Palm Treo 700W PDA Phone (CDMA, Bluetooth, 1.3MP, 128MB, SDIO/MMC)

Palm Treo 700w

Treo 700W PDA Phone (CDMA, Bluetooth, 1.3MP, 128MB, SDIO/MMC) Review, by Tom Mainelli April 20, 2006

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• Latest User Reviews 2 reviews
• Reviewed by: LouisS

  Duration of ownership: 10 Months

  Strengths: Keeps me in touch with every Verizon employee in tech support

  Weaknesses: This space isn't large enough. Poor battery life, freezes at any time, can't respond to voicemail when screen changes back to Today, won't play ringtones when call comes in, turns off phone by itself, aaaarggghh.

  Overall: I am on my 4th Treo 700w. Yes, my 4th. I have been begging them to switch me to a Blackberry since June but they insist on just replacing my bad Treo with another one to cause me heartburn. My first was in January just when they came out. It took 2 weeks to go silent. #2 was really nasty but improved when the service pack came out, but then went back to dropped calls, not letting me answer calls, freezing up, etc. #3 in June finally fried itself this past week in October after providing much entertainment in what it wouldn't do each day. Dropped calls, freezing up, couldn't respond to voicemail, would play ringtones in setup but not when phone rang, etc. My wife and partner pleaded with me to pay for a Blackberry if Verizon refused to switch me for free. I have to wait till January to get the discount from $470 to $300 for the Blackberry, so I am stuck with Treo #4 in the meantime. The best part is when I am in the Verizon store telling the techs about my problems and someone with a brand new Treo is listening to my horror stories. They are like deer in headlights, realizing they just signed up for the biggest headache in their lifetime. Oh yeah, tech support. I had a 1 Gb SD card in phone #2. Tech support told me that having that card in there corrupted the operating system of the phone so it wasn't their fault. I never installed any ringtones, programs or other 3rd party software. All I used was the default phone software. Yet they claimed that a storage device corrupted the operating system? I left the SD card out of phone #3 and it fried itself anyway. I do remember that when tech support told me that having so many Treo's go bad must be the way I was using it. I asked them if I should wear an aluminum foil hat just to be safe and they said it couldn't hurt.

• Reviewed by: mcuriel

  Duration of ownership: 6 Months

  Strengths: Good Size and feel plays good music for 500$ Palm has good support for a POS product

  Weaknesses: Dont depend on it to always work as a phone as it locks up ALL the time. Poor Battery life and takes forever to fully charge Freezes up At times you cant get the phone to come out of sleep Not as email friendly as the RIM devices but it works.

  Overall: Someone needs to be fired for putting out a POS product for us all to pay to beta test Open your window and toss the 500 out once you toss it out and the anger is gone you wont be remided by it all the time. This thing is not DEPENDABLE, not a good phone or a email device. Was waiting for a call and never got it so I called the ohter party 3 times to find out they were trying to call me as well and I took the battery out and rebooted and had 7 voicemails. Save your money

• Reviewed by: Neofury212

  Strengths: Easy interface with Windows desktop, Powerful media player application

  Weaknesses: Needs better then 240x240 res, however only a matter of time until firmware applications are released

  Overall: I have had my 700w for about 2 months now and I have nothing but good things to say. DONT listen to all of those out there who bash this great product prior to used or only after one day. Sure its different then Palm based OS, but its better different for the average person who owns a windows based PC not a Palm OS based PC(which I would love to try). Broadband is uncomparible to 128kb/s of other smartphones. On another note, i have a question for all you techgeeks out there who have 700w's.... Is it possible to browse the web using an SDIO Wifi card over your wireless network? I spoke with Tech support at Verizon who told me no. I honestly don't believe them. If possible, could easily do without 40 dollar per month data usage fee.

• Reviewed by: george2112

  Strengths: great internet speed

  Weaknesses: crashes when more than one program is INSTALLED (not running)

  Overall: I bought this treo and had it crashing within hours. The stated amount of RAM is not what you actually get! There is only 12-15mb of RAM available to use. This means that once you start the phone and maybe have ONE program running such as MP3s or CALENDAR, the unit will slow down and become unresponsive until you manually close anything running other than the program you selected. I could not put up with this OR Verizon's customer support, so I got a refund and will go with Sprint and THEIR phones! One more thing: if you ARE running a program and the phone rings...it will crash!

• Reviewed by: rgouldmd

  Strengths: Impressive appearance will give one a feeling of importance. The technical support people are very friendly. They better be.

  Weaknesses: If you buy this, you will become an unwilling beta tester.

  Overall: The palm people are counting on you calling technical support and tell them about the numerous bugs that this phone/pda has. Then they will tell you that they have no answer, but have a panel of experts working on a solution and thank you very much for giving them input. The technical support people are very friendly.

• Reviewed by: resq944

  Strengths: Wireless broadband, pop 3 client, windows mobile, does just about everything

  Weaknesses: NEUTERED BLUE TOOTH -VERIZON- WHY???, Phone is so-so, multiple daily freezes and lock ups requiring soft resets.

  Overall: Great all in one device, camera is pretty good, pda features work great, windows mobile is great, wireless broadband is pretty fast, almost fast enough to not notice. The phone feature is not that great, it preforms less well then my old nokia 6162 which worked everywhere. Of course the blue tooth is neutered thanks to verizon who wants you to buy 3 different devices to do the same thing, 1 voice plan, 1 PDA data plan and 1 wireless broadband plan for your laptop. This is so stupid as to be laughable. The 700w has the ability to tether to any laptop via blue tooth and share its wireless broadband connection but why would Verizon let you do that?? They wont. Of course for power users there are ways to do it that are not "supported" but if you google it you can find out how too. All I can say is I have "seen" a working wired tether and it would be nice if you could do it via bluetooth and Verizon would "let" you without hacking/third party apps. All in all I love this device even though it is not quite there and could use a firmware update to deal with lock up issues that require soft resets daily. I would not give it up for anything though and frankly I cant remember life without it and will never go back. Once the bugs get worked out this thing will truly bring the convergence device to fruition.

• Reviewed by: GIJane

  Weaknesses: Lack of Bluetooth voice activated phone callsActive Sync almost useless

  Overall: In today's world where hand's free operation is a must for phone users, it's incredible that there's NO voice activation over bluetooth for a device at this price point.One Hundred dollar phones do a great job of hands free bluetooth phone call activation. So should the 700w.Active Sync is too clunky and awkward to use - it leaves out syncing newly created files. Give me the Palm Sync anyday.I wish I could return the 700W, but my exchange window has closed. Some features work as expected, but the 700w is basically an unsatisfactory device. Been at trying to set up and use important 3rd part apps for about 45 days - little joy. Pure palm devices doing the same apps have been very easy to set up - less than a week, lots of joy.