Review: The Treo 700p is a good performer, fun to use

Computerworld - Beach umbrella. Check. Sunglasses. Check. Trashy summer reading. Check. Treo 700p. Check.

Packing gadgets for summer vacation? I never leave home without 'em. And since the newest Sprint-branded Treo recently landed in my mailbox for review around vacation time, I decided to bring it along.

Sure, the latest Treo is loaded with features that will keep you in touch with the office, including zippy Evolution Data Optimized (EV-DO) network access, support for a wide range of e-mail accounts, Palm OS and organizer applications, Bluetooth 1.2, and more. (See my previous column for details.)

Treo 700p

Indeed, I found the Treo 700p's 1.3-megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom and camcorder easy and fun to use. The device's 2.5-in., 320-by-320-pixel, 65,000-color display makes a great viewfinder for shooting stills and video as well as playing back multimedia slide shows.

Palm Inc. has beefed up the included Pics & Video application, making it a breeze to create albums and slideshows with voice narration, transitions and background music. You can even use the "Draw on Picture" feature to create title and credit slides. I put together a vacation photo show in couple of minutes, drawing "ooohs" and "ahhs" on a visit with relatives.

Like many camera phones without a flash, don't expect the Treo to work miracles in low-light situations. It produces acceptable snapshots and video of outdoor and well-lit indoor scenes.

The 128MB Treo 700p offers 60MB of available storage for photos and other files, but if you need more, the device sports an expansion slot that accepts MultiMediaCard, SD and SDIO storage cards.

Chances are you'll want to listen to some tunes while you're kicking back on vacation. The Treo 700p comes with the Pocket Tunes MP3 player. It's simple to use, but note that this version doesn't play rights-protected music. (An upgrade that plays more formats and subscription music is available at www.pocket-tunes.com.

The Treo now includes a full version of the user manual right on the device, where you'll find instructions for converting files to MP3 format and transferring them to the Treo with Windows Media Player or iTunes.

And forget about listening to your music through the tiny speaker on the back of this handset. You'll have a better listening experience with headphones.

The Treo's Web browser, Blazer, has been updated to better handle JavaScript and streaming video and audio. Clicking a link to streaming content in a Web page launches a built-in media player called Kinoma, which plays a variety of standard formats including WMA and MPEG4.