Back to basic...

Ok, enough rant for now. At least, I'll stop whinning about the E61 issues which make it fail to meet my requirements! Time for action!!!

That was my state of mind, a couple of days ago, when I received an interesting offer for a Treo 680 pre-order. Needless to say I jumped in and seized the occasion, and I'm still waiting for the 680 to be officially released here in France... More on this later!

Meanwhile, I still needed to do something to handle my severe case of disorganisation. In other words, I had to find a way to get my hands on a PalmOS PDA or (preferably) smartphone to be able to use my favorite calendar application (TakoSche) again and get a grip on my schedule.

Guess what I ended up with? A friend of mine offered to let me use a Treo 600 he had somewhere lying on a shelf. Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm using a three years old smartphone to type this blog entry! Had anyone told me, two years ago when I sold my own Treo 600, that I would be using one again in december 2006, I would never have believed it. Yet, here I am thumb-typing on its little keyboard.

So, how does it feel? If I set aside the shame to have to admit to the world in general (and my wife in particular!) that it had probably been a wrong move to let go of the Treo 600 and the PalmOS for two years, it feels surprisingly good!

Sure, I can always pretend that the money spent on the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000, Qtek 9100 and Nokia E61 - and all the associated accessories - during this two years has not been entirely wasted since I have acquired a goog knowledge of, respectively, Linux/Qtopia, Windows Mobile 5.0 and Symbian/S60 3rd Edition. Still, as good as all these devices and OSes were, they did not really fit my needs.

Back with a clearly outdated device, the Treo 600, I face again the limitations which enticed me to upgrade: poor screen resolution, medium sound quality, almost useless digicam, and no bluetooth. I won't even mention WiFi, as it's still a crucial lack when it comes to the most recent PalmOS Treos...

But at the end of the day, when I look at the way I used my Treo, I'm rather satisfied by this old device:

1) Ok, the screen resolution is really poor. On the other hand, the screen is bright enough to get its job done, and even if it's a bit hard to read in bright sunlight, it's manageable... Gone are the impressive slideshows with the kids pictures I sometimes showed to friends and relatives, gone as well the funny videos to impress friends. But now I have something really usefull to display, at last: my Memopad notes (around 200 of them), and various apps like SplashID or Metro, for which the PalmOS version is soooo much more usable than, say, the Symbian version. I can display in a matter of seconds data which took me 20 to 30 seconds to reach on the E61, and with the square screen, all in all I have less scrolling to do.


For instance, look at the next two screenshots taken in the mail application of the E61 and the SnapperMail application on the Treo 600. Although the Treo 600 screen is 160x160 only, you can fit almost as much data as on the larger (240x320) E61 screen.







The same is true as well for the Calendar application on the E61 and TakoSche (or the default Calendar application, FWIW) on the Treo 600.








2) Medium sound quality. There's a big problem with the Treo 600, which causes a buzz to be heard during a phone call. While it's very slight in my ears, it's close to unbearable for people at the other side. And it was a common plague for many, many Treo 600 owners. Indeed, the good old 600 my friend gave me for a while exhibit this problem despite having been opened once in the past (I was with my friend at the time, provided him the torx screwdriver and helped him twist the battery cable as advised by a fix found esasily on the net). So I opened the 600 again, shielded the cable with a small aluminium sheet, and everything was fine again... for a few calls, after which the buzz returned as strong as ever! I was very annoyed as this made the Treo 600 virtually unusable as a phone. Then I stumbled upon an interesting piece of informations from a PDA specialist amongst my friends: in some cases, the buzz seems to originate in a slight corrosion of the contacts between the battery wires connectors and their sockets. So I backed-up my data, opened the Treo 600 again, unplugged the white, tiny battery wires on both sides, plugged the connectors again (and repeated this two or three times...) and closed the Treo 600 again. The buzz seems to be gone for good so far! This leaves me with a working phone, even though the sound seems a bit less pleasant (both in normal and hand-free, loudspeaker modes) than my E61. Again, at the end of the day, I get my job done and that's what really matters.

3) The Treo 600 digicam. Hmmm... Back when I was using my own 600, it was already one of the worst phone's digicam, and it's still as bad as it was then. Only the competition has largely improved since, making it even worse in comparison! So I do not use it at all, but since my E61 didn't have one at all, hey, it's not as if I'll miss it that much, I've purchased a good separate digicam!

