Your Snowball Won't Melt Either (2/3)
Verizon Palm Treo 700w Pocket PC Phone
PRODUCT FEATURES
The Palm Treo 700w is the first Palm based
device with Windows Mobile OS on it. That is
to say, it has what most people familiar with the
Windows Mobile world will call Phone Edition OS, and
NOT SmartPhone OS. The two are very, VERY
different. Devices like the forthcoming
Motorola Q, the
MPx220, and the i-mate
SP5m, are Smartphone. No matter how many times
Palm calls the Treo 700w a SmartPhone, it's never
going to be a Smartphone. It's a Pocket PC
Phone. That classification is defined NOT by
what the OEM wants to call it, but by the OS that it
runs...at least in this case. Microsoft has a
Smartphone OS. The Treo 700w doesn't run it.
It runs Phone Edition OS.
While I don't want to get into a pissing contest over semantics, this is an important distinction. Windows Mobile based Smartphone don't have a touch screen. The Treo 700w does. Navigation around a WM based SmartPhone is done differently than in Phone Edition. The UI is different because of the screen resolutions, lack of a touch screen, and lack of Input Methods (like Keyboard and Transcriber), among other things. SmartPhone OS is different because the hardware is architected differently. While WM5 did a lot to bring the two closer together, SmartPhone OS and Phone Edition OS are still two different operating systems. Bottom line, if it looks like a dog, barks like a dog, wags its tail like a dog, guess what..? It's a dog. The Treo 700w is a Pocket PC Phone Edition device.
Over the past few days, I've noticed a couple of interesting things about it. Palm was very specific during their presentation about bringing the Treo experience to Windows Mobile. From what I've seen, they've succeeded. However this is bitter sweet. Some of it is good, some of it isn't.
The biggest complaint that I hear from most Palm Treo users is that whatever the device is doing comes to a screeching halt when a phone call comes in, or when they want to place a call. PalmOS based Treos cannot multi-task, and when a phone call comes in, it's possible that you will lose what you're working on if the OS doesn't save the application state correctly when the phone app takes complete control of the device. While this is a limitation of the OS and of the Treo 600/650, it has created a silo effect in the Treo 700w.
The Treo 700w Today Page. Notice the two speed dial buttons above the Web Search Today Plug-in.
Searching for a number with the Speed Dial Today Plug-in.
The entire phone experience in the 700w evolves around the Today page. You can't get away from it, which is both good and bad. Pick up the device, turn it on, type a name in Speed Dial, and boom, you're on the phone with that contact, using any of the numbers available for them. Find the contact you want in Speed Dial, and press and hold the Action button in the D-Pad, and the device displays all the different ways you can communicate with that person. You do all of this right from Today, which is as I said, good and bad.
It's good because you don't have to dink around inside of a lot of other applications. Calling someone from Contacts isn't always the most intuitive experience, especially if they have more than one number. Searching for someone in Contacts isn't bad, but it's nothing to write home about either. Doing this from the Today page can save time. The problem is, it's the ONLY way you can make a call. Pressing the green phone button on ANY other Phone Edition device brings up the standard WM Phone applet. On the Treo, it takes you back to the Today page, and is equivalent to tapping Start, Today. Then you have to press the green phone button again to bring up a menu to get to your recently dialed numbers, which you have to scroll through to get to the Call Log or the phone's Dial Pad. This is the PalmOS paradigm intruding on Windows Mobile, and it doesn't fit.
The Dial Pad used on the 700w is the same Dial Pad used on the Treo 600 and 650. The act of the green phone button taking you back to Today and not to the standard WM Phone applet is Palm's tired old, single task OS paradigm that is killing Garnet (PalmOS 5.x). Palm seems to think that I can only do one thing at a time. "Their actions indicate two dimensional thinking," to borrow a line from The Wrath of Khan. It's short sighted. If I'm working on a spreadsheet on my device and need to call someone to verify some figures, on the Treo the following would happen:
- Start, Programs, Excel Mobile, to get Excel up on the device, Open your spreadsheet and start editing
- Press the green phone button. The device minimizes Excel and takes you back to the Today Page and Speed Dial
- Type a name or number in the Speed Dial field
- Find the number I want to call and press the center D-Pad button (not push and hold) to dial the number
- Start, Programs, Excel Mobile, to get Excel back up on the device, so I can discuss the figures before finishing
On my K-JAM, the same process would involve the following:
- Start, Programs, Excel Mobile, to get Excel up on the device, Open your spreadsheet and start editing
- Press the green phone button. The Phone applet executes.
- Begin typing a number and a version of Speed Dial finds the Contacts that have matching phone number entries.
- Find the number I want to call and press the center D-Pad button to dial the number
- Tap the OK button in the upper right corner of the Phone applet to return to Excel and the spreadsheet I was working on.
While both of these processes contain 5 steps, the second and last step in each process are a bit different. On my K-JAM, I'm multi tasking. I also never minimize an application. I just start Phone and after the call is connected, tap OK to go back to Excel. With the Treo, I have to minimize one app, connect the call and then restart/maximize Excel via the Start menu. The whole process doesn't flow on the 700w, it has you stopping, going back to Today, and then restarting things. On any other Phone Edition device, you don't have to stop what you're doing to make or take a call. Palm has siloed these activities into the same paradigm that was required by earlier model Treos because of a technical issue with PalmOS that doesn't exist with Windows Mobile. Which leads me to an interesting theory that I'm developing about this device: Palm is trying to ease existing customers from PalmOS to Windows Mobile. The Treo 700w is a transition device.
