Treo Family Comparison Chart: Understanding The Differences

I think your spec between the Treo 700w and 700wx is incorrect with memory. if you look at http://www.palm.com/us/products/compare/index.html both have the same ammount of available mamory. If Palm is incorrect I would love to know.

Joe - when the Verizon Treo 700w was first released it had only 30MB of user-available memory while the Sprint Treo 700wx later had the benefit of 60MB user-available memory. To my knowledge Verizon's Treo 700w has not been upgraded with more memory.

I hope this helps.

Cheers, A.

Thanks for the comparison, Andrew. The product line is getting wide enough that I was beginning to get confused! My trusty 650 (unlocked gsm) is still working fine, but I'm beginning to think about its successor. Your timely post helps a lot.

Graham

Great chart Andrew. One minor correction: The Treo 750v uses a Samsung, not Intel Xscale chip.

"60 MB of storage memory are accessible to the user, as well as 40 MB of program memory. This is much more then the 24 MB that the 700w had, but not as much as the 57 MB the 700wx uses. This is partly because the Treo 750v uses a completely new chip and architecture on the inside. Instead of an 312Mhz Intel supplied, stacked CPU/baseband/Memory chip, the 750v uses a new 300 Mhz Samsung CPU/UMTS baseband processor, and separate memory chips. This specification has no real effect to the user, aside from the better power consumption of the Samsung chip as opposed to the Intel chip.

http://www.treocentral.com/content/Stories/906-1.htm

Michael - thanks for the information which I had missed... The chart has now been updated accordingly.

Cheers, A.

I don't want to get hammered by anyone, but the differences are far and few it appears to me. I guess what Im saying is they will all pretty much do the same thing. Other than the 6xx model, memory appeared to be the same. Data speeds and so forth. Im assuming 312 Mhz is better than 300? FYI I have the 700p and I love it. Anyways my point is why so many different models when there aren't huge differences? Except it was brought to my attention that I'm being reamed by the V for my data plan!!! $50 vs $15!!! Verizon needs to lower their price. Hopeful thinking.

Nice comparison. Anyone know where I can buy unlocked Treo's online (not eBay)? I went to the Palm site and located some addresses for the retail stores nearest me, but I'm not sure if they sell the phones unlocked.

Great chart! Only correction I've found is for the 650. You can get streaming audio and video via third party apps.

I believe the 750W, if ever released in Cingular, would use GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS. You have it listed as CDMA2000 (EVDO)... being a Verizon user I wouldn't mind :)

Other than that, great chart!

I can't believe that the 680 would be FREE!! Who the hell would buy any other model when they can get the 680 free. According to the chart, the 680 is not very much different to the 700P, which I just paid $300.00 for. Different camera and no braodband. Whoopee! Big difference between the free version and the $300.00 700P. If palm and cingular really does offer the 680 free, I will never put out that much money for a Treo again if i could get a similar version from Cingular for FREE! Nobody's going to buy the other Palm OS versions if the 680 is Free. So Palm is going to sit with the other versions not moving?

There's that reference to a CDMA Treo 750... :D Not that I'm complaining; I'm a CDMA user!

Andrew, based on history and your knowledge of the product, what is the approximate timeline between versions of the Treo? That is to say, how long after, say, a GSM phone is released, is CDMA version created and released?

And, good chart!

Nice comparison chart. Thanks!
Now I'm just waiting for the Treo 680 to become available...

I assume that for GSM users, the 650 will no longer be available? I mean, there's not a single advantage of the 650 over the 680, on the contrary, it has less memory, is heavier and more expensive. In addition, they can't sell the 650 anymore in Europe, so I don't see any reason why the 650 should still be produced.

Jim - please note that a Cingular Treo 680 'might' be FREE _if_ you subscribe to _both_ a two year voice + data ($30/month) contract only...

Jorge - you're right, I missed to add UMTS/HSPDA support for the GSM Treo 750w...

Patrick - I know about audio streaming on the Treo 650 but I'm not sure which third-party application you're thinking of that also offers video streaming for the Treo 650...

Cheers, A.

I can't believe I paid $650 (I didn't want any commitment) a few months ago for a 700p that doesn't appear to be much better than the 680, I don't understand the marketing. I surely won't be jumping on the early adapter bandwagon next time around!

