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Treo testimonials

Posted on 8 Oct 2004 at 12:09

Mark Needham listens to praise for the Treo before heading off on holiday with his iPAQ 2210 and TomTom Navigator

I have an old friend who's been selling handheld computers since we were both in short trousers. As a sales manager, he's always taken the sturdy view that his job is to shift boxes and make the numbers, not to worry about how many megabytes or megahertz each model possesses - his motto used to be, if it had an 'on' switch, he could sell it. So he took me by surprise recently by singing the praises of his Treo 600. He raved about the benefits of having email on a phone: 'I've become a one-box man,' he said, referring to the debates that have gone on within marketing departments over whether the public will want one unit to handle both voice and data, or whether they will buy two separate units.

He's not alone either. At a recent conference of Internet retailers, I spotted two people checking their emails on the Treo 600. Jonathan Wall, sales director of dabs.com, described himself as extremely happy with his Treo.

'As a rule, we use BlackBerrys internally, but I'm the odd one out. BlackBerrys don't sync your inbox as truly as you get through the Treo Mail application (albeit a $99 per year additional bit of software). I can get my Exchange and POP3 mail on it as well, which is a big bonus for me, and along with Google Mobile and bbc.co.uk/mobile, I find it the complete solution.'

Despite this, Jonathan did have his criticism: 'The screen is a bit disappointing, although it's meant to be fixed when the 610 comes out, and having a VGA-resolution camera is pointless as well. The only other downside is that the keyboard is a bit small compared to the BlackBerry, but I'm happy with this small gripe as it makes the unit just about small enough to live with as a phone as well. Battery life isn't bad and can manage a weekend without charge with a few calls, but at work or out-and-about it just barely makes it through a day.'

Reliability had been another issue for him: 'It's the third unit I've had, as the first two started "buzzing" during calls when GPRS was connected. Annoying, but Orange swapped out next day on both complaints, so it's never really been an issue, just a minor inconvenience.

'Our MD asked me if I was still happy about it yesterday, as he carries a BlackBerry and a phone, and my only answer was "I've still got it, haven't I". Being in the fortunate position of testing/borrowing any phone or PDA combo - and I've had a few in the past - this is the longest I've ever kept one and the first time I've been happy with a single hybrid solution.'

Another sales manager, who didn't want to be named, was equally happy with her Treo: 'You have to get used to the keyboard,' she said. 'But once you do it's very useful for checking email. The only catch is that I can't use it as an alarm clock like I could with my Pocket PC.'

The US investing public is also showing enthusiasm for the Treo 600. From a low point of 66 cents last year, the palmOne share price has shot up to $40 in recent weeks. According to Ed Harvey, editor-in-chief of the website www.brighthand.com: 'It's no mystery why palmOne's share price is up so dramatically. It can be summed up with one product: the Treo 600. This smartphone is selling so well that palmOne is struggling to meet demand. Still, it's making enough of them and its other products to make a profit of $13.3 million, or 27 cents per share, during its most recent financial quarter. The Treo 600 accounted for 28 per cent of palmOne's last quarterly revenues, but company executives are so optimistic about its prospects in the smartphone market that they predict 50 per cent of palmOne's revenues will be from the Treo line by the end of this year.'