The Treo 700p vs Treo700wx: which one to buy?

I have had a couple of people ask me which phone they should buy, the Treo 700p (Palm OS version) or Treo 700wx (Windows Mobile 5 version.) This is a tough question as both have their pros and cons. I have just finished my testing of the Treo 700wx so here's how I compare them:

Treo 700wx
Slow but powerful. This is a PDA first and communications device second. If you want to be able to access your SlingBox, LogMeIn remote computers or Skype from your PDA then them 700wx is the clear winner. However, if you need a phone, e-mail and SMS device primarily then this is not the unit for you. The phone has done very strange things such as lock up while attempting to accept an incoming call, then repeating my ringtone until it plays all the way through, or attempting to make a call and having the phone hang up completely. Keep in mind that the phone problems are the exception and not the rule, but nevertheless I have not seen this type of issue on any other operating system (although I have seen it on other WM5 devices such as the PPC6700.) The biggest problem I have is random freezes. Once in a while for no apparent reason I'll get a spinning wheel of death in which I can't do a darn thing. Sometimes this will happen when opening apps, sometimes this will happen when opening SMS messages, and sometimes this will happen when I want to answer the phone.

SMS messages are not threaded and e-mail is a mess. Sorting through who sent what message is a pain and SMS is grouped in with the rest of my e-mail accounts for no apparent reason. The push e-mail solutions for the WM5 devices are pretty crippled or limited to things like Exchange 2003 SP2 based servers. The gold standard for e-mail continues to be ChatterEmail which can push e-mail to a Palm based Treo without any middleware using any IMAP Idle compliant mail server. I tried a couple of push e-mail solutions available for the WM5 platform and frankly they all sucked.

Unlike the Palm devices, the Windows Mobile devices do a really good job of multitasking. It's very easy to have e-mail running in the background while writing a Word document and listening to music. I also love the fact that I can run real-world applications. If I'm in the field and a server gets an alert from LogMeIn indicating that the CPU has been hung at 80% for the last 10 minutes I can simply open Pocket IE and log directly in to my server. If I'm on the road and want to watch the Vikings beat the Packers again I can log into my home HDTV system via SlingBox mobile. VPN access is great as well which makes it very easy to VPN into work, term-serv into a server and do whatever I need right from my Treo all over EVDO. It's items like this that make the Treo 700wx a great PDA but lousy communications device.

Treo 700p
Great at communicating, lousy at business tasks. The Treo 700p is a phone first and PDA as a distant second. The phone on the Treo 700p is very easy to use with large on-screen answer/deny buttons as well as the ability to merge unknown contacts into an existing record (a very cool feature I have not seen on any other smartphone.) The built in e-mail client, Versamail, is mediocre at best; however, with the addition of ChatterEmail the Treo 700p becomes the most powerful mobile e-mail solution I have ever seen. SMS messages are threaded and run as their own application so it's easy to tell who wrote what and when. The Treo 700p looks at SMS much like a AIM chat which is very intuitive. From phone to e-mail to SMS the Treo 700p does a world class job of keeping me connected.

Looking for a great PDA in the 700p? Yeah, uh keep looking. The operating system that comes with the 700p is Palm OS 5.4.9 which is a slightly newer version of Palm OS 5 which came out over 4 years ago. In those 4 years we have seen improvements such as NVFS... and... well, that's about the only big thing I can think of. Think of Palm OS 5 a lot like Windows XP... It's good enough simply because there's no upgrade option in sight. I think we'll see Palm OS 6 around the same time Windows Vista actually ships in January, 2021. Palm OS 5 feels old, it looks old, it acts old and it's just plain old. While it's possible to get some items to do some semblance of multitasking, it's nowhere near the level of Windows Mobile 5 devices. Want to run LogMeIn or SlingBox? No way. Skype can be done, but it's a hack job.

The Treo 700p is very fast and has a much longer battery life than the 700wx even with ChatterEmail installed (which drains your battery like you wouldn't believe.) I've never had an issue with the phone and most SMS issues I have had can be attributed to the Sprint network (have had the same issues on the wx.) I have a very powerful e-mail solution, I can read and write Word and Excel documents and I personally think the PDF viewer on the Palm is much better than the one in Windows Mobile 5.