Just another correction, the 680 has 64Mb Total Memory not 128Mb. My guess is that the 680 has NVFS memory like the 650, so 55Mb will be User Accessible (Although user accessible memory is not specified in the specs), whereas the 700p still uses RAM and ROM type of memory as used by WM and older Palm devices. The 700p is a modification of the 700wx Hardware, whereas 680 was designed for PalmOS only.

Andrew, thanks for the reply, but let's look at the options : a free Treo on Cingular with a two year contract with $30.00 data, versus a $300.00 phone on Verizon with Two year contract and $50.00 data. Do you really think people will continue to buy the 700P? Engadget has a piece on their site that people a survey recently showed that people are choosing the carrier based on the phones they carry. If you can get basically the same phone for free on one carrier, why bother paying $300.00 at another? That marketing stratergy is stupid, and Palm will lose many loyal customers who have been paying hundreds of dollars with each upgrade. If they really do offer the 680 for free with a two year contract, I will stop buying the Treo! I just paid $300.00 for basically the same phone, and frankly, I am pissed!

Jim - I wouldn't say that _no one_ would buy the 700P. I'll buy the 700P. The differences btwn the 700P and the 680 may be minimal - and my one purchase won't keep either company [Palm or the cell provider] in business...but

1) I don't want Cingular as a carrier [I use Sprint]
2) My main Treo apps make use of network connectivity - the higher bandwidth available, the better.
3) A "better", faster data plan for less money.
4) $15/mo * 24 month = $360 [unlimited data w/ Sprint]
5) $30/mo * 24 months = $720 [Free $300 phone???]

razor and blades model - inkjet printers...same, same

Cripple - actually Palm's Treo 680 page clearly states that it has "64MB non-volatile flash memory available for user storage"... The total memory on the smartphone is 128MB...

Syphon - you can buy an Unlocked GSM Treo 650 for $379.95 and an Unlocked CDMA Sprint Treo 650 for $329.95 here as well here:

http://shop.treonauts.com/content/smartphones/index.htm

Cheers, A.

Andrew,

Are you sure about Sprint and Verizon are getting the 750w? I thought that was a Cingular GSM phone and maybe T-mobile would pick it up.

It doesn't seem to be a huge difference between the 700wx and the 750 besides smaller battery and no aerial and I haven't heard of any rumors about those carriers getting those phones.

Do you know if they will have EvDO Rev A aka the Qualcomm 7500 chipset (I'm assuming)?

I go back to my previous post and say, specs are a fine starting point, but they only tell part of the story - what is the rest?

For example - Not all LCDs are the same - the only thing the chart says is the 680 and 700P (for example) re both 320 X 320 - but that doesn't say anything about the actual quality of the display.

Similarly the 680 and 700p both have Intel proc. runing @ 312MHZ, but they are different processors - how much real-world speed difference is there?

Sizes of memory asside (and the 680 and 700p both have 128 TL RAM, but different user RAM ammounts? that sounds strange), are the RAM architectures the same as far as speed go?

Very nice and useful chart Andrew. I've posted on this and linked to it at:
http://justanothermobilemonday.com/Wordpress/2006/10/25/treo-family-comparison-chart-at-treonauts/

Hi Andrew,

sorry to inform you, but your data rates for the GSM-Versions are wrong. Most of them are too high...

At least if you see the data rates in Europe. I'm not sure about the US, but I doubt that they are higher.

The Information I found says the following:

Gprs: 51,6 kBit/s (theoretical with 8 channels 171,2 kBit/s but not found anywhere in reality)
Gprs / EDGE: 150 - 200 kBit/s (theoretical with 8 channels 384 kBit/s but not found anywhere in reality either)
UMTS: regular 384 kBit/s, HSDPA 1,8 MBit/s (in some areas up to 3,6 MBit/s)

Maybe now you can see, why I would never buy a non-UMTS Treo again (GPRS was okay in 2003, but not in 2006!). I'm using my 650 on a GSM/GPRS Network that doesn't support EDGE but would support UMTS. AND I would never buy a Windows Mobile Phone (again...). So the only thing I can hope for is a UMTS / Palm OS Treo (750p where are you?) or I'll have to look for something completely different :-(

Greets
Houston
(a little bit frustrated)

Is the information in your Treo Family comparison chart under the Mobility section correct for the Treo 750? You have it as an EV DO device where as it is a UMTS/HSPDA data device, and the speed should be different than the EV DO device.

