Upgrade to Treo 650

Barely six months after my Motorola Razr and Palm Tx purchase, I had a new one - Treo 650. I swapped my Palm Tx to Treo 650 and sold my Motorola Razr to my officemate. Then after tinkering with my new gadget for a couple of weeks, here are my thoughts:

Look and Feel

Having used to the slimness of Motorola Razr, the Treo 650 is quite bulky. Its bulkiness is even more evident when you put it inside your pocket. Nonetheless, its bulkiness is acceptable for a PDA-slash-phone.

Functionality

Palm OS UI is the best UI I've experienced so far in terms of navigation on a PDA phone. Texting is great with its QWERTY keyboard. Browsing the internet is not a problem with its built-in web browser - Blazer. I use it to browse for movie schedules at clickhecity.com. Office documents from MS Word Doc, Ms Excel and MS Powerpoint can be easily transferred and viewed using the included software, Documents To Go. Email is also possible using its built-in email client, Versamail. Its VGA camera is useful for taking snapshots. Sending pictures to your contacts through MMS has never been easier. Sharing multimedia files to other devices is also possible through IR or Bluetooth. Picture Quality is acceptable. Camera has three effects: Normal, Sepia and Black and White. Below are unedited samples of the snapshots.

Sepia



Black and White



Normal



Indoor Shot



Outdoor Shot

Entertainment

Aside from its usual PDA functionalities (i.e. Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Memos, etc.), the Treo 650 can be used to listen to MP3s and watch videos. RealPlayer is included for playing MP3s. For a better MP3 player on your Palm devices, I recommend using Pocket Tunes. For videos, I downloaded a third party application to play Divx movies - TCPMP Player. Video playback quality on Treo 650's screen is great.

Conclusion

I liked it a lot. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.