Upgrading To The 650 From The 600..........Is It Worth The Cost?

I've had the Treo 600 for over a year before finally taking the plunge with the 650 a short while ago. The 650 is neither a total redesign nor radical change from the 600. The 650 does the exact same fundamental things as the 600 did (phone, PDA, PIM). The 650 is almost identical in size, shape and appearance to the 600 too. What the 650 does is address some of the shortcomings of the 600.

That said, rather than drill down on every feature/function of the 650, in this particular review I am going to focus on the enhancements and new features in the Treo 650 vs. the older model, the Treo 600. This information will be very useful for those that already have invested in (and/or are already familiar with) the 600 and want to understand if the 650 is really worth the cost of shelling out yet another $500 (plus all new accessories).

If you do not have a basic understanding of the Treo Smartphone line yet, check out the other reviews here on epinions (including mine of the 600 model) or the analyst reviews sections on http://www.cnet.com

WHAT IS NEW AND/OR IMPROVED IN THE 650:

Bluetooth wireless technology -People were screaming for this with the 600 and it is finally here in the 650. Bluetooth technology is a great thing to have (go to http://www.bluetooth.org if you are not familiar with Bluetooth). At first, Bluetooth would not work on my 650 so I had to send it back and get it swapped out for a new one which worked fine. Pairing was pretty straightforward and easy and includes a wizard for pairing devices.

Hot Sync via Bluetooth is painfully slow, to the point of being unusable. Hot Sync set up via Bluetooth can be difficult too since it involves assigning ports on your PC. I had port conflicts on my PC and it took several attempts to get it working.

For file transfer, Bluetooth speeds were adequate but not great. It would work ok for transferring small files or prc applications to/from your phone, although I found infrared to be a bit faster. The most practical use for Bluetooth is a wireless headset. I bought the Treo headset ($65) and it works like a charm!

Bluetooth Dial Up Networking (DUN) Use your Treo 650 as a wireless modem for you laptop via Bluetooth. Most carriers are supporting this capability now. Business "power users" of the 650 will most likely get a lot of mileage out of this capability. I've used it a few times and it works well at traditional dial up speeds. You could do DUN on the 600 but it wasn't via Bluetooth, it was with an application called PDANet which costs about $40. However with the 650 you won’t need to spend the $40 on PDANet since you can do it directly with the built in Bluetooth.

Sharper display -- My biggest surprise with the 650 was the new color screen. 320 x 320 with 65,000 colors gives this unit an amazingly colorful display. I never gave the screen on the 600 a second though until I saw the 650 and it was then that I realized how terrible the resolution was on the 600 really is! On the 650, web browsing is so much clearer, images are very sharp, pictures are vibrant, applications look so much better. Your entire user experience is dramatically improved on the 650 because the screen is so much better. I'd equate this to watching TV on an old bare bones TV with rabbit ears antenna vs. watching on a real nice Plasma TV. It is *THAT* much better.

Improved keyboard and button layout -- Typing is even more finger-friendly with the improved keyboard. Navigation buttons are all centrally located for faster access. Keys are wider, flatter, more spread out and much easier to navigate and depress than the 600. I can't say enough about
this improvement, typing messages is so much easier and more fluid on the 650 than it was on the 600 (and the 600 wasn't that bad to begin with!). On the 650 I can actually crank out a full email quickly and easily where as with the 600 you had to move slowly to make sure you actually hit the right keys The 600 was like typing on a regular cell phone where short comments and one word answers were ok, but forget about full sentences and paragraphs. But with the new keyboard on the 650 you would have no problem doing a long email and doing it quickly and accurately too.

Keyboard backlighting - The keyboard is backlit more brightly than before and it stays on longer than it did with the 600. Another useful improvement that was much needed in the 600.

312MHz Processor - The 600 had a 144MHz processor. Can't say I notice the difference to be honest!

