PalmOne TREO 600 - best of breed (for now)

The TREO 600 is without doubt the best convergent device on the market at this time - bar NONE! It combines a phone, a Palm OS 5-based organiser with messaging, email and web browsing features and it does so in a package which feels like a real phone, not a brick.

It's a great irony that we missed our pre-christmas deadlines with this story, because it would have been an even better review if we hadn't lost the file with all the notes in it - an irony because electronic files can miss back-up and get deleted when multiple people use the same server and don't follow procedures. At least notes on paper don't disappear and become attenuated radiation.

So firstly we'll apologise to Palm who made the effort to get us one of the first units available so we could write about it and we didn't - at least not before now.

But such is the pace of progress with the convergence of the telephone and organisers and cameras and internet devices, that in missing getting the story into our newsletter prior to Christmas, the rumours of the new TREO 610 began to emerge before we were back at work in early January.

Put simply, the consensus of opinion on the TREO 600 is that it is a great device with a couple of obvious failings - a low resolution screen, not enough memory and it doesn't have Bluetooth.

Some of the other failings, such as that it doesn't natively support graffiti and it doesn't come with MP3 playing software can be easily remedied with software.

Indeed, the TREO is much more than a list of cool features - it has the integrity and comprehensiveness of a phone someone has thought about when it was being designed. It feels like a real phone when you use it, and in some aspects it works better than most dedicated phones.

For example, instead of having to go through menus and activate silent mode when you're going into a meeting (and vice verca afterwards), there's a physical switch on top of the unit which enables this most crucial of functions to be used painlessly.

The hands-free speaker is another essential which you wouldn't appreciate until you have used it and once you've had it, you'll want that feature forever more.

And the phone and PDA functionality can be used independently, so that the phone section can be switched off and the PDA used whilst flying for example.

The screen is one of the brightest that we've ever seen and even puts the Palm Tungsten T3 to shame.

But as good as the TREO 600 is, those three factors - screen resolution, memory and the lack of Bluetooth - mean that not many power users are going to throw away their T3 and get the TREO because it is a backwards step. You can't for example, surf the web on the TREO using your existing internet connection (and a Bluetooth card in your main computer), because it doesn't have Bluetooth. And given current Telco mobile rates, prolonged use of the internet on the TREO could be a wealth hazard.

And you can't just hot-synch your T3 and TREO (if you upgraded) because the T3 has 64mb of memory (of which about 50MB is available after system software and the like) and the TREO has 24 MB to start with.

The organizational and brainspace friction lost when both phone and PDA are integrated is worthwhile. With the TREO 600 you can check your calendar while you are talking on the phone and you can dial directly from the contacts database and you can take a picture of someone and assign their number to it and when they call you up, their picture comes up on the screen. All very useful.

And then over Christmas, the rumours began to fly and ALL of the wishlist has been reportedly delivered. The TREO 610 is heavily rumoured to be due for an announcement on or around March 1 with a higher resolution (320 x 320) screen, and more memory and Bluetooth.

It really is Christmas.

Now that doesn't mean it will be available on March 1, or even that it is true - some people are cynical enough to believe that it's unlikely that the obvious weaknesses have ALL been addressed in one upgrade. On the other hand, the 600 has been flying off the shelves and is in short supply and there are other Palm enabled phones due to market in the next few months.

The TREO 600 is a fantastic device - if the rumours are correct though, the 610 will deliver a significantly higher level of functionality for the power user.