Palm Treo 750v – The Wonderphone!

When my mobile phone contract came up for renewal in December of last year, I decided to move into the 21st Century, abandoning my trusty Nokia 6330 and going for a Windows Mobile device. For my sins, I opted for a T-Mobile contract and the MDA smartphone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that smart and should be re-banded as a ‘waste-of-time-effort-and-money-phone’ (I plan on writing an entry about this bag of shite in the hope that someone will stumble across it and steer clear of the device, but thats for another time).

To cut a long story short, the MDA decided to die one evening when away from home with work (when I say die, I actually mean that it kept responding to phantom key-presses but wouldn’t respond to any real key-presses. After a couple of attempts to persuade it back to life, it was invited to have a meeting with the bedroom wall – amen). With a dead phone, I started looking around for something new. I had seen the Treo 750v reviewed and a few colleagues had the model, so after a little playing (and subsequent drooling) I decided to buy one off eBay. After running the unlock software (it was locked to Vodaphone), I’m was the proud owner of a Palm Treo 750v!!

Simply put, the is the best gadget I have ever seen (even more so than my iPod nano) – it blows away all of the competition and should put HTC (the makers of the T-Mobile MDA) to shame. It’s responsive to key-presses, never seems to be bogged down trying to run too many applications and has a snazzy little QWERTY keyboard at the bottom that works great (although I think I need matchsticks for fingers). The screen isn’t as big as the MDA, but all the information I need is there, along with some excellent productivity applications that help you get to stuff a lot faster than the MDA ever did. I also love the fact that there are Ok/Close and Windows buttons on the keypad – this means that you never need to get the stylus out if you’re doing the day-to-day stuff. Simply Excellent.

I think the only thing I don’t like are the proprietary connectors for data and charging (which means I now have another two cables to carry around with me), but I think I can live with that.

In closing I’ll prove my geekiness (I sometimes think I’m a bit of a closet geek) – my first customisation was to add the ringtone from CTU in the 24 Series. Geek Central ;-)