Better camera which also captures video -- The camera on the 600 was borderline useless– the picture quality was terrible at best and the lighting had to be perfect or else you’d just get a blurry mess. However on the 650 the camera is VERY good now!! Pictures are clear and visible, you can crop, zoom, resize right on your Treo. There is also a built in mirror so you can take self pictures (that was not do-able on the 600!). There s a counter that tells you how many pictures you have left based on available space. There is still no flash with the camera so low light situations will continue to be a challenge. Full length video can easily be recorded and stored on your SD card or memory. I have 200 MB free on my 512MB SD card and that would give me over an hour of video storage.

Removable & interchangeable battery - On the 600 the
battery was sealed inside the case of the unit. On the 650 you can access the battery by sliding off the back panel. Some people may love being able to have a back up battery ($35) on hand. I don'tt think I will every use it because I
don't want to carry a spare battery around with me. Data and applications are safe while you change batteries or if you lose power.

Stylus/Soft Reset - no longer do you have to unscrew the stylus top and use it to push the soft reset button. Now the tip of the stylus (as is) is capable of depressing the soft reset button. This was a step in the right direction but see below under the Dislikes section for info as to why this was a lateral step rather than a true improvement.

New Keys

The Home key used to be located at the bottom right of the keyboard on the 600 but it is now a separate button next to the 5 way navigator up top. I love this new set up, it is very useful since the home key is one of the most used keys.

There is now a Menu key on the main keypad area next to the 5 way navigator. This is a major improvement since the Menu key is applicable to every single Palm OS application and integral to using the 650 on a day to day basis.

Phone disconnect/power button has been added as one of the 4 basic hotkeys across the front of the unit. This button replaced the screen on/off switch on the 600 and it is used to also turn the phone on and off. The phone power button on the top of the 600 was eliminated. This new layout took some getting used to. I was very used to pushing the button on the top for phone connections and also very used to pressing the screen to hang up my calls. Now this is all done with the same button on the front. Better? Yes, much. Different? Yes, much!

Volume Up/Down - these are still in the same spot, on the right side of the phone, but they went from being to small and separate buttons to one large rocker type
control.

View, Edit, create MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files
- Palm lists this as being on the 650 which is somewhat misleading. What they did was bundle Dataviz Documents software out of the box with the 650. Dataviz Documents is readily available for the 600, but it was just a separate purchase ($50) on the 600. I already paid for Dataviz Documents on the 600 so I don't consider this a true improvement with the 650, but if you don't own it already then you may think differently. The Dataviz Documents product requires a review in itself but in short, it allows you to view, create and edit Word, Powerpoint and Excel files directly on your Treo. In all honesty, it is so cumbersome to create and edit these files on a small handheld that it is not likely that many people will actually do it. It does however come in handy as a viewer so you can open and read email attachments on the Treo.

MP3 Player - Again, Palm lists this as new on the 650 which is somewhat misleading. Real Player for Palm is now pre loaded on the 650. However, it is also available as a free download from Real's web site and works on the 600 too, so I hardly consider this a new feature, but apparently Palm does!

Combined text and picture messaging -- Send and receive text messages, photos, or video clips from one application with a single Inbox.

New Palm Desktop UI with Quick Installer - the traditional Palm Desktop software application is pretty much the same feature/function wise but they have improved the look and feel of the UI. A nice new feature they did add was a “Quick Install” application that launches just the palm installer section of the Palm Desktop so you don’t have to launch the whole application if you just want to install Palm files to your handheld.

Updated Blazer browser - the UI on the blazer is a little cleaner. Can't say the performance is drastically better or different than the 600 but the navigation is cleaner.

Favorites - On the 600 you used one of your main keys or navigation keys to get to your favorites lists. On the 650, it is now accessible live from the main phone screen.

Preferences - The navigator screen is redesigned into a a single screen navigation area on the 650 rather than a drop down menu navigation screen on the 600.

Calculator is improved - There is a new and cleaner U I for the calculator. It's pretty good and I suspect most people don't even think to use it.

