Palm Treo 750v

...fingers - I chose the Palm Treo 750v as my next mobile phone of choice.

"Why?" I hear you collectively cry. "Why have you gone for something that appears so unwieldy it will make your pocket look like the crotch of a 1970's porn star? Why have you gone for something so riddled with keys it's clearly trying to be a Blackberry and not quite making it? Why - oh why - have you gone for a brand that, two years ago, was fading ...
...like a porn star, the Palm Treo 750v is actually a very good phone - and, contrary to popular belief, it's not trying to be a Blackberry at all. The Treo is something a little bit more than a phone and, since Palm stopped using their own operating system and moved across to the Windows Mobile platform, it's actually rather clever and easy to use, too.

As a phone, the Treo is probably a little bulky, but it's actually not as big in ... more

These days it's easy to get confused by the mobile phone market - there's a plethora of phone products so vast and varied that there's a mobile phone to suit literally every personality, pocket, wallet or, even, bikini line. The only product line more varied than the personal communications industry is that of the adult industry, where ladies have a veritable surfeit of choice when it comes to toys for pleasure with devices literally designed to fit every - and I mean every - nook and cranny, and maybe one or two gaps in between.

Honestly, it's virtually impossible for a lady to decide which vibrator she should buy and, similarly, when it came to choosing my next mobile phone I was all but spoiled for choice.

Should I go with the über-cool, latest Nokia - the N95 - kitted, as it is, with every feature known to man, including a powerful vibrating battery, or do I go for LG's Shine, a supremely sexy looking mobile phone built with LG's legendary (ahem) quality? There's the Nokia N93i, which looks like it's designed to either inflect extreme pain or extreme pleasure, or there's the somewhat unpronounceable Motorola KRZR K1, which is less motorbike and more fashion phone of choice for the elite.

At the end of the day, however, I choose my phones on the basis of what I'm actually going to use them for every day so - even though the mighty N95's DVD-quality camera and built-in GPS software was appealing, and even though its double-slide mechanism to choose between multimedia and phone options was so breathtaking I almost creamed my Jeep jockey shorts at the sight of the sales girl slipping the keypads back and forth in her nimble fingers - I chose the Palm Treo 750v as my next mobile phone of choice.

"Why?" I hear you collectively cry. "Why have you gone for something that appears so unwieldy it will make your pocket look like the crotch of a 1970's porn star? Why have you gone for something so riddled with keys it's clearly trying to be a Blackberry and not quite making it? Why - oh why - have you gone for a brand that, two years ago, was fading in to the background as other smartphone manufacturers swept forth with the ease of Darth Vader slicing off Luke Skywalker's hand?"

Well, apart from the fact that I quite like the idea of having a crotch that makes me look like a porn star, the Palm Treo 750v is actually a very good phone - and, contrary to popular belief, it's not trying to be a Blackberry at all. The Treo is something a little bit more than a phone and, since Palm stopped using their own operating system and moved across to the Windows Mobile platform, it's actually rather clever and easy to use, too.

As a phone, the Treo is probably a little bulky, but it's actually not as big in your pocket as pictures might suggest. At 154 grams it's 34 grams heavier than the sexy N95, but I don't criticise your wife for being overweight so let's not get into the semantics of how light your phone is compared to mine, ok? Phone functions are straight forward: you can ring people; people can ring you. You can send text messages; you can receive them too. Bluetooth and InfraRed technology allow you to communicate with other like-minded devices nearby. It has a camera, so you can multimedia message (if you really want to) and a built in version of Windows Media Player allows you to use your favourite annoying MP3 tracks as ringtones. If you really must.

It's when you don't want to use it as a phone that it starts to come in to its own. The Treo 750v is the latest in smartphones and the latest in handheld PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) devices combined. On top of pretending to be a phone, this little device doesn't just keep a record of your diary, your task list or your notes, but also has the latest in mobile office solutions on board and is fully compatible with the Microsoft Mobile Office applications. This means you can carry your Word, Excel and even Powerpoint documents with you for review, edit and even creation. The inbuilt contacts software synchronises perfectly with Microsoft Outlook, so any changes you make to your diary while out and about will be updated with your office computer as soon as you plug the two together. And vice versa.

Out on the road the combination of mobile phone and handheld device works even better. Using your mobile provider's data connection you can pick up, read and reply to your e-mails on the move without having to open your laptop or find a wireless network connection point. Unlike a Blackberry, which force feeds you your e-mail as soon as somebody sends a message on how to enlarge the size of your penis, the Palm only picks your mail up when you tell it to and I find this a lot less intrusive than Blackberry's method, not to mention a lot cheaper.

The small QWERTY keyboard might be a bit fiddly for large-thumbed people and those who are all too familiar with the predictive text software of every day mobile phones, but it doesn't take long to get used to and the inbuilt software will start to guess the words you want as you type to help speed up the process. It works very smoothly, unobtrusively and quickly. But if you still can't get your head around the mini keyboard, a stylus is discreetly located in the back of the device and the large, clear touch screen can be tapped and written on like any other handheld PDA to input and navigate your way around the options.

Being a Windows Mobile device you can download lots of add-on applications, ranging from productivity to entertainment software and anything in between and they install quickly and easily without too much prior knowledge or Microsoft Certified Engineer degrees being needed. The Windows Media Player communicates with the Media Player software on your desktop and you can simply drag and drop the tunes of your choice to install them on your device. The speaker isn't the best, when it comes to MP3 quality, but then this isn't really designed to be an MP3 player. A decent set of headphones plugged in to the standard mini-jack connector, mind you, quickly resolves that problem and it's not too bad as a portable music player. As on your computer, you can choose the tracks by artist, album, track, genre, rating etc. and the corroboration between handheld device and full computer even means that album covers are transported across too.

Of course, all this entertainment and business use has a downside. The battery life is good for ten day standby time and four and a half hour talk time ... if you just use it as a phone. Start messing around with the other features, however, and you'll hammer the battery a lot quicker. That said, I've still had two full days use out of the device, including e-mail, texting, talking and even playing the MP3 player before it's required a batter recharge. The other negative aspect is memory: the Treo 750v comes complete with 64mb of built-in memory, but this doesn't last long if you start storing music and photographs on the device. Mini-SD cards can be purchased from all good retailers starting from 32mb upgrades and prices of approximately £20.

The other negative to this device is the camera. It's only a 1.3 megapixel lens with 2x digital zoom. It does focus automatically and it counters for white balance and it can even record video with sound. It's just not very good quality. All things considered, though, you don't really buy this type of device for the camera and I've never seen why I should have a camera on my mobile phone anyway. Even the stunningly good 3.2 megapixel camera on the Sony Ericsson K800i that I've just replaced isn't as good as my Pentax Optio S50 digital camera, so I rarely bothered using it. Palm would have been better keeping the camera out of the device, saving some weight and allowing application memory to be used elsewhere.

In short then, is it any good? Well, if you run a business, work for a business, need a portable diary, constantly have the need to be in touch with people via various communication methods and like to be able to play games too, then this is perfect for you. From £Free on contract with Vodafone it's incredibly good value. Like all good, perfectly formed things, the Treo 750v fits snugly in the Palm of your hand. Surprisingly, it doesn't give you a smug bulge in your pocket but, thanks to modern technology for ladies, it does work surprisingly well with the OhMiBod Boditalk Phone Vibrator.

If, however, you'd rather your happy-slapping videos were in better quality, then you might want to look at the Nokia N95 instead. 

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