Palm's Treo 700p is the latest in a now long linage of Treo smartphones. The Treo 700p combines the benefits of a full featured mobile phone with the Palm OS mobile computing platform. From a visual perspective the design changes are small, evolutionary refinements of a proven smartphone form factor. Most of the improvements to Palm's flagship smartphone come in the form of new software innovations, a big boost in memory and fast, broadband like data speeds.

Beginning with the large aerial bulge, the top of the device contains the memory expansion slot, IR window, the famous silent mode switch and the stylus silo. The silent mode switch now vibrates when activated, giving you a physical confirmation when engaged. Compared to its successful predecessor, the Treo 650, the 700p has a much darker grey plastic casing with with a more subtle silver finish. On top front of the device above the screen are the LED and phone earpiece. The LED on the Sprint version now only blinks when you have a waiting notification alert such as a missed phone call or voicemail and remains on when charging. Curiously, the Verizon version still retains the old behavior of inanely blinking to indicate network status.

At first glance, the Treo 700p is almost identical to its Windows Mobile counterpart, the Treo 700w. The main differences between the two units include the operating system (obviously), a higher density 320 x 320 pixel display and a few distinctive icons on the buttons. On the back of the device is a possible sign of things to come. The usual Palm powered circular logo, has been replaced with a new ACCESS Powered stamp, reflecting the new owners of PalmSource.

The keyboard now has a more square thumb keyboard arrangement instead of the rounded oval keys on past treos. They keys are now angled towards the sides of the device in the usual smile pattern. After using it for a few weeks I can't say I either dislike or prefer the new keys. My personal thumb typing speed and accuracy feels about the same with both styles. The backlighting on the keyboard and buttons has been improved with blue outlines on the app keys and a brighter, more consistent white illumination on the qwerty keypad.

The 700p has two new dedicated send and end call buttons just below the display. The rectangular green and red buttons are devoted to initiating and ending phone calls. The red end key also turns the screen off and activates the keyguard. Activating and using the keyguard is nicely implemented and is pretty mostly a transparent process. You simply tap the red button to turn off and it locks the keys. The on-screen keyguard display now has a larger notification bar that now shows the current time and date whenever you activate the device.

The center 5-way navigator is also a bit larger and is a lot easier to grip and thumb around with. The row of application buttons below the screen are user changeable and by default take you to the Phone app, Agenda view (calendar) and email. Hitting the blue option key before tapping a button gives you a few more shortcuts which you can also customize.

The menu key has been moved to the bottom right of the keyboard and gone is the former convenient home and menu key arrangement from the 650. The home key is part of the application buttons on the far right and can't be changed by design. The menu key has been awkwardly relocated to the bottom of the keyboard next to the infrequently used alt key. This reshuffling of the key navigational array is a disappointment. it is a little more clumsy to access common functions and menus. I also ran into trouble with a lot of games and a few apps. Often the home key is over-ridden by the games and there is no way to quit out of the current app and you can get stuck. Fortunately, there is a third party utility that lets you remap the buttons to your own preferences and you can revert to the more efficient 650 style.

Size wise, the Treo 700p has dimensions of 5.08" x 2.28" x 0.89" inches (129 x 58 x 22.5 mm) and weighs in at 6.4 ounces (180 g). It pretty much shares the same dimensions and weight as the Treo 650 and 700w.

Hardware

The Treo 700p is powered by a 312 MHz PXA270 Intel XScale processor. The device has been given a much needed boost in the memory department. The 700p includes 128 MB of non-volitile (NVFS) chip for internal program memory, of which 60 MB is user-available. Both the dbcache and dbheap (internal application memory space) have been increased for improved program memory space allocation. The dbheap is now up to 10 MB and the dbcache has a 18 MB capacity.

