If your job or business involves lots phone calls, scheduling appointments, sending lots of e-mails, and taking pictures mostly from your car; then the Treo 650 is your super all-in-one package communicator. This spotlight on the Treo 650 by author Bob Caldwell provides some great insight in to this nifty smartphone.

The Palm one Treo 650 is a cell phone PDA with e-mail ability, picture taking ability, Internet browsing and a built-in MP3 player. The Treo 650 is not too big like some of the early clunkers in its class. It's just 4.4 x 2.4 x 0.9 inches and weighs only 6.3 ounces.

The Treo 650 runs either on a GSM or CDMA network. What you will enjoy about the feel of the Palm one Treo 650, is it feels like any cell phone, the microphone is more sensitive, which is a good thing. Test the Treo 650 speakerphone, the caller on the other line will be able to hear you clearly. In keeping with the current design styles, the speaker is on the back of the phone.

Navigation:

The Treo 650 comes with four specially assignable buttons, which surround a five way rocker. The power and the mute button on the top of the phone comes in real handy. On the left-hand side of the phone, there's a pair of volume buttons. When you make a call with the Treo 650, it takes one to three seconds before you see the dialing screen. Compared to its predecessor the Treo 600, the Palm one Treo 650 is a turtle when it comes to making the call.

Keyboard:

The keyboard is small and that's OK. It fits right in your pocket or purse, a handy little tool to add is the graffiti -- like jot (www.cic.com) handwriting recognition software. You will find it convenient to use the pen for text entry when composing e-mails in the keyboard for dialing phone numbers.

Screen:

The Treo 650 with its 16-bit 320 x 320 transflective (outdoor -- readable display) gives four times the number of pixels compared to the Treo 600's 160 x 160 pixel screen. Even direct sunlight, incandescent, office fluorescent light, the pictures are sharper and easier to see. You can adjust the brightness of the Treo 650 by pressing option P. even when you have it set to the maximum brightness, it doesn't look washed out. Another handy feature is: you can turn the brightness off when the battery runs low. It's worth paying a little but more for the Treo 650(retailing for $449 US at www.palmone.com) to avoid eyestrain.

Camera:

The Palm one Treo 650 comes with a 0.3 megapixel (640x480) resolution digital camera. You will find increase picture quality compared to its sister Treo 600. The second major benefit of the Treo 650 camera phone for many, will be the 2x digital zoom capability. Set the resolution lower when you just want to send a quick picture to a friend. The recessed lens in the Treo 650 allows you not accidently dirty it with your fingerprints.

Music:

With a faster processor, you will enjoy listening to your tunes on the built-in RealPlayer MP3 player. A RealPlayer comes packaged with the following games: Zap! 2016 shoot em game, RTS game, Mariokart--style racing game, and much more...

Bluetooth Technology:

If you do not want to get tangled up using wired headsets, you will have the freedom of purchasing a wireless Bluetooth headset for your Treo 650. Click on the set up device button at the bottom of the screen. Select the Bluetooth headset option. Its that easy!

The Treo 650 - Image Source: Palm One

One disappointment with the Treo 650, the software that's included to give you voice dialing capabilities only works with a corded headset or built-in microphone. This software doesn't let you use your Bluetooth headset for voice dialing. If you have your heart set on an in car Bluetooth speakerphone, you will also be sadly disappointed. The Treo 650 will not work with an in-car Bluetooth speakerphone.

Talk Time:

The battery is what's known as fixed 1800 mah. The lithium polymer cell charges in three hours and provides four hours of talk time. As an added option, you can purchase a removable battery, which will allow you to spend more than six hours a day talking on the Treo 650. At the end of the day, you may want to place the phone in its charger (option add-on). Then when you're ready to get back to work, and it's fully charged. An improved feature with the Treo 650 is you will never lose your data even when the batteries are depleted.

Multitasking:

One of the features you will love the most is that you can look up data while you're on the phone. Most cell phones don't have this feature. You can use the pen to write notes, write a quick e-mail message, look up a phone number, or check the weather forecast. For an additional fee of $19.99 a year, you can receive a one-year subscription through Palm one for the hand mark express weather which allows you to track weather forecast for any major city right on the Treo 650 smart phone screen. You can easily add, delete or change any cities from the forecast list. When you are done with these tasks, and you just click the phone hard button above the keyboard and you are back into the call screen.

PDA:

A combination of an improved screen and better background wallpaper is more likely to give you an enhanced Pocket PC like screen experience. A number of incoming mail messages in your incoming calendar events are displayed right on the Treo 650 screen. On a typical PDA, you have a date book and to do functions, which on the Palm one 650 are what's known as the Calendar. The contact database is directly integrated into the phone. To look up the person's phone number, you just type in the initials and a list of phone numbers is displayed. Just so you won't forget to buy a birthday present for your best friend or a corporate client, using the Treo 650, you can create a calendar event and the person's birthday will pop up a few days ahead of time.

Image Source: Palm One

Favorites:

No matter how dispersed or unorganized old address book can be, the Treo 650 lets you display 14 favorites per page. Using the favorite screen, you can store up to 50 speed dials, web sites and other commonly use applications. Speed dial contacts can also have a photo associated with them. To find out the persons address or e-mail you can use the menu button and scroll down to the open contact and tap on the name listed.

This is convenient for cases where a client ask you get to know a nameless face in order to find out information. When the person's face comes up on the screen announcing their call right away, you know who it is and be prepared for your business conversation.

E-mail:

Treo 650's most valuable data mobile application is the Palm OS 5.2.1. The simple to use e-mail technology Versa

Mail lets you sync your Treo 650 Microsoft outlook, and inbox to go, and Outlook compatible solution that lets you access your Outlook inbox as often as you wish. As well, the Microsoft exchange ActiveSync® is built right in the Treo 650 smart phone. You will not have to constantly update your calendar events, update your e-mails, change appointments by running back and forth to your desktop or laptop. The Exchange Server 2003

synchronizes wirelessly with your Palm one Treo 650. You don't have to wait until you get back your office to send and receive e-mails. You can set the Palm one Treo 650 at varying intervals throughout the day. The VersaMail® email client

lets you view can send Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint attachments. Feel free to send simple attachments as well.

SMS Text Messaging:

The Treo 650 serves as a new pioneer for a combo PDA cell phone. The Palm one 650 has more messaging applications such as the capability to send: voice recordings, movies and pictures. You will enjoy typing out or writing out a long text dialogues while still being able to view the conversation in a chat window.

Web Browser:

The Treo 650 ships with an improved Blazer™ 4.0 browser, the better screen resolution allows you to see maps, web pages and other graphics in full color. You'll notice a significant difference when you visit small web pages coded with HTML, xHTML, WML, JavaScript, CSS, and SSL Internet standard or PDA friendly sites. You can also use the find feature of the Blazer™ 4.0 browser to look for strings of words to easily find what you're looking for on the web site. This is real handy especially because you to not have a full-screen browser to scan through the web page for what you're looking for.

Summary:

While the Treo 650 doesn't have a voice recording capability, no analog roaming, and difficulties dialing numbers using your Bluetooth headset, you will be real happy with this digital wonder. You no longer have the juggle a cell phone and PDA.

Author : Bob Caldwell

One web site run by Bob Caldwell presented the most clear and concise articles on: Prepaid cell phone deals, free cell phone offers, wireless internet cables, wireless service providers. See http://www.free-cellular-phone-deals.com/

Suggested Weblinks:

• http://www.palmone.com/us/products/smartphones/treo650/
• http://www.palmsource.com/developers/
• http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/ 

This article is copyrighted (c)2005, Bob Caldwell