Setting The Treo Record Straight

The announcement of the Treo 500 in Europe last week as well as the launch of the Treo 750 running WM6 in Canada yesterday have made me stop to think about all the criticism that has been aimed at Palm and the Treo in recent months. 

While much of this criticism – particularly the one aimed at Palm’s sluggish innovation – is well founded I nonetheless feel that the one imposed on our Treo as a device has been more than somewhat unfair and I’d like to take this opportunity to try to set the record straight as well as to help people better understand the overall current smartphone landscape.

Let me start by outlining the six types of smartphone hardware designs that currently exist so as to give you a better sense of where the Treo sits:

1. Large touchscreen + full QWERTY keyboard
• Treo 680, 750, 755p, 700w|wx, 650
• iMate JAQ3, iMate JAQ, HP iPAQ hw6920/25
2. Large touchscreen + sliding/flipping QWERTY keyboard
• HTC P4300, Samsung SCH-i730, T-Mobile Wing, Nokia E90/E70, Sidekick, SonyEricsson P990i
3. Large non-touchscreen + full QWERTY keyboard
• Treo 500 (image below right)
• Moto Q, Samsung Blackjack, T-Mobile Dash, BlackBerry Curve/8800, Nokia E61/E62
4. Small touchscreen + mini QWERTY keyboard
• Palm Centro (image below left)
5. Small non-touchscreen + mini or T9 keyboard
• BlackBerry Pearl, HP iPAQ 510, Nokia E50/E60/E65
6. Touchscreen only (no physical keyboard)
• Apple iPhone, HTC Touch, LG KE850

Although there are many factors that can influence the choice of a smartphone there is no doubt that when specifically comparing a Treo against competing devices that also have a large touchscreen and full QWERTY keyboard neither iMate’s nor HP’s Windows Mobile offerings come close to matching the elegance of the Treo 750 or the PalmOS Treo 680 and 755p. 

People have repeatedly complained about the relatively bulky Treo form factor but in this respect there is a surprising little fact that you should know about your Treo that nobody has bothered to ever mention before.  Namely:

The Treo 680, 750 and 755p are still the smallest and lightest smartphones featuring both a large high resolution touchscreen and full QWERTY keyboard on the market today!!! 
[The Treo weighs 5.4 ounces while competing devices in this category are between 5.6 and 6.33 ounces.]

Why does the above fact matter?  Because although some people like to complain about the Treo’s perceived “aged” design almost everybody will nonetheless agree that the combination of a touchscreen, large full keyboard as well a set of dedicated hard buttons combined with a powerful OS means that our Treo delivers the simplest, fastest and most intuitive smartphone experience. 

It is therefore important to understand that the main hardware compromise that one must be willing to accept (for now at least) with a Treo is that having the benefit of a large touchscreen and full keyboard inevitably means that it will be slightly heavier and bulkier than competing devices that have either no touchscreen or no keyboard (such as the Dash or iPhone).  Most Treonauts understand this perfectly well and have been more than willing to make this compromise.

Let me nonetheless take a closer look at the other five smartphone categories and devices available below:

