Top notch smartphone.. Finally one I like

Bought this smartphone in July 2005 after having a BlackBerry 7760. I try not to switch cellphones around much, but my blackberry failed on me and I was on a business trip, so I had no chance but to get a new phone.

Appearance (7/10)
Love how the phone looks. It has a light blueish silverish tint all around with flashy bright metallic inserts. It fits your hand kinda like a big soap bar. Short stubby antenna on the left side. Big screen. Nice keypad with great tactile feel. Keys have an expensive feel, makes you wanna touch them!

Could be thinner though, but it doesn't feel too heavy for a PDA phone.

Screen (10/10)
I've had quite a bit of PDAs (several iPAQs in the past) that had a great backlit screen. The Treo 650's screen blows ANYTHING, and I mean anything that I have seen so far. Its backlighting is perfectly even and it's very bright. You can see the screen with direct sunlight coming in. The display is extremely crisp, and sharp, 240x240 pixels... It is so bright it will blind you in the dark. In dark areas I even use it as a flashlight :) Colors are extremely well defined. One of the best features of this PDA phone for sure!

Phone voice quality (6/10)
I've had a Blackberry 7760 in the past and frankly, I thought that was one of the phones that had the best audio quality. Afterall, this is a phone and it's supposed to be its primary use. Well the Treo doesn't excel too much here. I haven't tried other carrier's version (the Treo for Sprint or the one for Cingular Wireless) but the voice quality kinda sucks. I say this because Most of the time, I only see 2-3 bars of signal, which is weird because Verizon has excellent coverage anywhere around Chicago. I had crystal clear and sharp audio on the blackberry, but on the Treo I sometimes can barely hear people talking. The earphone is kinda sucky and it distorts while in high volume a little bit.

When put in speakerphone mode, the audio is kinda bad and distorted. This was a little bit a of a dissapointment for me, because this is my cellphone and I mostly use it for talking.

Kind of a limited selection of built in ringtones. In order for you to use MP3s as ringtones, you need to purchase a third party program, and that sucks. $29.99 for that, I won't fork the cash for it.

Phone has a switch on top, so you can turn your phone into silent mode with the flick of a switch. Very nice feature!

Oh boy how I love the SMS feature. Replying to SMS text messages is a blast. It displays incoming text messages as a chat log conversation! I totally love this. It also arranges all your text messages based on the person that sent it. So easy to go back on them and see waht you talked with to a specific person. Plus typing on the keyboard makes it a true pleasure to use. I use text messages a lot as well, and I find it awesome. a LOT better than the blackberry.

Searching for contacts and dialing numbers? Piece of cake. Search for a contact by typing a few letters and press the middle button, the Treo is now dialing!

Email works great! I can pick up email from my comcast account over the internet. And you can reply and everything.

Blazer web browser is also great, fast downloads, very sharp screen. It has a few glitches that will cause your phone to reset, but it's great for quickly reading the news or reading any web page on the spot.

Infrared port is also on the top. Never used it, though.

Sucks that this phone doesn't come with a holster or pouch or anything. Too bad, for a $500 phone, you don't get anything to carry it on, you'll need to buy it on your own.

Camera quality (7/10)
First of all, no flash. Thumbs down for that. Dont even try taking pictures at night because they come out looking as when CNN is making live coverage of Desert Storm using night vision. lol.

On very bright days with lots of sunlight, the camera rocks. You can snap pictures straight into the phone or into an SD card. It's only 1.3 megapixels, but it takes great pictures on daylight, crisp and sharp, used it many times and have been satisfied. Like I said, forget about taking pictures in the dark.

Applications and use as a PDA (8/10)
Excellent integration with Outlook. I can use Palm Desktop to sync up my calendar appointments, tasks, contacts (most important because I have 400+ numbers stored, from customers to friends). Everytime you execute a HotSync, it backs up EVERYTHING to your computer, including the last phone calls, SMS, picture messaging, etc. etc. takes about 40 seconds to do that. Truly awesome. In my blackberry, a sync operation would take more than a minute, plus backing up everything was a pain and took around 10 minutes.