Eyes on... Handspring Treo 180 Communicator

 

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Posted on 19 Mar 2002 at 17:37

We've been lucky enough to have one of these highly-anticipated little beauties pop through our letterbox last week. So we put the all-singing, -talking and -surfing gadget through its paces.

Out of the box it's a reasonably discreet affair. The steel-blue finish gives it a classy look and its sprightly 69x110x18 dimensions fit snugly in the pocket. However, it looks boxy compared to today's mobile handsets and you'll want to use the hands-free kit for phoning. You can open the protective flip top cover and hold the device to your ear like a regular phone, but you look like you're speaking into a couple of soap dishes and it makes you an easy mugging target. I prefer to look like I'm insane, talking into thin air, plus I'm not really built for fending off violent attacks.

Other points to note about the Treo's physical presence is the back-lit, touch-sensitive, 4-bit grey-scale screen. The lack of colour depth (only 16 shades of grey) means it's not really pleasant to view in sunlight, but given our current inclement climes that wasn't an issue while I was testing it. The 160x160 resolution is about as good as you can expect, given the physical size, and is fine for navigating To-Do lists and the odd Web page.

The Treo 180 we got hold of has a small button keyboard beneath the screen (the 180g has a Graffiti pad instead) and below this are short-cut buttons for selecting key functions such as phone, SMS and the Internet, as well as up and down navigation buttons. Navigation is also aided by a rocker switch on the left-hand side and a stylus snuck in the top. The keyboard buttons are very very small indeed, with quite a stiff action. It's fiddly (but not impossible) to type, although whether this is any more efficient than an on-screen, stylus-operated keyboard is debatable.

Slip in the data-enabled SIM card supplied and you're ready to talk (via the BT Cellnet network only). As a phone, it's pretty nifty, and with a dual-band radio supporting 900/1800 GSM networks you should be fine both in the UK and Europe. Despite conflicting reports from other Treo users I've run into, audio quality for both caller and receiver was pretty much crystal clear throughout.

You can do the usual tricks such as conference call, speakerphone and speed dialling and you can concatenate three SMS messages, meaning you can send messages up to 480 characters long. Another bonus is - it being a PalmOS device - filling the PhoneBook (which replaces the PalmOS Address Book) with your contacts is a simple HotSync operation away. The on-screen dial pad also features nice large buttons which you can press with your finger without having to get out the stylus.

In fact the only improvement I'd make is voice-activated dialling. If you could do this through the hands-free kit you could make calls without ever having to get the monster out of your pocket - again avoiding the prospect of being a mugger's delight.

Surfing the Web is an altogether different prospect. With your username, password and the telephone number of your ISP you can get online to visit your favourite sites and collect your (POP3) email in minutes. That's minutes rather than seconds. You can watch the data creeping in byte by byte, which is particularly galling as you're paying by the second rather than byte. 9.6Kbits/sec is the optimum rate for a GSM radio. A GPRS software upgrade, to be made available when upgraded networks are more widely available, will allow greater data transfer speeds of between 56 and 114Kbits/sec. It's also always-on, so you would only pay for the amount of data transferred, not how long it takes to do so.