Palm Treo Pro

Given that it practically invented the smartphone, Palm really hasn’t done that much to impress of late. Shipping two million Centro devices is certainly a notable achievement, but that’s an entry-level rehash of a five-year old smartphone and Palm’s other handsets are barely more sophisticated.

Thankfully, someone seems to have lit a fire under Palm's collective ass and the new Treo Pro is by far its most capable smartphone to date. Unfortunately, merely being ‘capable’ isn’t quite enough for a smartphone these days, so the question has Palm done enough with the the Treo Pro to take on the likes of Apple, HTC and RIM?

Well, answer is a definite “maybe”. The Treo Pro is certainly a sleek little smartphone, but for a device that Palm is pitching as “high-end”, it has precious little of the 'wow' factor that the Touch Pro and BlackBerry Bold are bristling with.

Part of the problem is that Palm simply doesn’t pay enough attention to minor details and there are none of the sexy design flourishes that Apple and RIM excel at. For example, peek into the earpiece on the HTC Touch Pro or iPhone 3G and you’ll see a sleek metallic mesh that protects the tiny speaker beneath. The Treo Pro, on the other hand, uses a grey fibrous baffle that, while perfectly functional, is hardly a sign that Palm has done everything it can to make this a ‘must have’ device.

In fact the Treo Pro’s design is essentially the same as that of last year’s Treo 500, which is no bad thing as that was a good-looking smartphone. Palm has, however, dumped the Treo 500’s excellent Qwerty keyboard and instead used the one from the aforementioned Centro. In other words, the well-spaced, hard plastic keys are out; closely packed keys with an unpleasantly rubbery feel are in. Ugh.

The button layout has changed little from the Treo 500 and Centro – small call start and end buttons sit at either side of a circular four-way control pad, with the usual Windows Mobile Windows and OK buttons in between. The Treo Pro lacks the multi-function ‘soft’ keys found on other Windows Mobile devices though, and instead you get two shortcut buttons for the calendar and messaging applications.

After dropping it from the Treo 500, Palm has reinstated its familiar ringer-off switch on the top edge of the Treo Pro, and there’s a volume control and camera-launch button on the left edge. Of far more significance is the single button on the right of the case – not because it’s small and tricky to press, but because pressing it activates the Treo Pro’s Wi-Fi.

And that's right – the Treo Pro is the first Palm device to have onboard Wi-Fi since 2003’s Tungsten C, and only the second in its fourteen-year history. To say that Palm has missed the boat when it comes to wireless networking would be something of an understatement, but at least it has tried to make amends here. One press of the Wi-Fi button enables Wi-Fi and activates a connection to whatever profile is available, which is far easier that fiddling around with Windows Mobile menus. The connection powers down when the smartphone goes into standby mode and stays off when you turn it back on (handy for power saving), but you can override this in the Wi-Fi Prefs settings.

Fortunately, any remorse Palm might be feeling about its techno lag is at least paying off – along with Wi-Fi, the Treo Pro also has HSDPA, GPS and Bluetooth 2+EDR, making it a very well-connected smartphone by any measure.

Palm has also finally seen the folly in used 2.5mm headset sockets on a smartphone and the Treo Pro now has a standard 3.5mm jack. We’re less thrilled about its use of a microUSB port rather than the more common miniUSB, but least you get a tiny mains adapter that can be used with any USB-rechargeable device.

Unfortunately, Palm hasn’t been quite so forward-thinking when it comes to the Treo Pro’s operating system. Palm used to be held in high regard for the elegant user-interface of PalmOS, but it simply can’t work the same magic with Windows Mobile. To be fair, it has tried to make Microsoft’s mobile melange more user friendly in the past with things like threaded SMS, but that particular tweak is now standard in Windows Mobile 6.1

But while HTC has recognised that the Windows Mobile UI just isn’t up to the job in a world where the iPhone exists, Palm has not and Windows Mobile on the Treo Pro is as standard as can be. We’d have settled for something as simple as the bespoke program launched Palm developed for the Treo 500, but as it stands, you’re left to poke around on the Treo Pro with the stumpy stylus – or pay for an interface fix like Spb Mobile Shell.

Actually, the Treo Pro also works rather well with a fingertip, too – there’s obviously no on-screen keyboard to worry about, and the flush-fitting screen means there isn’t an annoying lip to stub a fingertip against. The transparent sheet of plastic that sits over the display is a little on the soft side though, and ours picked up a scratch after just a day’s use.

The Treo Pro’s screen isn’t the best we’ve seen and looks a little grainy to our eyes, but it’s both bright and clear enough, even in daylight. Its square shape is unusual for a Windows Mobile device, but it’s one Palm has used on its other Windows Mobile smartphones. It has increased the resolution from 240 x 240 to 320 x 320, but the screen is still physically smaller than on other Windows Mobile devices. The extra pixels are obviously welcome, but the aspect ratio means that it can’t display widescreen video or web pages as well as a taller, lower-resolution display (most WM devices have a 240 x 320 screen).

There’s much to like about the Palm Treo Pro – it’s sleek, highly pocketable and is packed with connectivity options. Battery life could be better (the claimed 250 hour standby time worked was more like 100 hours in our tests) and we’d have liked to see at least some attempt to mask Windows Mobile, but these are hardly complaints that are unique to Palm.

At around £400 unlocked, however, the Treo Pro is on the pricey side. The HTC Touch Pro is only £95 more and is a much, much nicer Windows Mobile smartphone, while the excellent Symbian-powered Nokia E71 is £70 less. T-Mobile will soon be offering the Treo Pro for nothing on an 18-month £35/month tariff, but that’s on a par with the iPhone 3G's cost – and again, that’s a much better smartphone.

So, while it’s good to see a Palm smartphone that catches up with the competition, it still has a way to go before it will worry the likes of HTC.