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Palm's first Windows Mobile-based product, the Treo 700w Smartphone melds the popular Treo hardware with Microsoft's operating system for handhelds---and with Verizon Wireless's superfast EvDO BroadbandAccess network. It's not great enough to convince me to give up my Palm OS-based Treo 650, but it's as good as a Windows Mobile smartphone gets.

Like the Treo 650, the 700w is small enough (4.4 by 2.3 by 0.9 inches) and light enough (6.4 ounces) to fit in a pants pocket, but big enough to let you read the display and type on the integrated QWERTY keyboard. The $550 price tag (less if you renew or purchase new voice service and a $50-a-month unlimited data plan) is typical for a full-featured PDA/cell phone hybrid.

Similar to the 650

Like the Treo 650, the 700w runs on a 312-MHz Intel XScale CPU, and it uses the same connectors. The 700w has 128MB of flash memory, versus 32MB in the 650, but both have an SD Card slot for expansion. The 700w's screen is the same size as the 650's, but its 240 by 240 resolution is lower than the 650's 320 by 320. Nevertheless, the 700w's display was by no means unattractive, and I found its 1.3-megapixel camera a definite step up from the VGA camera that previous Treos used.

OK, Start Buttons

The button layout has changed slightly: A Windows Mobile Start button (which brings up the Start Menu) replaces the Calendar button to the left of the central navigation button; to the right, the Mail button has become an OK button, useful for shutting down memory-hogging Windows Mobile processes. The two buttons located directly beneath the display activate right- and left-hand on-screen options (a common cell phone navigation feature).

Pushing the 700w's phone button brings up Palm's variant of the Windows Mobile Today screen, which consists of a pair of text entry boxes. The first box is for entering a phone number or looking up a contact (so you can initiate a call quickly); the second is for Google searches, which produce results very quickly on the EvDO network.

Palm has introduced a few neat new phone features. You can create speed-dial buttons with text labels or thumbnail portraits on the Today screen, which certainly beats memorizing speed-dial numbers.

You can respond to an incoming call with a text message (in addition to the usual voice mail)--useful if you're stuck in meetings. A graphical voicemail management system lets you use the same interface for different voice-mail systems by assigning the numeric keys (for, say, delete or replay) to the appropriate icons. You can also use a video clip as a ring tone.

E-Mail Wizard

The Treo 700w's e-mail client falls short of the Treo 650's bundled VersaMail: You can't select multiple messages (for deletion or transfer to other folders), and you can't choose whether to delete downloaded mail from the server. The integrated Bluetooth capability supports hands-free car kits or headsets, but doesn't let you use the device as a modem.

While the Treo 700w should please corporate users standardized on Microsoft software, its best features owe little to Windows Mobile. So I'll just wait for them--and 3G network support--to appear on the next Palm-based Treo.

Yardena Arar