Andrew,

Nice chart, but what you are missing is a line for Program Memory. That is the actual RAM that Windows Mobile programs run in, not the storage memory that Palm talks about.

The primary difference between the 700w and 700wx is that the 700wx has 128MB of Storage Memory and 64MB of Program Memory. The 700w has 128MB of Storage Memory, but only 32MB of Program Memory. They both have about 60MB of free Storage Memory to use by the user. Think of Storage Memory as equivalent to your hard drive. You store your files and programs on it, but for them to run they must be loaded into RAM (Program Memory). That happens automatically and transparently when you launch a program on a Windows Mobile device.

Without sufficient Program Memory (at least 64MB) multitasking is much more limited on a Windows Mobile device. Hence the reason that Palm and/or Sprint upgraded the Program Memory on the 700wx. They just didn't advertise it because they don't want to draw attention to the fact that the 700w has less.

andrew,
I remember reading (perhaps in one of your earlier posts?) that the 680 feels slower, even though the specs a very similar--maybe because it uses lower speed memory or something. Can you confirm/elaborate on that?

Didn't the Palm guys say it would be about $200 on contract? I would assume that this is a data contract.

Thanks for the chart, I really needed this to keep the overview.

I would say, keep it up-to-date and give it it's own section on your site/menu bar!

Nice chart. I would love to see the difference in the type of Bluetooth that each phone uses. Which one of these uses Bluetooth 1.1 compared to 1.2? Makes all the difference on whether you can use a Bluetooth headphone to listen to music.

So according this chart, there isn't going to any gsm Treos (either OS) that will be wifi capable, even with my palm wifi SD card?! Too bad, my college is blanketed with wifi! I had high hopes for the 680 with Cingular. I guess I'll be looking somewhere else.

Just an FYI, I think on your new text based chart you have the prices for the cingular 650 and 680 shifted to the right of where they are supposed to be. you have no price for the 650, a 299 price for the 680 and a 174.99 price for the 700p (not even available on Cingular....might want to check that out.

Can somebody help me understand the screen resolution? I'm a little nervous about the 750's resolution @ 240 X 240 vs. the 680's @ 320 X 320. Since the dimension of the screen looks to be roughly the same size these pixel counts seem to suggest that the 750 will have 75% of the resolution that the 680 has. That seems hard for me to believe, though. I want to believe that they are going to produce this phone with a brilliantly colored and clear screen. Somebody told me that I'm not understanding these resolutions correctly... that these resolutions don't really describe the image quality as I thought. They said that the manufacturer may be using the same screen for both phones but they feel that the 240 X 240 is the best choice for the Windows operating system. Can anybody explain this to me?

Actually, the more that I think about it... you can adjust your monitor to have a larger or smaller desktop and these resolutions change even though the image quality isn't more or less bright or clear. This argument suggests that the resolution (320 X 320 or 240 X 240) doesn't translate to image quality. The other argument, though, says that one screen has more dots of color than the other. If you compare the total number of pixels on one screen vs. the other the larger number suggests more dots of color. It seems to follow that the larger number would translate to a clearer image. Which is it?

The 320x320 Palm OS screens look _a_lot_ better than the old 240x240 Palm screens. Too bad the Windows phones don't/can't use that resolution.

When I looked at Cingular service at Radio Shack the other day, unlimited data was $20/month for all the phone there. Granted, the 680 was not there yet. Has the price been dropped since this chart was created or is it higher for different categories of phone?

As I understand it the 750 Treo will have UMTS but not HSDPA. Is that true.

A note... the 680 does have built-in voice memo, and doesn't require a third party app. By default, that app is linked to the PTT button on the side.

The Treo 650 is available for $99 from Cingular with plans. Also, the Treo 680 supports SDHC, so 8GB cards and beyond. I would assume the 750 has similar support, but I don't know about Windows Mobile.

Great chart!

Two things to make it even better:

1. Add a second 'height' line in the dimensions to include the total height with the antenna. Right now, the height chart looks odd because the 680 and 700 are the same size.

2. In the phone, the megapixels line should probably be a red background, not green, for the low resolution of the 650 and 680.

Thank you again!

Andrew,
Does Treo 680 have Push Email capability?

Great website, I like it.
Thanks.

CORRECTION: The Centro does not have a mini SD slot. The Centro has a MICRO SD slot.