Which smartphone would I use?
This is a tough question. Frankly I think all smartphones suck. Why is it I can have an iPod nano with 8GB of memory, but my Treo which is 10x the physical size only has 128MB? Why in the world does Palm feel it's necessary to have that f'ugly antennae sticking out of the top? Can't anyone make a smartphone OS that won't crash? Is it possible to add a lower quality camera or did all of the smartphone manufactures snatch them all up already? Whatever you do, don't ever, ever, ever think of adding WiFi, that would simply make the device far too useful for any single person. Their head might explode. Complaining aside, I would personally go with the Treo 700wx. Why the wx you ask? I need less of a phone and more of an e-mail and LogMeIn device. I need to be able to log in to any server, run any app and have access to any box on my network in as many locations as possible. It's a very close call and if ChatterEmail was available for the wx I would move in a heartbeat. Besides, being able to watch my SlingBox from anywhere is just plain cool. Your needs may be different, so decide if you need a PDA or a communications device first and then go from there.

It is a hard decision to make between two smart phones that are rather some incredible mini computers. I think I would choose the Treo 700 p because is very easy to use with large on-screen answer/deny buttons and it has that incredible feature to merge unknown contacts into an existing record.

I have seen it on other WM5 devices such as the PPC6700.) The biggest problem I have is random freezes. Once in a while for no apparent reason I'll get a spinning wheel of death in which I can't do a darn thing.

I too am testing both phones side by side. A couple of things you didn't cover your article which may or may not be significant to people..

The Personalization ability on the wx is far superior. Now with some quick editing and a drag and drop you can make mp3's your ring tones by contact and have MUCH better quality sounding ringers. With the "P" I had to create .qcp ring tones then use a website like Mixxer to upload and download the ringers. It was a few extra steps.

there is also a hack to make the sending of pictures identical to the sending of pictures on the P, so that ended that issue for me.

I'm not sure I agree with the assessment of email being better on the P with chatter. Of course I have an exchange server that I sync with, and don't need anything else, and for that, i find the wx much more capable to the task than chatter on the p.

more applications are available for the wx and the windows platform albeit with limitations is more "synergistic" with my desk top. I can connect the device, search it's folders, etc. Can't do that with the palm.

Whoa!!! Don't complain about logmein not working on the P. Use PalmVNC instead or the P version of a terminal services client. But to not even mention an alternative to Logmein means you didn't even know about it. As far as the interface, there are a bunch of front-ends for the P so that's another bogus claim.

You want Outlook connectivity? Use Sprint Business Connect or Goodlink. So much for that argument.

VPN? Don't tell me you didn't research that either. For the P, just use AnthaVPN.

Multitasking on the P? Of course it does. I stay connected to Verichat servers and check POP3 email all in the background while listening to MP3s on Pocket Tunes Deluxe while editing a Word docuement in Docs-to-go. So, just what was your point?

mRing lets you assign MP3s as ringers to individuals, a group, a category, whatever.

You complain about the OS on P being old. How does the word "stable" sound? UNIX is stable because it's old. If you don't like the way the front-end looks and feels, replace it on the P. Can you do that on the W?

You didn't mention Agendus. It give you a ton of integration features not found on the W. Let's face it. If you don't like the look and feel of the W, you are stuck. Not so, with Palm.

Flip, because I don't mention something does not mean I don't know about it. There are many solutions for remote desktop, but VNC is not a viable solution for secure IT. It's poor at NAT, slow and has a few nasty security bugs. Since all our IPs are behind a NAT, it makes VNC very hard to use. There are other solutions such as GoToMyPC but it's WM5 only as well, and frankly not as good as LogMeIn.

I don't use Outlook, that's not a very good e-mail client, I never mentioned that I even wanted to use Outlook. I want a GREAT e-mail application for my Treo 700wx like Chatter on the 700p. Bringing my computer with a EVDO connection card with me is not a reasonable answer. It may work for some, and I *have* a Sprint EVDO card, but I should be able to easily get my e-mail in real time... Like I can on the Treo 700p, just not the 700wx.

AnthaVPN does not work with our VPN gateway. The built-in WX VPN (free BTW) does.

The Treo 700p does partial mutitasting... It's far inferior to the 700wx. It is possible to do two things at once, but usually it's just a background check, not a stream, check, phone call and word doc all at the same time, as the article stated.

I didn't complain about ringers... I think they are about equal on both devices. I can assign a WAV file to the P and a MP3 to the wx... I use the same ringer on both. The quality is about the same on both. I think we agree here.

the Treo 700p is NOT stable like Unix, but it is faster than the 700wx. If it was vastly more stable than the 700p would not complain, but even today I have a user who can't get into their Treo 700p prefs without the device soft-resetting. UNIX and PalmOS are two different beasts. UNIX has been maintained and has great support though BSD and Apple (Darwin). PalmOS has been growing older and older with little to no improvements. It's just crusty now. Stable is not the first word that comes to mind.

