Palm Treo 500 review

When Palm made the decision to start making smartphones using Microsoft's Windows Mobile software platform, most Palm device and PalmOS fans were horrified but soon won over by the company's initial efforts like the Treo 750, which brought a new level of quality and ease-of-use to Windows-based smartphones.

Today, Palm has tried to apply its experience to a Windows Mobile smartphone that will also appeal to the non-business users. The result is the Treo 500, a smartphone available in two otherwise identical versions, the 500 and the Vodafone-locked 500v. We're looking at the 500, which will work on any network.

At first glance the Treo 500 looks a bit like a child's toy - the Fisher Price My First Smartphone. It's a very chunky plastic phone at 16.5mm thick, 61.5mm wide and 110mm long, making it bigger overall than a Blackberry, but still thinner and lighter (120g) than many other current Windows Mobile devices like the HTC TyTN II.

Once you get beyond the initial look of the phone, you quickly realise that it is extremely sturdy to the point of being rugged.

Wireless connectivity is limited to 3G or 2G mobile phone data connections - no HSDPA alas - and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR. The 500 supports the stereo headset Bluetooth profile, but there's no Wi-Fi and no built-in GPS.

Six of the best

Using the 500 is straightforward, with most features accessed via just six buttons: two that handle answering and ending calls, two for accessing on-screen menus and soft keys, and two buttons dedicated to recalling the main menu and going back a step. There is also a directional thumb control in the centre for navigating menus. Two buttons on the left-hand side control earpiece volume, while a third can be configured to load a preferred application, by default the Internet Explorer web browser.

Above these keys is a very sharp and extremely bright 320x240-pixel colour screen (not a touchscreen) that supports up to 65,000 colours.

The 500 uses the smartphone version of Windows Mobile 6, the latest release of Microsoft's PDA and smartphone operating system. There is still a strong focus on business software, with support for Exchange push email, synchronisation with Office files and support for virtual private network (VPN connections). Palm has included a couple consumer applications to get you started including a Google Maps client, a Java platform to allow games to be installed and a network settings wizard with preset configurations for most network and carriers.

These bits of software sit alongside the standard Windows Mobile features, such as the Internet Explorer browser, address book, basic games, email, SMS and picture messaging support, mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Microsoft's Instant Messenger client and Windows media player for audio and video playback. All the applications run very quickly, and switching from one to another is almost instant.

Quality Qwerty

One of the key applications for the 500 is email access, and to support this the phone has a full Qwerty keyboard. The keys are small and close together, but bigger and more spaced out than previous Treo phones with a keyboard. The keys are very rounded and have plenty of movement, making typing comfortable and reassuring that you have pressed a button fully and accurately.

Don't be fooled though, configuring email can be fiddly, especially if you use and IMAP-based service like Yahoo or Google Mail, or have multiple accounts.

One aspect that particularly disappointed us was the camera. On paper, a 2 megapixel camera with a 2x digital zoom and no flash should have been adequate, but not stunning. In reality we found the image quality was fuzzy and dull. Competing Windows Mobile devices such as Samsung's SGH-i320 and SGH-i600 deliver much better image quality with lower resolution camera hardware.

Battery life is good, with Palm claiming 10 days standby and up to 4.5 hours of talk time. In our use, we achieved 7 days standby (with no background data access) and 4.5 hours of talk time.

If you can manage to get the battery cover off the back of the phone (when clipped in place, it really does take some shifting), you'll find a microSD card slot to supplement the onboard 150MB of user storage.

In all, if you can live with the husky proportions of the Palm 500 and lacklustre camera, then you'll have a very competent and robust phone, and probably the most consumer-friendly Windows smartphone released so far. However, it needs more non-business applications, such as more games, maybe a second browser pre-installed and definitely more help with configuring services such as email.