Good bye T5/Nokia… hello Treo 680! – Part 1 – Story of the migration and inital impressions

Posted on January 27th, 2007 by thiswayup.
Categories: Palm,PDA's and other smartphones.

Over the new year I had pretty much got to the point of being fed up with my Nokia 6270 starting to shows sign of failure (nav button not responding and tinny feedback when making calls!) I decided it was time to eat my words of staying away from smartphones...and trying one. After hearing very good reports of stability and less problems with the last few models of the Treo, I thought it was maybe time to pick up one. After having a pretty long standing relationship with Palm PDA's, it seemed like the logical choice to keep with the same theme given that I use many applications specific to it and couldn't be arsed or risk trying the real only other contender in the smartphone market currently, WinCE.

So why the change of heart? Well I envisioned that I would be doing alot more of the data stuff in the coming future such as mobile web browsing, RSS feeds, streaming radio (Somafm.com I love you!) plus just trying to keep on top of my email on the go (and moving away from piling 100's msg's in my inbox!), heck might even try IM again. Spying the Tmobile web n walk I figured it was now cheap enough to live the Mobile Connected lifestyle! But take note it is gonna be £11.50 not £7.50 as the standard service doesnt allow for data streaming.

I managed to nab a bargain from Ebay(where else?) and with 11 months on the warrenty, a rubber cover, brand new condition plus at a great price. On recieving it, I still had reservations but then after dunking in my O2 sim for a couple of days using the Treo in its fresh state (with none of my current Palm apps), it felt just right! I synched up my Treo with my existing Palm Desktop on my main PC and found that it went ahead with no problems, probably not the best idea and I should've cleaned up some of the apps before transferring it onto the Treo, but hell I  wanted to get stuck in! Most of the apps seemed to work ok so no worries. Except to my dismay Tom Tom! I find it unvaluable as a A-Z replacement with its A-B route finder showing the best driving AND walking routes I'm guessiing there would be a fix soon enough!

My biggest challenge was to try and port over my contact details from my Nokia 6270 to my Treo. Given that I had details on the phone itself (and not just the SIM) I had to find a way to move it across. After sifting through the net, it appeared that the simplest and easiest was just to use Outlook. So I synched up the address book on my Nokia with Outlook on my laptop(had built in Bluetooth), uploaded the details (no problems thus far). I then changed the Palm conduit from Palm Desktop to Outlook, so that it would synch the Treo contacts to the Outlook address book, this seemed to have worked a treat! I now had all my contact details in my Treo stored in one central location and backed up everytime I synched up!

So I been using it for almost 2 weeks solidly, whats it like? Here's the summary thus far of humble opinions and a taster for the next part.
Good
+ Text input much better on a keyboard then crappy Graffiti2
+ The speaker is powerful and perfect for doing chores whilst playing some podcasts
+ Love the feeling of being to move from reading a ebook or my mobile bloglines online to texting and setting reminders for calls all in one place! ohhhhhh the power....sweeeeeeet!
+ MMS is taken to a new level, the flow is much more quicker from recording sounds/video to sending it to unsuspecting friends

Bad
- 2.5 stereo jack!
- Need to upgrade some key software (Zlauncher, backup, Tom Tom)
- Onscreen number dialing can bit irriatating
- Battery drain is quite bad (but investigating on the trick you can do)
- The pad lock seems a bit weak

Well, thats it for now. Time to play a bit more...

Whilst writing, I was listening to: Pandora.com - Louis Armstrong stream

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