Photos: Palm Treo Pro

21 Aug 2008 11:05

Palm's new Treo Pro will be available in the UK in September. Will it revive the company's fortunes, or is it just another Windows Mobile smartphone?

Meet the Palm Treo Pro
Designed for mobile professionals, the Palm Treo Pro comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition, complete with the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite and Direct Push Technology for real-time email delivery. The quad-band phone also offers a full assortment of wireless options, including UMTS/HSDPA support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Photo credits: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks

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Pricing and availability
Palm will ship the Treo Pro in the UK in September. It will be available from Vodafone and O2, or SIM-free for £399 (inc. VAT).

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Going green
In a first, Palm will ship the Treo Pro in sustainable packaging, which includes recycled content and a recyclable box. The user guides are printed with soy ink, and the smartphone will no longer ship with a software CD. Instead, all the drivers are preinstalled on the device.

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The evolution
Although the operating system is a different story, Palm has done a lot to improve the design and hardware of its smartphones. Here is the Treo Pro sandwiched between the Palm Treo 700p and the Palm Centro.

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Slim and trim
One of the first things you might notice is that the Treo Pro sheds the outdated, clunky design of previous Treos and trades it in for a sleeker design (144mm tall by 60mm wide by 13.5mm deep; 133g).

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Classy black
Overall, the Palm Treo Pro has a pretty solid construction, despite the plastic casing. The smartphone is only available in black at this time, and we noticed it's quite prone to smudges and fingerprints. There is also a new screensaver function that will show you the time, any missed calls or new text/multimedia messages at a glance.

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Hints of the Centro
The Treo Pro features a newly designed navigation array that includes two soft keys, Talk and End buttons, an OK button and shortcuts to the Start menu, Calendar and Inbox. There's also a navigation toggle that will pulsate colours when you have new voice mail. The QWERTY keyboard itself is reminiscent of the one found on the Palm Centro, but is slightly roomier.

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Tight spaces
The Treo Pro's QWERTY keyboard is larger than the Centro, but we expect some users will still have problems with it. The buttons are fairly small and there isn't much spacing between the keys. However, as with any QWERTY device, it will become easier with more use.

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Say cheese
On back of the smartphone, you will find the Treo Pro's 2-megapixel camera. There's no flash, but you do get 8x zoom and video-recording capabilities. If your company does not allow camera phones at your workplace, the feature can be disabled by the IT department.

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Expand your memory
The Treo Pro has 256MB (100MB user-available) on-board memory and 128MB RAM, but the smartphone also features a microSD expansion slot, which is located behind the battery cover. It can accept up to 32GB microSDHC cards.

Story URL: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/handhelds/0,1000000735,39464113,00.htm