Great Little Smartphone (Palm Treo 650)

Member Name: meika

Product:	Palm Treo 650
Date:	04/09/09 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Huge amount of older Palm O/S software

Disadvantages: No wifi card support, forces you to use telco data rates

This is a great little smartphone. It's more like a pebble than a jewel like what the iPhone is, but with it's Palm OS you have ten years worth of software available, from Tom Tom navigator and GPS logging software(requires a bluetooth GPS unit) astronomy software, through a huge number of ebook and document readers, learning programmes like supermemo, language and reference dictionaries, electronic reference, medical reference, the value for money of the old Palm O/S device (over buying every thing new for the shiny iPhone and Palm's new WebOS) is considerable. And games, games, games, and most all of it is on bittorrent. This smartphone is my second brain. Oh, it does the usual PDA stuff as well, calendar, appoinments, to do, tasks, address book stuff. The keyboard is great for texting, I'd never go back to T9 predictive text on an ordinary phone. URGH! It has sepearate chips for PDA and phone capabilities.
It can handle up to a 2GB SD card which means you can put a fair whack of your favourite MP3s. I actually put my language aural/oral exercises on it and listen to them on a bluetooth headset whielI'm cycling.
The only drawback is that Palm was forced by its telecommunications partners to basically cripple its on-board support for wifi cards. This was so that you would use the telco's data rates for email and surfing rather than the wifi hotspot at the cafe. Curiously Palm's later Treo which ran Windoze mobile were not so crippled. A case of a greater evil empire telling the evil telcos to go jump. (there is a third party sled which can help but is exy)

Summary: my second brain

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