Speed and Shortcuts

I've already mentioned that the 800w is easy to type-on with just one hand, but one of the key advantages to a Treo is that you can do damn near everything with just one hand. Compared to the Mogul, the Treo is not only faster, interface-wise, it's faster to navigate simply because you can get at everything on the device with your thumb.

And besides the Start, Calendar, and Mail key on the front face of the 800w, there's also the side button to configure. Additonally, you can map Opt buttons to applications as well, though (aggravatingly), you still have to hold Opt down in order to launch the secondary shortcut.

A bit more about that interface speed, though. The 800w is snappy. I wouldn't have expected it from the specs listed above, but the 800w is easily the fastest and most responsive Windows Mobile Pro device I've ever used; and I've used nearly all of them. In the WMExperts Podcast, Malatesta has been telling us all that Palm does quite a lot of optimization on Windows Mobile to make it perform better on lighter hardware. I can't speak to how much of that Palm may or may not have done here, but again: the 800w makes with the speedy.

The Touch Diamond may have TouchFLO 3D, the Sprint Touch may have TouchFLO 2. All the Treo 800w has is Palm's classic stuff: Photo speed dial on the Today Screen, custom threaded SMS, some smallish speakerphone and mute buttons on the call screen. The 800w, both on the screen and on the device itself, does not bring the pretty. But when it comes to running a fairly 'stock' Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro setup, it's wonderful device. Very little extra junk is included from Sprint, next to no lag, plenty of screen real-estate, one-handed operation... all of it makes the Treo 800w as utilitarian and powerful as its staid looks imply.

Data and WiFi

EVDO Rev A is fast. Wicked fast. I've had download speeds up to 850k, I'm averaging around 450 to 500k. That, my friends, is fast.

Of course, WiFi is included and it works darn well. I'll revisit the theme from above here: Palm has managed to work with the stock Windows Mobile defaults and make them easier to use. Here's the deal with the WiFi button:

WiFi Off: - Tap the button to turn on WiFi. If a network is in range that your phone recognizes, it will auto-connect - Hold the WiFi button down to just jump straight to the WiFi settings directly to pick your network.

WiFi On: - Tap the button to go to WiFi settings and choose your network. - Hold down the button to turn WiFi off.

...although there is a little strangeness to having the button's behavior flipped depending on whether or not WiFi is on, once you get it down it's very convenient. I was initially skeptical about Palm's choice of a button instead of a switch (like on the Mogul) for WiFi, but with the added ability to quickly access the WiFi settings I'm absolutely sold.

Additionally, there are other WiFi settings that are new to the 800w. Under WiFi Prefs in settings, you can turn on Power Saving mode to increase the 800w's battery life. You can also change the default "Always On" to "On button press," which means the 800w will turn off WiFi when it detects that data hasn't been used for a set amount of time.

Given that the 800w has a tiny battery, the added power management features are welcome and should go a long way towards increasing battery life for average users and make managing WiFi easier for power users. Bravo.

Call Quality

Call quality on the 800w is so so. The voice quality is decent enough as is the speakerphone -- the gripe I have is that reception doesn't seem to be quite as good as the 700wx. It's very close and so I may just be making this up; but I've found that in my town, where Sprint's signal is just this side of unacceptable, the 800w seems to perform slightly worse, signal-wise, than the 700wx or the Mogul.

Battery Life

Palm and Sprint claim you'll be able to get either 4 hours of talktime (read: heavy use like talking, browsing, or GPS) or 200 hours of standby. In my testing so far that's a fairly accurate estimate, which is remarkable given that the 800w uses the same tiny 1150mAh battery found in the Centro. I need to do some more testing of a 'typical day' for me since I've been hitting it pretty hard, but right now I'm comfortable saying I get around 3.5 hours of heavy use off a single charge.

In other words, it should get regular users through a full day fairly easily, but power users will want to keep a close eye on power management. Given the fact that the 800w uses the same battery as the Centro, buying a backup battery is fairly easy to do and I recommend it. Actually, since Palm is selling to many Centros these days, they must have some pretty good economies of scale on those batteries, it would have been nice of them to include a 2nd one.

GPS

The 800w has built-in A-GPS (i.e the full standalone GPS that can also get extra assistance form towers) and Sprint has not locked it down at all -- it's fully available to any app that wants to access it. In my tests so far it's been able to pick up satellites in under 30 seconds with a clear view of the sky and can also perform moderately well indoors (which is to say I've managed to grab signal a couple of times).

Sprint Navigation (aka TeleNav) is on-board and included for free with simply everything plans (others must pay a monthly fee). On my test unit I wasn't able to get it going as it's tied to an email address not my own, but it's safe to assume that it works like TeleNav does on other devices; which is to say: it works very well for turn-by-turn directions and it's more convenient than TomTom in that it can name the streets you turning on.

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