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Review: PalmOne Treo 650 Smartphone (Updated 4x)

palmOne Treo 650I love the Treo 650 from PalmOne. I have been getting ~70-135 kbps downloads and I use it all the time – downloading apps, streaming wireless radio, uploading photos etc. True wireless for video/multimedia is going to be fantastic when the price comes down. Read More…


palmOne Treo 650I love the Treo 650 from PalmOne. I have been getting ~70-135 kbps downloads and I use it all the time – downloading apps, streaming wireless radio, uploading photos etc. True wireless for video/multimedia is going to be fantastic when the price comes down.
I currently pay a US$20 flat rate per month for all the data I can eat. Kind of confusing. Apparently Cingular doesn’t advertise it you can still get the old US$20 data plan depending on who sets up your account. See the discussion here. Verizon Wireless’ data rates are 20MB for $40 per month or 60MB for $60 per month. -Ed
Just set up last night a photoblogging service off my cell phone camera. Snap a picture and it shoots up to the Web page blog – how neat. Snapping pictures in stores of items for the apt etc and running them by others i real time (thanks Mom!) has been great. I’ve been using direct email of the images but this is even better.
The latest cool thing: I upload the camera phone pictures to a photo-weblog with just one push of a “publish” button – Up to now, I have been emailing photos directly to peoples’ regular email accounts using the MMS service. I just got a new place, so dear old Mom is acting as interior design consultant – whenever I am in a store and see something potentially cool – I pull the phone out – snap a photo (push to her email (or now to the weblog) and then call her and we discuss there and then – ain’t tech cool.
I can listen to streaming Internet radio with Pocket Tunes 3.0 and I watch full DVD movies on an absolutely kick-ass screen using Divx compression. It works out to about 700 MB for DVD movie that looks great on the Treo screen. Your jaw would drop at some of the action scenes from House of Flying Daggers – I would have never believed it would be satisfying to watch action flick on the screen but what do you know. From TreoNauts:

Watch .mpeg and .avi movies & videos currently on your PC and with no need to re-encode them using the free TCMP player ? videos look absolutely fantastic on the high-resolution Treo 650 screen. Additionally, Kinoma and MMPlayer each offer some unique video playback features but do require re-encoding. You can also convert your DVD’s to Divx for playback on your Treo using Pocket-DVD Studio.

The thumb-board and 5-way D-pad kicks the stuffing out of graffiti. I actually write long emails on it.
One downside is volume from earpiece not loud enough. Often have to use the speakerphone if I am in a car or noise street. I heard the Verizon version might have fixed that but it’s CDMA so can’t take it abroad. Unfortunately, that’s a serious caveat for something that’s got to be a good phone first. If you routinely use a headset, then it’s no problem at all. The MP3 player function through stereo headphones is phenomenal.
The PowerPage is looking for low prices on the Treo650 but it has to be on Verizon. What’s the best price you’ve seen? Get in touch.