Palm Treo 500v, the review
Posted on March 11, 2008
Filed Under Palm, Pictures, Treo 500v review, Videos, Windows Mobile Standard
I made a phone call to my favorite place in the city last week and a few days later, I received a Palm Treo 500v from my friends at Overseas Electronics. If your in Chicago, go check them out its worth the trip.
The Palm Treo 500v is a Windows Mobile smart phone platform. This is running Windows Mobile standard edition.
The specification are.
1. 320×240 screen
2. GSM/GPRS/UMTS on the 900/1800/1900 and Umts on the 2100
3. Bluetooth 2.0
4. 256 mb
5. Micro sd under the battery
The Palm Treo 500v video review
The Treo 500v has a very familiar feel to the Treo 700 series devices. One unique difference is the thickness. The 500v is thinner and feels better in your hand. The keyboard is an just like the other Treo 700 series, with good placement and a nice response to the key press.
Overall the phone is built solid, even though all plastic. There is no creaking or flexing at all. The buttons on the front and side are solid. Palm did a nice job doing the button layout. The button placement has good positions from each other as an accidental button press is pretty much a mute point.
The standard size headphone jack is a nice addition.
I was unable to test the phone quality or data side of things, since ATT does not run the 1800 and 1900 gsm bands. I expect the Treo 500v has a similar quality of voice call to a Treo 700 series.
The Treo 500v is running Windows Mobile standard edition. The interesting take on this is what Palm and Vodafone did with the interface. Instead of the usual Windows Mobile interface, they changed the navigation with a new menu layout.
Instead of using a grid layout after you enter a menu, this has been changed to show a top level menu with frequently accessed items below.
As you scroll to the left or right, you have the option of scrolling down to choose an option. In addition some menus have sub menus which you then select with the right soft key.
Overall an interesting approach to navigation. I prefer it over the default grid layout of the menu. I think it cuts down of the more menu operations that are present in the Windows Mobile standard edition platform.
Check out all the screen for Windows Mobile standard on the Treo 500v.
The Treo 500v has a 2mp camera, which is pretty standard for the smart phone category. Picture quality is average, with no built in flash, but in a pinch for Flikr uploads, not bad.
Thoughts and feedback on the Treo 500v. Overall a solid offering from Palm. There will always be a debate, is Windows Mobile right for Palm. I think Palm made Windows Mobile perform decent on well designed Palm hardware.
Phone operations are smooth and not much wait between key press and application launch. I would not expect too much multitasking here.
If your looking for a smart phone that runs Windows Mobile for, connecting to Exchange and powerful pim functions, without a layer of Pocket pc functionality, then the Treo 500v should be for you. Since this device does not have some of the advanced features of the Pocket pc platform, such as wifi and built in gps, that layer of additional components are removed and as such, makes the Treo 500v a little simpler to use.
I would like to thank you to Overseas Electronics for providing the review Treo 500v.
