Technology Evangelist

It was just a matter of time. My Treo 600 finally died after a long life of good work. Um, long may not be the best description since a previous Treo 600 became dead to me when it stopped syncing but it was still a good run compared to the half dozen Treo 300 models I went through (kept breaking the flipping lid off).

What should I do now? Should I take Ben's advice and upgrade to the Treo 700p, pick up a Treo 650 for around $280 on Ebay, or look at the Windows options including the PPC-6700 and Treo 700w?

At this point, I'm leaning toward the 700p over the 650 because I really want the EVDO web access. The Windows devices have EVDO as well, but I'm not a fan of the PPC-6700's two-handed operation (how and I supposed to surf the web while holding my wife's purse at the mall?) and the Treo 700w's interface seems to call for more trips to the stylus than the 700p.

Frankly, none of the smartphones I'm familiar with are perfect. To me, perfect means as reliable as my thermostat, which keeps my home comfortable day after day with no fiddeling, reboots, or attention of any kind. It just works as expected. Do I expect this level of reliability from my smartphone? No. I've grown to accept the occasional dropped call and sudden unexpected reboots.

What smartphone would you recommend or warn me against?

Good call, Raj. I was able to walk to a Sprint store on Market St in SFO today to show them exactly how dead my 600 was. They replaced it for free with another 600, so I'm back online but short the data since my last sync. This gives me some time to think about my next upgrade.

CDMA vs GSM would have no effect on the ability to make a VoIP call. The latency built in to 3G services will hurt the call quality a bit, but EVDO Rev A promises to fix this (promises, promises).

I would stick with CDMA in the states. It's more wide spread, has better broadband options (which is important) and in general costs less. There are a few annoyances with CDMA, but with the 700p most of those are gone (no calls during a data connection has been fixed).

Just a quick note to add. More of an update really. Just got back from Asia and stopped in Hong Kong to find 3.5G being widely available in the city! They promise 14 Mbps downloads but realistically a colleague was demonstrating a throughput of 1.5 Mbps via a bandwidth tester. Pretty good stuff!

Comments

1. Posted by: raj on July 27, 2006 3:25 PM:

Ed, don't pay $280 for a 650. I paid Cdn$199 through my provider. There are cellular providers in the US selling 650s for US$199 or even less, if you get a plan.

But try not to get a provider using CDMA, else you won't be able to use VoIP on it. (To my knowledge.)

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