-mobile $10 data plan. I enjoyed playing and finding solutions like downloading contacts to the phone without using the MS outlook. In the process, I found out how much I hate Microsoft (it sucks!) and how much I love Google (free stuff works). Even if you don't use a data plan, the Wi-fi connection works flawlessly, in 5 minutes after I opening box and turned on the phone. Be warned, I was frustrated at first because I can't get the $10 data plan works. But now, I'm happy that the $10 plan works, and I hope it will continue.

3.) I learned the GPS does not work if you don't have a data plan. Maybe there is a way to get around, but I do not see a solution on the internet. The Google map still works w/o a data plan, but you just don't have the GPS tracking.

4.) The camera, in my opinion, is a shortfall. Picture quality is gainly, zoom is weak, shutter capture speed is slow, the picture and photo software is crummy, not user friendly. I like my 10 mp Panasonic camera much better.

5.)This is my first query keyboard, and it does not bother me that it is plastic. I guess I'm learning to use the query keyboard, and I bet I'm also spelling the word query wrong. Who's care, no body read this.

I still like this phone despite these shortfalls. The phone is built solid. I dropped it twice (already) on cement floor, and it still works. Call quality is good, but most important, it helps me get up to speed on mobile phone technology. Now, I'm excited about the Google phone, and I'm also following Windows Phone 7 development. FYI, Microsoft is changing the mobile operating platform from "Window Mobile" to "Windows Phone". Microsoft has much to do in order to catch up Iphone and Google. That's all. Thanks for reading.