Preamble: Apple iPhone v. Palm Treo 680
This is the
Preamble to my full comparison review between the Treo 680 and the
iPhone - you can the full comparison review
here.
I’ve been waiting anxiously for the iPhone come out since it was
announced at MacWorld Expo in January. I had just purchased an
unlocked Treo 680 in December, and at the time of the iPhone
announcement, I was really liking my Treo, but still knew that I
would get the iPhone. I love gadgets, and cell phones are one of my
bigger gadget weaknesses. In the past few years, I’ve had the
following cell phones: Treo 680, Sony Ericsson P990i, Blackberry
8700, Motorola SLVR, Nokia 6620, Treo 600, Sony Ericsson T226, Sony
Ericsson T68i, Nokia 6100, and a Nokia 6162. There was one more
cell phone that I had in 1998 from GTE, but I don’t remember the
model.
I switch to a new cell phone pretty frequently. The cell phone I
used the longest was the Nokia 6620 – this is a good, solid phone
that I have since unlocked and keep as my back-up phone for days
when I am supremely upset with my Treo and need a break from it
before I do something I’ll regret later (as in smash it on the
ground and jump on it while screaming obscenities, then setting it
on fire and doing a crazed happy dance around it, all the while
still screaming more obscenities).
In some ways, I lament how cell phone technology and feature sets
have advanced over the years. While the geek in me loves that I can
do so much with my cell phone, the price is most certainly
reliability and stability. The first cell phones I had were
definitely the most reliable – they didn’t do much except make and
receive calls (and hold my address book and calendar) and I never
had any problems with them or worried that they wouldn’t work when
I really needed them. With the most recent phones I’ve had, this is
definitely not the case. Resets for no reason and/or the need to
reboot at inopportune times make me worry that my cell phone won’t
work, with my luck, when some crazed serial killer is chasing me.
Ah, the good old days when cell phones were simpler and worked as
intended! But I can’t bring myself to “go backwards”
technologically, so I must be willing to take the bad with the good
as cell phones continue to be more multi-functioned.
This brings me to my Treo 680 and why it’s driving me nuts, which
has since increased my desire to get an iPhone to replace it. A few
key things stand out – its ability to sync with my MacBook,
Bluetooth bugs/issues, and general stability. I use the Missing
Sync (since the free Palm Desktop software has not been updated for
several years now, and there are no plans to update it) and this
has been troublesome. It worked well for the first few syncs, and
then started working verrrry slooooowly, and then stopped working
altogether in the space of a few weeks. Checking the Mark/Space
forums and contacting their tech support did not help. I found a
solution on the Apple forums, and ended up re-installing iSync,
which seemed to solve the problem, although my syncs are starting
to take longer and longer again, and I’m just waiting for it to
stop working once again. With the caveat that I’m not a software
programmer, I think something in Missing Sync corrupts iSync over
time, so I’m fully expecting that I’ll need to re-install iSync
again in the near future. I really just want something that syncs
seamlessly with my MacBook, and I’m pretty sure the iPhone will do
this from what’s been described so far.
The Bluetooth issue on my Treo is two-fold: once I disconnect from
a Bluetooth device (my Jawbone headset or my car’s Bluetooth
system), it still acts as if it’s connected for the next call I
make and tries to route it via Bluetooth; and over time, the
trusted devices list seems to get corrupted to the point where it
won’t pair with anything anymore. For the first issue, I have to
hit the “cancel Bluetooth” button on each and every call after one
I’ve made using a Bluetooth device. This is a pain to say the
least, and it’s a bug I’ve been hoping Palm would fix with a
software update, but who knows what they’re doing while their
customers continue to have problems with their products (anyone
reading this with a 700p still waiting for an update?). In fact,
don’t even get me started on what Palm is working on. The Foleo is
a huge disappointment in my eyes. And this is from a girl who has
been a huge Palm fan since the moment she got her Palm V. What the
hell are they thinking? Anyway, to solve the second bluetooth
issue, I’ve found that deleting Bluetooth cache files fixes it
temporarily.
There are a few other issues that irritate the bejesus out of me,
but I’ll stop ranting about my Treo now. Well, at least for the
moment. Here’s what I’ll focus on for my Treo 680 and iPhone
comparison review:
• Overall form
factor & ease of usage/portability
• Phone/voice
quality and applications
• Syncing with my
MacBook – options, speed, ease of use (you knew this one was
coming!)
•
Contacts, email,
Calendar, To-Do’s, Memos/Notes – an application to application
comparison
•
Picture/video
quality
For this review, I’ll skip detailed Bluetooth comparisons
(performance of different headset/devices) and features that do not
exist on one of the phones (e.g., there is no built-in
voice-dialing capability on the Treo). Of course, I’ll post
pictures of un-boxing my iPhone and the package contents as well.
I’m enabling comments on my site, so let me know if there’s
anything else you’d like me to cover in the
review…
macgirl.net Review: Treo 680 v. iPhone
Comparison Preamble
