Move Along Visor, Here Comes the Treo 90!
Written: Jun 03 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small design, built-in keyboard
Cons: No grafitti, no springboard support, no phone/pager
The Bottom Line: If you are looking for a pint sized, powerful PDA, the Treo 90 is a good choice.
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| gorocco's Full Review: Palm Treo 90 Cell Phone |
Handspring has been shifting their focus from the Visor line to their combination phone/pager/PDA Treo line. Apparently, the Treo line extends beyond these all-in-one devices as their new Treo 90 is all PDA. And the Treo looks like a nice successor to the Visor line.
Fancy Exteriors
The Treo 90 comes packaged in a tight, stylish, easy-to-carry case. Modeled after the Treo 180 and 270, the Treo 90 looks like a wide and flat cell phone with a flip cover that can almost make the unit look like a phone. As of now, the Treo 90 comes in only one color, bronze.
The unit itself is 4.2 x 2.8 x 0.65 inches and weighs a paltry 4 ounces. For such a small package, the unit feels sturdier than most other Handspring products. The screen still feels like cheap plastic that will scratch after heavy stylus use, but the rest of the unit feels like it can take a beating. After just holding the Treo 90 in my hand, I felt more confident about the unit than with most of the Visor line. And on the plus side, the graffiti-less interface will mean less stylus use on the screen.
The front of the unit features a 2.75 inch color screen (more on that later). A QWERTY keyboard (similar to those used in Blackberry phones) lies just below, with a square box from the letters Y to M doubling as a numeric keypad (a blue "shift" button allows you to input numbers instead of letters with those keys). Just below that are the now standard Palm PDA buttons for scrolling up and down and for quick access to the DateBook, Phone List, and To Do List.
The top of the unit features a SD/MMC slot for CompactFlash and SmartMedia memory expansions. The IR port is sandwiched between the SD slot and the metal stylus slot on the far right of the unit. The power button/LED (for the silent alarm feature) lie on the opposite side of the stylus. The bottom of the unit features a port for the USB Hot Sync cable. This go around, Handspring has opted to forego the traditional Palm cradle.
The flip cover conveniently covers the keyboard. A clear plastic screen gives a full view of the color screen at all times. The traditional Palm buttons lie exposed with the cover on, allowing you to quickly browse through phone lists, to do lists, etc. without fiddling with the cover.
The Interior
The Treo 90 uses the fast Dragonball VZ 33 Mhz processor, seen before in a multitude of Palm/Handsrping/Sony Clie units. The unit uses the Palm 4.1H OS. 16 Mb of built-in RAM is included. No Flash memory is present, although OS upgrades can theoretically be done via RAM software upgrades. The Treo also has a rechargeable Lithium ion battery. The unit is reported by Handspring to last a good ten days on a single charge. I am too paranoid to test this as data loss can be so infuriating. With a charge every other day or so, I have had no problems with battery life.
The Color Screen
The Treo 90 organizer uses a "transflective" color STN LCD, using a backlight for indoor and dimly lit areas and reflecting ambient light to make the screen viewable outdoors. Combined with software support, the Treo produces 12-bit color, displaying 4,096 colors on the 160x160 pixel screen. Most other Palm models use 16-bit color and can display about 65,000 colors. The difference can be seen in photos, but it is very mild. On the 2.75 inch screen (slightly larger than that of the Palm m130), text and pictures appear very vibrant both indoors and outdoors. Under very bright conditions, the Treo screen is difficult to see, but otherwise, the screen performs admirably.
The Treo in Action
When upgrading from an older Palm unit to the Treo 90, the one adjustment I had to make was unlearning Palm grafitti. The Treo does not feature an area for grafitti (that space got taken up by the keyboard). Software can be installed for the die hards, but the keyboard itself works quite well. Typing with my thumbs took a little getting use to. The Treo keyboard features small, silent buttons. The layout is quite familiar as it uses the traditional keyboard QWERTY pattern. The lack of a click felt wierd in the beginning as I am use to by computer keyboard making lots of click-clacking noise. But the buttons are actually quite sensitive and are very responsive. Each key pressed in softly and easily, and before long, I was inputing data much faster than with traditional grafitti.
The quick access buttons on the bottom of the unit were much stiffer in comparison. This makes sense as these buttons are always exposed, and as the Treo was orginally designed to be a phone/pager/PDA, and with the idea that the unit may be constantly jostled in one's pocket, you don't want the unit to accidentally turn on and leech battery power unneccessarily. The buttons were nicely responsive, nonetheless. And the ability to look up information quickly without much fiddling of the unit itself (thanks in part to the clear screen flip cover) was a definite plus.
The built-in software has been adjusted to allow easier use with the keyboard. However, 99% of the Palm software out there was made with stylus and graffiti in mind. My Palm standards of ePocrates (a drug encyclopedia) and MedMath (a program filled with commonly used medical calculations) handled well on the Treo. But it was quite annoying to have to whip out the stylus to activate specific menus. And once the stylus was out, I had to think twice before trying to use Palm graffiti to enter data (old habits die hard). It will be interesting to see how well support for built-in keyboards is implemented in future Palm programs, but as of right now, a graffiti-less interface is quite the annoyance. A Jog Dial or something to help avoid the stylus would have been nice.
Expansion
The former hallmark of Handspring PDAs, the Springboard module, is gone. In its place is the SD/MMC slot. The Treo is not SDIO compatible, so products such as the Margi Presenter VGA Adapter (useful if you want to give PowerPoint presentations) will not be compatible. The immense flexibility of the Springboard modules is gone as the SD expansion slot is pretty much only useful for increasing your storage space.
The Price
The Treo 90 clocks in at $299 retail. The unit itself is not bundled with much in the way of software. Besides the built-in software (Datebook Plus, Memo Pad, Advanced Calculator, CityTime World Clock, Contacts, Mail), the Treo comes with the Blazer internet browser and Nomad WordSmith so you can modify MS Word documents when you are on the go. Throw in a USB Hot Sync cable and a Travel Charger and that pretty much rounds out the package. People should look at the packages Sony includes in their Clie products.
Final Thoughts
The Treo 90's looks to be a direct competitor with Palm's m130 model. For a slightly higher price ($299 compared to $279), you get a smaller unit, 16 Mb RAM (double the memory), and a larger color screen. Not bad for just $20 more. The built-in keyboard takes a little getting use to, especially for long time Palm users. If you are looking for a pint sized, powerful PDA, the Treo 90 is a good choice.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 299
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gorocco
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Location: Stony Brook, NY
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