Last week, you heard me moan about my unfruitful search for the perfect all-in-one device.
You have also heard me whine about Handspring's Treo 180 before in this column. Well, I put away my trusty Nokia for a week and spent a week taking calls and messaging with Handspring's Treo 270, a GPRS-enabled, colour version of the Treo 180. I must say that the experience, though far from perfect, was not the total nightmare I had expected.
The 270 feels, weighs and looks similar to the Treo 180 except that it has a colour screen. It has the same grey chassis, the same grey flip cover which some users of the Treo 180 had complained about because of its outmoded appearance.
At just 150 grams, Handspring has got the size and weight right. This is an all-in-one device that is truly pocket-size. The screen is decent at 4,000 colours with fairly good backlighting though you cannot compare it with the high-resolution screens found on Sony's Clie handhelds. I could read off the screen in most conditions except in direct sunlight on a bright afternoon. That is when the flip cover comes in handy; you can use it to shade the screen.
Unlike the 180, the 270 features a backlit keyboard, which is a thoughtful improvement. It makes typing in the dark much easier. For those familiar with the 180, the 270 offers the same phone-personal digital assistant features.
It turns on when you open the cover and takes you directly to the speed-dial menu which can store up to 50 names. You can dial a person in the phonebook by tapping their number. It is easy retrieving a contact from the phonebook application. Just type the letter of the person's first or last name, and a short list of entries appears. You can also manually key in the numbers.
It runs on a 33 megahertz Motorola DragonBall processor and comes with 16 megabytes of memory and a really old Palm operating system, Palm OS 3.52, and is non-upgradeable. The Treo 90, introduced at the same time, ran with Palm 4.1. Palm 5.0 has been available for a few weeks.