This is a positive step up for both application development and overall device stability, though is still a bit conservative. The 700p improved on two of the major drawbacks of the Treo 650: limited internal memory and device stability. While there are still a few quirks and bugs with some third party apps, generally I found the 700p to be much more stable. The 650's main limitation was its cramped internal memory. Even with external memory expansion, things can get crowded quickly if you had more than a few applications and games installed. In addition, many apps store their databases in internal ram such as email and the browser cache and rely on having a few megs free in order to operate correctly. Fortunately the 60MB of space on the 700p makes things more comfortable if you are upgrading from the 650/600.

The Treo 700p has a SD/MMC memory expansion slot. Palm has added built in FAT32 support for SD cards up to 2 GB in size. Palm engineers are currently testing 4 GB size cards for compatibility, some 4 GB cards may work others may be incompatible at this time. While the SD slot does support SDIO accessories with Palm OS device drivers, Wi-Fi via an SD card is still not supported. This appears to be a limitation of Palm OS Garnet and Plam has no plans to ever support WiFi on this model

Display
The Treo 700p has a 2" x 2" inch square display. It is a 320 x 320 pixel TFT touch-screen display that supporta 65,000 colors. The display on the 700p is an improvement from previous models. The new display has much "whiter" whites and a noticeably better color saturation rate and chromaticity. It does a decent job of remaining viewable in direct sunlight, as well as lighting up a dark room at full brightness. It also appears a bit brighter than the 650 screen at the same brightness level and had a slightly better viewing angle.

Having more pixels than most other smartphones is a definite selling point. People are often impressed at the quality and viewabilty of digital video the small screen. TCPMP supports pretty much all the formats including avi, mpeg, divx and mp4 (video iPod) files. You can convert your own videos using VEMoDe and there are a number of DVD mobile conversion programs. There is also a program available that can automatically convert content from your Tivo.

Camera
The 700p includes a 1.3 megapixel digital camera on the top back side of the device. It can take photos at a max resolution of 1280 x 1024 and has 2x digital zoom. It also records video clips with audio at a 352 x 288 resolution. The software takes care of automatic light balance and the camcorder function has an improved FPS capture rate. A non-camera version will also be made available. The camera quality is pretty standard for a phone-cam. Outdoor scenes and good natural lighting conditions will give you the best results. Since the resolution is higher you get better detailed and clearer pictures than the Treo 650. However the 650 does a better job indoors and in lower light situations. The 700p camera has a tendency to be very dim and washed out in darker conditions and in low light indoor scenes. In some indoor, low light conditions the 700p would be totally dark, when the 650 would have a clear picture. Here are four raw, unedited Treo 700p photo examples in various lighting conditions (partial shade, sunny, indoors, outdoors lowlight):

Bluetooth
The 700p also has built in Bluetooth wireless capabilities. This allows for accessories such as wireless Bluetooth headsets, GPS navigation kits and using the 700p as a wireless modem for your laptop (which will likely require a carrier DUN plan). The v1.2 spec allows for faster device connections and adds the ability to use Bluetooth devices concurrently. For instance, you could keep a headset connected at the same time you have your Bluetooth GPS running. I noticed that the device can transfer files over Bluetooth a little quicker than previous Palm devices and there is also less interference and static when using Bluetooth headsets. There is also a new option to leave the device in discoverable mode for a short time period. By setting the device visibility to temporary it will remain discoverable for 2 minutes.

Phone

The Treo 700p phone uses CDMA wireless technology (850/1900MHz). It is the first Palm OS smartphone to support EV-DO high-speed wireless data. EV-DO allows for data speeds around 10x faster than previous 1xRTT rates and is backwards compatible. EV-DO also allows you to receive calls while the Internet connection is active, as on all previous CDMA devices the phone would not accept calls when using the data connection. Previously, incoming calls would go straight to voicemail when browsing the web or checking email. It also features E911 compliance with a built in A-GPS chip that is solely used for the enhanced E911 emergency location service.