I say this because of the following:
- The phone experience and paradigm they've tried to create on the device is identical (or nearly identical) to the phone experience on their PalmOS devices. Existing or former Treo users will find a similar phone experience and be able to be up and running on the device immediately
- The device doesn't have Transcriber installed on it at all. However, it does have both Letter Recognizer and Block Recognizer, the two SIP's that Microsoft created to help PalmOS converts become comfortable with Windows Mobile because they're similar to Graffiti and Graffiti II found on many PalmOS devices.
- Like their PalmOS cousins, the Treo 700w only has 32MB of Program RAM. With only 32MB of Program RAM, the device is going to be limited to running one, maybe two applications well, at a time. I haven't tried it yet, but I wouldn't want to play MP3's and then have a call come it. The device is likely to choke due to a lack of available memory.
There's a memory leak somewhere. I started the day with 7.01 MB free Program RAM and have watched it drop all day long, with nothing running at all.
I like the list of recently dialed numbers. It's a short call log if you will, that has not only the one number of the contact you called, but all of the contact's phone numbers. You can scroll through the list with the D-Pad, and then press the right arrow button on the D-Pad to make the additional numbers appear. But this is the extent of the standard phone experience on the 700w. Palm tries to keep you stapled to the Today Page as much as possible. If you must use the Dial Pad, at least the buttons are big enough to press with your thumb, which helps with the device's one handed operation a great deal.
The list of Recently Dialed Numbers appears when you press the Green Phone button
Palm's Standard Dial Pad. It's the same one as in PalmOS.
The old, familiar Windows Mobile Call Log.
Interestingly enough, Palm has moved speed dialing out of the Phone application and also placed it on the Today Page. You can put just about any amount of speed dial buttons on your Today Page. I gave up after 12. The problem with this is that they take up space on your Today Page, making a scroll bar appear on the page, and pushing any items below it, down below the bottom of the screen. I don't know about you, but I hate a scroll bar on my Today Page. It just seems unnatural.
Create new Speed Dial buttons here.
Tap Link to Contact to select the Speed Dial button contents.
The Speed Dial button Advanced Tab.
Interestingly enough, while you can have just about as many speed dial buttons as you can create, you can only have 37 with Quick Key entries (0-9 and A-Z). Palm has really created something nice here by allowing you to automatically dial any extra special digits, including pauses for voice mail passwords, or other digits in order to get to the party you wish to speak to. Now, you can dial your spouse's office number, AND their extension number with just one tap instead of having to do it manually. Very nice.
One of the most innovative features I've seen this side of Redmond is the Treo 700w voice mail VCR buttons. You can set up a speed dial button to get to any voice mail system you want, and then configure a set of VCR styled buttons that will allow you to play, erase, skip forward or backward through your messages. Because they're set up as VCR buttons you don't have to remember which numbers do which functions on this or that voice mail system. Once you set it up, all you have to do is look to find the right VCR button to do what you need done. I wish all WM5 devices could do this!
HELP SUPPORT
As you saw on page 1 of
this review, the printed documentation has errors in
it. I'm hoping that I got an early,
preproduction version of the user's manual and not
something that everyone in the world is going to
get. I honestly haven't had a chance to go
through the entire document from cover to cover, but
if it has the big glaring diagram error that I found
while casually skimming through it, there are
undoubtedly other errors. I was able to see in
the PDF that I downloaded from the Internet that the
error has been corrected, but the Getting Started
Guide that I was shipped is bad.
Palm's support web site also gave me some problems. While trying to find the soft copy of the Treo 700w User's Guide, I went to Palm's support site and tried to search for it. The site returned search results, but when I tried to click on any of the links, I kept getting an error from the site that the knowledge server wasn't running. I don't know if that's because there was truly an error in the link I was clicking on, with the site itself, or if it was just over loaded. I did finally manage to find what I was looking for; but if I wasn't under this deadline, I would have given up. It just wasn't worth the effort. Even after I got to the KB articles, they didn't answer my question. The Palm Support KB has yet to be updated with 700w related information. This is likely one of the biggest problem areas with the device right now. God forbid you should have to do a hard reset. There's no documentation on how to do one. Don't go experimenting too far with this device just yet, because if you do and you bump into problems, there's nothing and no one available to give you a hand.
One of the biggest problems I'm having right now is with OTA Syncing with my office's Exchange 2003 server. The Treo won't consistently sync when it's supposed to. I brought this issue up during the conference call that Palm had for me and a number of other journalists who couldn't make it to CES. The PR contact I'm working with had the Sr. Product Manager for the 700w, Nancy Gayden give me a call. According to Nancy, there's no reason why the device shouldn't sync. When I suggested to her that it was likely due to the low amounts of available Program RAM (the device normally has less than 10MB of free Program RAM available), she vehemently disagreed with me. However, Nancy said she would get in touch with Microsoft and have one of their senior engineers look into the problem. As of this writing, I'm still waiting for an answer to my synching issue.
Who knows..? Maybe I'm wrong about the device not being able to kick off the sync due to an insufficient amount of RAM available. Maybe I'm wrong about the memory leak. Maybe the problems have nothing to do with the device... It wouldn't be the first time, and certainly won't be the last. We'll have to wait and see. Please check the pocketnow.com front page for a blog entry or two regarding the outcome of this issue.