I *hate* the bloatware that is Agendus. It's garbage, but that's all personal opinion.

Well after reading the posts and the comments im just as confused as I was before I started. Great discussion though, Im sure that if I go with the P I will look into all these programs.

Okay, I just picked up the Treo 700wx. Ill try to read up and follow the advice here and see how I like it. This will be my first smartphone and it seems HUGE. Then again im getting rid of my KRZR that keeps locking up and dropping calls.

great article and awesome discussion. i am so confused. is the screen resolution a lot better on the p? i think i'm going with the p, I can't stand a phone freezing. thank you very much guys.

"If you don't like the way the front-end looks and feels, replace it on the P. "

Can someone tell me how? I'm tempted by the screen, speed, and stability of the p, but it's interface is ugly and dated looking.

Also - How does Docs-to-go on the p compare to Word/Excel/PowerPoint on the wx? And how about Balzer vs PIE?

Treo 700wx-When I am on a call and a second caller calls in and leaves a voice message, my phone deactivates but the original call does not disconnect.

I then need to press the red power-up button, activate and deactivate my speaker function in order to resume my original conversation.

This is my third replacement phone from Sprint in the last two months. Sprint tells me that they have no idea to correct the problem, they say it's an isolated issue.

I have had a Treo ever since the Treo600, and while I love it dearly I must say the Palm-based system isn't the most stable. My Treo600 died every four months, my Treo650 crashed what feeled like every other hour.

Documents-to-Go has made reading Excel files pretty easy, but it would take forever to open them.

Connecting to Sprint Vision/EVDO has been virtually impossible. Constantly I am sitting and waiting for it to connect only to get a PPP Timeout Error 0x1324 error, constantly.

The Treo700p can multitask, barely. By this I mean if I'm in a call I can use applications which require no data usage, or I can send SMS's. If I'm in a program such as Verichat (for AIM/MSN/Yahoo), I can check my email and reply to incoming messages at the same time (of course, this is provided I don't turn the screen off in which case Verichat starts blasting me with SMS messages). All in all, the Treo700p is not the ultimate multitasker; far from it.

The Treo700p also has other little buggy issues: The calendar will ring through to the end even if you acknowledge the event (aka, if you tell it to ring 10 times, it -will- ring ten times). Sometimes switching apps causes my Treo to get stuck in a loop (much like the 650 but not nearly as frequently) and I need to pull the battery out. I've also noticed, albeit rare, that the Treo doesn't inform me of missed calls or SMS messages or any other events for that matter.

The camera causes problems too. Let your screen turn off and lock while on the camera? Good luck getting it back on. You have to race with your Treo to hit the center button to disable the screen lock. Most of the time, you fail and it turns back off before you even get the chance. One other issue, which has just developed recently, is that the camera doesn't work properly. No matter what my settings, no matter if I zoom in, the camera always snaps it at zoom level 1 using the default color settings.

I have yet to use the Treo700w on any large level. It looks like an excellent multitasking tool, but not nearly as good for communications (as stated above).

One last comment about my Treo700p: I went to bed with it last night on my side table. I woke up this morning to it restarting, constantly. The thing is dead. The screen won't work. The Treo (any version) has been the most faulty set of phones I have ever used. At least the 700p is a step in the right direction.

I have always been a huge fan of palm os regardless of what people say about it. I've owned 4 palm pilots over the last 7 years (palm III, m505, m515, & my favorite Tungsten T3), and have had a Treo 700w for a year.

I absolutely hate the 700w!!!! When this came out they rushed WM5.0 and IMO it is the worst OS ever! I pitty da fool that gets a 700w!

So, last month a good friend of mine was purchasing 10 700p's for his small business, and asked me if I wanted one at his cost. I said sure because anything has to be better than this device.

After 4 weeks of using the 700p I am so glad that I got rid of the 700w. No more crashes, no more freezes, no more over clogged home screen look, and much more.

One of my favorite things I like about the 700p is it is COMPLETELY one handed. You don't have to whip out the stylus for anything unless you want too.

The ease of palm 0S is great and even though the OS is 4 years old I still prefer palm over windows operating system. I don't have to click start, pick programs, click programs to get going. I have everything on the home screen and whala.