Audio
Like previous Treos, 700p has a dual speaker design, with the front earpiece speaker used for phone calls only while the rear handles the speakerphone, sysytem sounds, games and music. If you want to listen to digital audio via a headset with standard headphones you'll need to use a 3.5mm stereo adapter accessory. The rear mono speaker is well placed just under the camera and can get loud. There is an varied selection of ringtones that can also be used as alarms. You can record your own sounds to be used as a custom ringtone and alarm. You can also transfer wav and midi files via Bluetooth, beaming or hotsync for use as ringtone sounds. The 700p has no new ringtones from the 600/650 set.

Seeing that the best selling treo software has been a call volume boosting app, VolumeCare, I was wondering if the Treo 650's notoriously low ear speaker phone call volume had been addressed. While I found that the highest setting standard call volume through the speaker is a little better, I still don't think it is adequate at full strength. Even in some moderately noisy situations and outdoors the max volume did not seem loud enough, but in most situations its not that bad of an issue. Call quality seemed very good as I never had any issues and all calls were very clear on my Sprint review unit. The speakerphone is loud and clear, and I found I get better volume with a bluetooth or wired headset.

One Hand Operation
Like all Treos, the 700p really excels at one-handed operation. The 5-way navigator and on screen cursor combine to make most tasks work without having to tap on the screen. In fact, it's pretty rare that I even use the stylus, except for games. There is a light blue glow that highlights dialogs and form elements, that acts much like an on screen cursor. It really makes using the handheld with one hand easy and more intuitive. It works well within many of the included apps and is also compatible with many existing and newer third party programs. It is worth noting that having a touchscreen on a mobile phone is a new concept for many first time smartphone buyers. It really adds a lot to the device functionality, that many experienced PDA users now take for granted. The touchscreen makes many apps and games much more usable, like crossword puzzles and and soduko, and there is always handwritten notes, drawing programs and of course action games.

The Phone application is the centerpiece of the phone functionality that controls calls, contacts, dialing and accessing your shortcut favorites buttons. From here you can simply start punching in numbers, or letters that and it will display your matching contacts or you can click to goto your phonebook. The favorites function allows you to setup quick shortcuts to frequently dialed numbers, groups of contacts, device applications, emails and web links. It has a nice scrolling animation when you expand the list, which can store up to 70 custom buttons. The phone application also shows your signal and battery strength, bluetooth status, data status and the number of new email or text messages. There is also an option to display your next upcoming calendar appointment in the main screen. The phone display options support choosing a background photo or wallpaper or can show the standard dialing pad

Battery
The Treo 700p comes with a 1800 mAh Li-ion rechargeable battery that can be removed via the cover on the back. The cover also hides the reset hole, which can be activated with the stylus tip. Additional spare treo batteries are available for $24.95 USD. A 2400 mAh extended life battery is available for $39.95 for approximately 33% more life. Official battery lifetime is rated at 4.5 hours talk and 300 hours standby. With my own personal usage pattern, which included heavy internet usage and a few phone calls a day and Bluetooth on all the time, I am able to go roughly 2-3 days on a single charge, which is impressive for a high end phone. I felt that battery life was comparable to the 650, but the EV-DO use is seems much more power hungry and with a lot of net usage I saw my time between charges drop. I also felt I got better battery life out of 700p than with the 700w, but battery life varies greatly with how you personally use the device and features. As an example, when on flights (wireless off for most of the time) I can watch about 3 hours of video and play a few games and still have around 40% battery life left when I land.

Software

The Treo 700p runs the Palm OS Garnet operating system v5.4.9. While this is still the same Palm OS 5 Garnet core, there have been a number of improvements to the Palm Treo platform that extend the functionality and multimedia capabilities of this device.

First off, there is a new UI style for some of the built in applications, but only a few programs make use of the new interface, namely: pTunes, Pics&Videos, Voice Memo and the streaming program. Its full blue titlebar and silver, grey color scheme and buttons give these apps a more modern and attractive feel. It's too bad this new UI style is only used in a few of the newly commissioned apps.