Much lighter in weight? - I held my 600 in one hand and the 650 in the other and the 650 felt so much lighter! I dropped them both in my pants pockets and the 650 didn't feel like the roll of quarters that the 600 always does. This is particularly noteworthy because the 650 is technically heavier than the 600 (5.9 oz vs. 6.3 oz). Go figure!


A Treo wouldn'tt be a Treo if it didn’t have some things to gripe about. Here are the things that I am finding as shortcomings with the 650:

No WiFi – Don't hold your breath for WiFi in *any* release of the Treo. Reports from Palm are that the Treo is just too small to support the necessary drivers that power WiFi connectivity. We’d all love WiFi but not
at the expense of making the unit considerably bigger in size.

Speakerphone volume is terrible. I never had a problem with the volume on the 600 but the 650 is barely audible at full volume. It is borderline useless on the 650 which is a shame.

It's crash happy - the 650 soft resets automatically (ie..crashes) far more often than the 600 did. By crash happy I mean……several times a day,pretty much every day!!! I thought maybe it was just my particular unit that
was defective but the one I got as a hot swap from Palm to fix the Bluetooth problems crashes just as often. Yes, this is as annoying as it sounds, especially when you are in the middle of something and it crashes on you.

A new version of the ROM has just been released (1.15) which claims to address some of the stability issues. I wil l update this review once I get chance to install it.

Painfully slow to boot up – it takes twice as long for the 650 to power up and connect to the network than it did with the 600. It takes about 60 seconds for this process now which in itself certainly isn’t a lot of
time, but it is very annoying since the 650 is so crash happy and requires continued daily resets. More of an annoyance than anything IMHO. Sort of like watching water boil, it just seems to drag on forever!!

Removal of the back panel is kluge. It requires two hands and strategic positioning to push the release button and slide the panel down. The most natural way to perform this task puts your fingers on the screen which then gets oils all over it so you need to be conscious not to do that. This could very easily have been (and should have been) a one handed procedure.

The soft reset button is located underneath the removable back panel. Given that the 650 is crash happy AND the removable back panel is a pain to get off, you can see why this is an issue. Why they didn’t put the reset button in an easily accessible place is beyond me.

Very few of the accessories from the 600 are portable to the 650. I had probably $100 worth of existing chargers including car charger, rapid charger, extra stylus, USB sync/power cable, etc.. with the 600 that simply do not fit or work with the 650. I’m sure this is done intentionally by Palm to make you pay for all new stuff. The only accessory that was portable was my headphones – the jack size is the same in the 600 vs. the 650.

SUMMARY:

In my opinion the majority of the new features in the 650
are "nice to have's" rather than major functional improvements. Things like flip flopping some function keys around, moving the reset button, the removable battery, etc. are things that don't necessarily improve the phone’s capabilities or performance. "Putting lipstick on a pig" as they in my business, it still does the same things as it did before but just looks a little better doing it.

However I will single out the new color screen, new keyboard
layout, new camera and the addition of Bluetooth as being the capabilities that truly separate the 650 from the 600. The million dollar question is.....are these 4 new features alone worth the $500 price tag? In my opinion yes, they are, but only if you are a "power user" that relies on the Treo to as a business productivity tool and to communicate with the office while on the road. Users such as this will get their monies worth out of the upgrade to the 650. It may sound odd that these 4 features alone would be worth $500 , but once you get used to the new keyboard and screen you will find the Treo to be even more useful than the 600 ever was!&

But the casual user that just uses the Treo for the phone
and to check their yahoo mail now and then probably couldn't justify the expense of upgrading to the 650 from the 600. The phone quality isn't any better (actually it's worse if you consider the speaker phone in the 650) and the built in Bluetooth is really the only thing that is exclusively new on the 650.

If you fall into the casual user category I would recommend sitting tight with the 600 for and wait for the next release of the Treo (Treo 700?) to come out. I'd imagine they will ship the next release around Christmas time and this one should get packed with new features rather than just being "fixes" like the 650 was.