Treo 650: old and busted. Treo 700p: new hotness.

I got the Treo 700p. I like. The EVDO network is a lot faster: the web browser is, dare I say it, fast enough to be usable now.

Most importantly, Bubbles still works.

Listening to the DNA streams works, which is pretty cool.

It supports streaming video in WMV, but not Quicktime or RealVideo (e.g., ours). I can understand not supporting Real (who uses that crap any more?) but not supporting Quicktime? Come on, that's pretty useless.

It's not as much faster as I expected/hoped for downloading email (POP3S), but I guess that's more a latency issue than a bandwidth issue.

I tried again to use VersaMail the mail reader that comes with it (since it's in ROM, it's taking up space whether I want it or not), but I couldn't get it to do SMTP+TLS+AUTH delivery to my home machine, so I gave up and continued using the copy of Snapper that I bought last year. (Functionally they're basically identical, except that Snapper works.)

The camera is 1280x1024 instead of 640x480, but it's the same shitty plastic lens, so the pictures are just as blurry, dark and illegible as before, they're just bigger.

I use Missing Sync (which is generally pretty good), and before, I had the photo conduit set to download pictures on the phone to a folder and delete them when done. But with the 700p, there is an unpleasant new bug: it will only download photos that you've taken from the photo app -- not photos that have been sent to you as SMS and then downloaded to the phone, and not photos that you've taken from the SMS application. However, it will gleefully go ahead and delete those photos from the phone after not-downloading them. So beware.

(I reported it as a bug and their answer was, "We don't have a 700p." Nice.)

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20 Responses:

  1. nyankolove says:

    i'd think it would be pretty trivial (and necessary) for missing sync to only delete photos it has successfully downloaded. they shouldn't need a 700p to test for that...

  2. taniwha_nz says:

    it's still an ARM processor right? how'd they get WMV working?

    • moof says:

      wmv, like quicktime, is only a container format. Last I heard, Apple was still firmly sitting on the Sorensen codec, preventing anyone else from licensing it. Don't think that WMV has that particular problem.

  3. vanbeast says:

    I reported it as a bug and their answer was, "We don't have a 700p." Nice.

    Between that and their "We won't give you a demo, and if it doesn't work for you, tough titties; you should have read the mailing list" attitude, I'm increasingly wary of buying anything from them. Why do companies act that way?

    • jwz says:

      Because they can: their only competition is the barely-works-at-all bundled Apple iSync.

      • vanbeast says:

        True. It's too bad, too. I don't sync my treo to my mac because of that crap... Palm Desktop (on Windows, mac version doesn't work at all for me), while shit-tastic itself, works better than the iSync conduit.

  4. hermeticseal says:

    what's the delta for power vision vs the 650? is DUN really charged separately? not like i cant afford it but i'm just a cheap bastard.

  5. boggyb says:

    I can understand not supporting Real (who uses that crap any more?)

    Well, the BBC for starters. All their streams are in Real format (with some here and there appearing in WMV), and they're experimenting with the multicast support in RealPlayer.

  6. gregv says:

    Not apropos the post, but you were right about the Evolution redesign Kinesis was doing. They updated the page so I fired off an e-mail and yes, it will not include a chair mount version due to "just too little demand." No track mount either, just desktop.

    Sucks, since mine has a few flaky keys and should be replaced. The only similar thing I could find is based on the freaky PowerGlove design.

  7. malokai says:

    try chattermail. It's not free ( you gotta pay for it and the SSL library), but it works great and does imap push (so if you're restricted by bw usage it's great).

    • jwz says:

      Dude, how in the world did you get from "I tried to use the built-in ROM POP3 mail reader to save space, but instead I'm using the other one I already paid for" to "Oooh! Oooh! I know! Buy this other non-ROM mail reader that does some stupid IMAP thing!"

      I hate you.

  8. ciphergoth says:

    I got VersaMail to to TLS + SMTP AUTH but I had to reconfigure my mail server to do it. I'm guessing that's not a route you'll find attractive.

    I can't even remember what I did, besides switching off SMTP and using packet capture to debug the problem.

    • jwz says:

      You guess ever so correctly. Snapper is talking TLS/AUTH to it just fine, and space on the device isn't enough of a problem for me to care about that for more than about ten minutes worth of hassle.

  9. leendabunny says:

    God Damn you and your damn Bubbles. Now I can take it with me and never have a life again!