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" We are in a curious era in the development of smartphones right now. At the beginning of this month, Apple unveiled its iPhone, which, if it comes anywhere close to its technological potential, will be nothing short of a revolution in the way smartphones are designed. Also, Microsoft is planning to launch its version 6.0 of Windows Mobile (codenamed Crossbow), which is expected to be the Vista equivalent for mobile devices. Neither of these two technologies is on the market just yet, but the Palm Treo 750 is. Just launched this month and available for $399 (after rebate) from Cingular (now sort-of-called AT&amp;amp;amp;T), the Treo 750 has the dual input QWERTY keypad and touchscreen-with-stylus interface that Palm users are by now no doubt familiar with. What may come as a surprise to some users is that the Treo 750 doesn&amp;#039;t actually run Palm&amp;#039;s own operating system\u2014rather, it runs Palm&amp;#039;s modified version Windows Mobile 5.0. This is not, in and of itself, a new development for Palm: The company&amp;#039;s 700w from Verizon Wireless (also $399) runs Windows Mobile, as the operating system is a favorite amongst business users thanks to it playing nicely with Microsoft Exchange servers. The Treo 750 does represent a new look and shape for Palm, as the signature &amp;quot;stubtenna&amp;quot; has been fully internalized and the ho-hum silver look of previous Palm smartphones has been updated to a rubberized sparkle-blue that feels awfully nice in the hand. These are both nice advances, for sure, but given the current atmosphere of excitement around the iPhone, they seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. The big story with the Treo 750 is that it works on Cingular/AT&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s new UMTS/HSDPA 3G network that promises data download speeds of 400 to 700kbps, comparable to Verizon and Sprint&amp;#039;s EVDO services. In practice, all of these wireless broadband services work in fits and spurts. Downloading Web pages took anywhere from 20 seconds to a minute and a half. And, as anyone who has used a mobile device to surf the Internet can tell you, very little online content is formatted to look nice on a mobile phone screen. (Wouldn&amp;#039;t it be nice if you could simply view that content on a horizontal widescreen? Wait, that&amp;#039;s exactly what the iPhone does....) Nevertheless, it is infinitely faster than the EDGE network that Cingular users had access to before. As an e-mail and organization device, it is truly splendid. Palm&amp;#039;s reorganization of the dreadful Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system makes the OS close to tolerable (which, frankly, is more than I expected was possible), bringing both contact list and Internet searches to the phone&amp;#039;s home page and giving the search, silent and OK functions hard keys. The one thing that would definitely improve the interface, however is a scroll wheel\u2014a BlackBerry innovation that is showing up on competing Windows Mobile devices such as Samsung&amp;#039;s BlackJack. Which brings us to the one unforgivable problem with the Palm 750: It is an incremental improvement over Palm&amp;#039;s previous devices, but it is not necessarily so impressive next to the devices it is competing with. It is definitely more user-friendly than the Motorola Q, and packs in more functionality than the BlackJack, which doesn&amp;#039;t have the mobile version of Microsoft Office that the Treo does. But the Treo costs twice as much as these smartphones, and it isn&amp;#039;t twice as good. Plus, it is within millimeters of the dimensions of the current generations of Treos, whereas the Q and BlackJack are slender enough to disappear in a pocket. And that&amp;#039;s just the competition that exists today. The Treo 750 is within spitting distance of the iPhone&amp;#039;s hefty $500 price tag and running on a lame-duck operating system. Anyone who has a few months to wait may just want to throw the $400 they would have spent on this phone into Apple stock, and by June you&amp;#039;ll probably have enough to get the iPhone. \u2014Glenn Derene "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a1254/4212298/>