There's more memory, in the 700p its faster and just more reliable than windows. I can't believe that the 700wx is much different than the 700w.

I have had both and the 700p works best for me. I cant be screwing around trying to answer a phone call or trying to make one. The wx should have been a vac. becuse it sucks more than my hoover.

Everyone always talks of OS crashes and less memory and more size. Well duh, it has a phone and a home computer, it is 1/100th the size of a laptop. Nanos simply play music and video and thats it, they don't call people, they dont computate, and they don't play high end games. If 4" by 3.5" by 1" is too big for you, then you like small things a little too much, the Treo rocks! Only complaint I have, odd resolution on the wx and lack of built in wifi

Is it possible to hot-sync or transfer the info from a regular Palm Zire to the Pal Treo 700wx? Especially the Contacts, Calendar, and Memos. Also, a Laridian program on my Zire memory card does not work on the Treo. I understand the Treo is MS, the Palm Zire is....Palm, I'm not extremely tech wise, so please speak English! Thanks much, Diane PS: I chose the Treo 700wx on many recommendations, and frustration with the Palm Zire's frequent crashes, half-screen images, inability to search without crashing and resetting, etc., tho I still love the format of Palm---oh well.

I was wondering if anyone had information regarding GPS software on the palm treo 700's. National Geographic offers a program, called Pocket TOPO, which you put maps from your desktop to you palm or pocketpc. Would a pocketpc be better for this, and if so what would be the best to get (Alltel wise)?

Great review! Every other review are done by hacks that only look at generic phone properties. Nobody cares on how the phone syncs via Exchange or know how to do it probabbly. Thanks again, very honest and not scewed to the Palm OS.

I just made the upgrade to the 700p and find this discussion of software options very helpful. Hard choice between 700p and 700wx. Screen size and battery life favored the 700p for me. However, now that I have it, I am looking for the apps like really good VNC to access/maintain my servers.

I'm using the updated Versamail to sync with our exchange server. I tried Chatterbox on my 650p but it just burned through my battery so I gave up on it. Does anyone know how Chatterbox works with an Exchange server? I have other accounts that are IMAP and would look at it again if it did both well.

I bought the 700wx and had to take it back for the 700p because I do not have Outlook on my home computer. Therfore, there was no way to sinc Contacts, Calendar, etc. from my computer to the Treo. I also did not think it was very user friendly. I went back to the Sprint store and traded it for the 700p and I found it to be instandly more user friendly and all of my PDA information on my computer was easily transferred to my phone. Since this device is for personal, not business use, and since I'm just a regular person who doesn't have to connect to servers, etc., I'm much happier with the 700p.

Just bought the 700wx. I find it a peice of crap for the heavy business user. Sometimes I wait 5 minutes for the phone to search for a contact. My blackberry kicked its ass. (but alas my new company does not support blackberry. Whyy on earth cna you not seacrh for a company or contact name at the same time. The indexing is rubbish.

well i was unsure for awhile but i went to the alltel store and tried out the 700wx and the 700p along side the 755p... i have an old pda with palm os (about 5-7 years old) and because of that i was more attracted to the p.. i do like the wx with the windows os but the p was easier to use..

also because you all talk about multitasking i hear that the windows os tends to run programs in the background and keep running them.. you wont notice until it begins to lag/ slow down.. at which point to have to goto the applications screen and stop running programs...

Help: 700wx vs 700p for phone and WiFi hotspots
I've had the Tungsten T3 forever and love it and got the WiFi card for hotspots. I'm thinking of upgrading (my phone contract is up - separate unit) but don't want to waste my accessories. The Palm site states that the WiFi card is compatible with the wx (not excited about using windows OS) and that the only difference with the 700p is the operating system...does that mean that my WiFi card will work with the 700p? The Palm-support-guy said it hadn't been tested yet. Anyone have further info?

In reading through the Palm website, it appears the Wifi card will only work with the Treo 700w or 700wx. Sorry!

Comments

1. Posted by: Roald Marth on September 26, 2006 10:51 PM:

Great article, I think I will wait to see what you think of the 750v, rumors are, at least the SMS is threaded. What I can't believe is that NOTHING but the Blackberry can do distribution groups in the email client, more than 5 years after Blackberry could do it. And that the WX still has only 240x240 screen resolution. It seems that all the employees of Microsoft are working on Vista, so WM5 gets no attention. It could be a GREAT mobile platform someday, if they focused on it.

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