• Large touchscreen + sliding QWERTY keyboard
• None of the offerings in this category are of any interest to me as I concluded some time ago that sliding keyboard devices are just too large, heavy and cumbersome for my use.  Having said this both the Sidekick and Nokia E90 have their fair share of converts.
• Large non-touchscreen + full QWERTY keyboard
• Because the lack of a touchscreen allows devices in this category to be considerably lighter and slimmer (from 3.5 to 4.76 ounces and 0.45” thick) than high-end Treo smartphones they have gained in popularity thanks to the Moto Q/Q9, Samsung Blackjack, T-Mobile Dash, BlackBerry Curve/8800 and Nokia E61/E62 all making interesting offerings include some with built-in GPS and WiFi.  BlackBerry in particular has risen from being one of the ugliest smartphones around to one of its most elegant.  Additionally, I have been very impressed with Palm’s new Treo 500 and I have no doubt that it will do very well competitively in this category – particularly if as expected it is offered for free with a new two year contract in the US.
• Small touchscreen + mini QWERTY keyboard
• The forthcoming Palm Centro (possibly called Treo 550 or 555 upon release?) will surprisingly be the first smartphone in this category – one targeted at a younger audience.  It will provide people the opportunity to experience the simplicity of PalmOS packaged in an ultrasmall and ultralight form factor while still benefiting from a touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard.  If as expected the Centro shares the same build quality as the Treo 500 and is released for $99 I have no doubt that it will be extremely successful.
• Small non-touchscreen + mini or T9 keyboard
• The BlackBerry Pearl has undoubtedly defined this category with an ultralight, small, slim and very elegant offering.  It does not feature a full keyboard but instead uses a unique set of 20 keys to type.  Although targeted at a different audience the forthcoming Palm Centro will have the most similar form factor.
• Touchscreen only (no physical keyboard)
• The hottest gadget of the moment in this category is naturally the Apple iPhone – a device with one of the largest high resolution touchscreens and a stunning and fast user interface.  However, while many have been attracted by its beautiful design (and influenced by its powerful marketing engine) the fact is that any experienced smartphone owner will like me quickly realise that the lack of a physical keyboard and dedicated buttons is a great and tedious barrier to completing the most basic tasks – particularly those requiring any type of data input – and this remains one of the iPhone’s main drawbacks.

Additionally, it may also be worthwhile pointing out that there are five main types of smartphone operating systems (each of which has its own particular set of strengths and weaknesses):

1. Palm OS: Treo 680, 755p, 700p, 650
2. Blackberry: Pearl, Curve, 8800
3. Windows Mobile: Treo 750, Treo 500, Dash, Blackjack, Moto Q/Q9
4. Symbian: Nokia E series, Sony Ericsson P990i
5. OS X: iPhone

In this respect, again, although my preferred PalmOS has remained relatively unchanged for years the fact is that it retains quite a bit of an edge over its competitors whether they want to admit it or not.

Having said all this, it’s only natural that we should all want and expect even more from Palm.  Our demands for a next generation high-end Treo 800 smartphone are actually pretty simple:

• Make it look great - shave off some weight and make it slim, clean the lines, add an ultrasharp screen, make sure it’s solid, go for black (remember, we want people to go Wow! when they see it)
• Deliver that new Palm Linux OS that you’ve been raving about with a superb new HotSync technology and Palm Desktop from which we can control and modify all aspects of our smartphone (including files).
• Make sure that the next Treo has something unique to offer out-of-the-box in the areas of communication, productivity, information and entertainment and work closely with third-party developers to deliver it.
• Pack the Treo 800 with all the features that we want: full 3G connectivity, built-in WiFi and GPS, Bluetooth v2.0, 2+ megapixel camera as well as fast USB 2.0 connectivity among others.
• Provide a completely new set of Treo accessories to match the look and feel of your new smartphones just like Apple does so well.

Finally, now that Palm will have devices competing in three of the six smartphone hardware design categories I also expect to see the company’s product development team getting ready to fill the remaining three as well with a:

• WM large touchscreen + full sliding keyboard
• WM small non-touchscreen + mini or T9 keyboard
• PalmOS and WM Touchscreen-only (no keyboard) like in the mockup below that I quickly conceived in Photoshop with a large rectangular and small square screen based on the design of the Treo 500 and Palm Centro.

Separately, there’s another important area that we seem to have been forgetting of late.  Namely, the wireless carriers.  In the US the big question on my mind right now is WHERE IS VERIZON!? Both the excellent CDMA Treo 755p (for $199) have been available on Sprint for some time and the company is also expected to be the first to launch the forthcoming Palm Centro but Verizon Wireless for its part is still only selling the Treo 700p and Treo 700wx (both for $399)!?  Also, where is the CDMA Treo 750 gone?  There’s no doubt that Palm will not be able to sell more smartphones unless it manages to have the necessary carrier distribution and perhaps it’s time that Treonauts started writing or calling Verizon Wireless en masse to demand to know where their new Treo is…

There’s a lot of food for thought in this post and choosing the right smartphone for you can be a complex task.  However, with this short overview I hope that people will at least be able to more readily understand where the various Treo models sit within the overall smartphone ecosystem and realise that for all its faults our Treo remains an absolutely superb device.

Treonauts are always setting things straight…