4) Bluetooth. No bluetooth on the 600, end of the story. This, along with the screen resolution, would make it hard for me to keep the 600 for months, because that means I can't use my bluetooth GPS anymore. On the other hand, GPS navigation programs almost always require a 320x320 minimum screen resolution, so even with bluetooth I'd have problems with GPS navigation. But in the end, this lets me realize that I only infrequently use GPS anyway, about 5 times a month at best, so for a while this is manageable... The lack of bluetooth headset is bad as well, but I don't spend too much time on the phone (between 2 and 4 hours total every month, counting inbound and outbound calls!), and even less in a car (probably one phone call every month on average, with a wired headset instead of a bluetooth one at the moment). The fact that I drive a motorbike instead of a car to go to work of course helps to reduce my phone use: I'd never (read: not in a predictable future, at least!) make a phone call while on a bike, it's dangerous enough as it is and requires 100% attention! I didn't even use my bluetooth GPS on the E61 whith the bike, save a couple of times for testing purposes with the E61 in a pocket (to escape the temptation to look at the screen too often) and only a headset for aural guidance... All in all, the thing I miss the most was the fact that I could browse the E61's memory via bluetooth on my Mac, and copy files either direction. Since I can do almost the same using Missing Sync and the USB cradle with the Treo 600, it's not the deal-breaker it could seem at first glance...

4) No WiFi. Well, to be honest the Treo 600 is a 2003 device, so I cannot expect it to have it all, but clearly this is something I'd have liked to keep. But if I look at a typical work day, after all, I have to admit that my WiFi use was scarce on the E61: after waking up at home, I use my WiFi home network to download the latest France Info podcasts (a few interesting chronicles on various subjects from a French FM information radio), maybe a weather forecast back when Handy Weather was still working on my E61. Then I ride to work with the motorbike (i.e. no train or subway where I could possibly use WiFi). On my workplace, I had never been able to connect to the free WiFi networl due to some incompatibility between the E61 browsers and the hotspot's login page that never appeared on my phone, and I only spend around one hour there anyway before finding myself locked in a plane, where WiFi is both useless and prohibited! At the end of the day, I'll either drive back home or spend the night in a hotel somewhere in Europe, in which case the WiFi network, if there's one (25% of the time, on average), will not be free, so I'll most certainly prefer a small roaming charge on my bill to giving my credit card number and getting charged a few Euros just for checking my emails and getting a couple of them (plus some spam, of course!). Now, if I was to spend a long time in the hotel, the WiFi would be an option, except that in this case I'd also bring a laptop computer for long browsing sessions. But to quickly check my emails and update a couple of RSS news feeds, GPRS is definitely the way to go. I don't even need UMTS!

Well, you could be asking yourself: "if the Treo 600 suits him so well, why not keep it for a while?". Here are a few reasons why I did order a Treo 680:

1) Because I like new toys. Let's face it, I always enjoy discovering new devices and OSes, so I won't even try to deny that with dubious false (or even good) explanations. ;-)

2) Even if I rarely display pictures or videos, from time to time I do it, and when I do it I'd appreciate a better screen resolution (and more CPU horsepower) than available on the 600. Hey, even displaying a memo or calendar entry is more pleasant with a hires screen, not to mention those (few) apps that won't run at all with 160x160.

3) Bluetooth. As infrequently as I do use it, it makes my life easier, and from time to time I really need a GPS app, and don't want to carry my old TomTom Go with me - I'll certainly forget to take it along with me to begin with, anyway! I have a nice, light bluetooth headset, and a bluetooth-enabled Mac, so I want blueetooth.

4) The antena-less form factor is something I'm looking forward, too. The E61 had no antena, the Treo 600's seems bulky now...

And that's about it...

What problems do I expect to have with the Treo 680, which would make me upgrade if/when a more "perfect" PalmOS smartphone is released?

1) Battery life. While not extraordinary, the E61's battery lasted at least one day even with heavy use (given my usage, anyway). I'd charge it every night or every two night to be comfortable, but with moderate use I could last three days with a charge. From initial reports of Treo 680 early adopters, the 680 will most certainly have to be recharged every night, and some people have to be carefull to make it last a full work day. I'm confident that we'll soon see third party "expanded" batteries better than the current 1200 mA/h ones, but if I can get more, I'll be interested (ideally I'd like 4 full days on a single charge. That could be achieved with two batteries giving each two days of use, though, so it wouldn't be a compelling reason to upgrade on its own).

2) WiFi. Just because I can live without doesn't mean I want to if I can do otherwise... I won't hold my breath for a PalmOS 5.x Treo with built-in WiFi, but if Palm can survive long enough to release an Access Linux Platform (aka PalmOS next generation) Treo, I'd be in!

3) A better builtin digicam. Not that I need 3 megapixels or a zoom, but if I could get a 1.3 MP digicam that does decent indoor pics, I'd really appreciate, for all those instants you'd like to capture but are not worth the effort of carrying (and using) your 5 MP digicam. And if the device is WiFi-capable, then a second digicam for VoIP video call would be nice, but it'd be a while before WiFi or UMTS prices make it worthwhile to do video calls...

4) A smaller (i.e. thinner, the other dimensions being quite fine for me) and lighter device. 10mm depth and under 100g would be fantastic.

Do you hear me, Palm? Think you can reach this goal? Other manufacturers already do this in 2006, but I don't want a Windows Mobile device, I tried earlier this year with a Qtek 9100 and I'm definitely not ready... yet!