One Week with the Treo 755p

While I'm not exactly a Palm fan, I was able to get my hands on the Palm Treo 755p from Sprint for a few days as a friend loaned it to me. If you don't own a Palm device but you own a Windows Mobile device, handling a Palm can only take a few minutes of getting used to since the navigation menu on this device is very user friendly.

The Palm Treo 755p runs on Sprint's CDMA 2000 1X EV-DO network and has the Palm OS 5.4.9 as its operating system. The Palm Treo 755p has a built in 128 MB of memory and can be expanded using a miniSD card. The device also has a 2.5 inch TFT touch screen with 65k colors and 320 x 240 resolution.

Palm, as many of you know has revolutionized the smart phone, however, because of lack of new products it has been pushed back by competitors such as the iPhone and smart phones from Nokia and other cellphone manufacturers. Though I'm really not a Palm fan, I was surprised that I liked using the 755p. The Intel 312 MHz Xscale processor on this device can run applications smoothly with minimal hang-ups which makes it great for running the different applications preloaded on the Treo 755p such as SprintTV, PocketTunes, Web Browser, Instant Messenger, Palm Desktop Software, etc.

I like the fact that the Palm Treo 755p can handle the three different Instant Messaging Clients-Yahoo, AIM, and Windows. This Palm device also has built-in support for Microsoft's Direct Push Technology so you can have access to corporate email, that is, if your company supports push email technology. However, the damper is that even though the Palm Treo allows you to have access to your IM accounts and corporate email, it lacks WiFi connection so you're limited to using Sprint's EvDO network, the upside is Sprint's network is still relatively fast compared with AT&T's EDGE network.

The Treo 755p also has an integrated 2 mega pixel camera however I was disappointed to find out that the picture quality doesn't really meet my standards. I'm now starting to wonder if a smart phone with good camera quality really does exist as most smart phones that I have come across only has subpar picture quality.

The Treo 755p also doesn't have a Bluetooth A2DP profile so audio streaming using your Stereo Bluetooth headset is out of the question. The built-in PocketTunes allows you to listen to your music but you're limited to listening to MP3s, WAV and MIDI formats, if you want to listen to WMA audio, you need to upgrade your current PocketTunes software.

Overall, I have to say that the Treo 755p is more geared towards business individuals. The subpar camera quality and the limited music playing capability doesn't really make the Treo 755p an ideal all-in-one smartphone device.