The Treo 700wx is an upgrade to the Treo 700w addressing common complaints by power users that the Treo 700w does not have Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking (DUN) and comes with too little user available memory. The Treo 700wx addresses these concerns. However, I wish it dealt with a few smaller issues as well.

Hardware

The Treo 700wx is identical to the Treo 700w in nearly every way. That’s a blessing, because the Treo 700wx has the same elegant form factor that has made the Treo successful over the past four years. It’s somewhat of a curse because the Treo 700wx has a 240×240 display, just like the Treo 700w. While the screen is acceptable for surfing the internet, the shortcomings of the Treo 700wx’s display become obvious when viewing pictures and especially video. When comparing the display of the Treo 700wx to the gorgeous 320×320 display of the Treo 700p, to this reviewer it seems dull and muted.

The 1.3mp camera of the 700wx is the same as the 700w. Perhaps because of screen resolution, images seem grainier than they do when taken on a Treo 700p’s 1.3 megapixel camera. Same thing with videos.

The 312MHz processor is unchanged from the 700w and is a blessing. The Intel XScale processor provides plenty of processing power for any task. As a matter of fact, this processor is almost as fast as my first computer!

The most significant difference between the 700w and the 700wx is in the availability of application accessible memory. While the 700w and 700wx both have 128mb of memory, the difference is in how the devices allocate their memory. The Treo 700w only allocated 32mb for programs. The lack of program dedicated memory has resulted in sluggish performance for many 700w users. During my evaluation of the Treo 700wx I never experienced sluggish performance. As a matter of fact, I found the 700wx to perform quite well, zooming through all tasks from playing video, to downloading email, and even simultaneously rendering WebPages. During the course of my evaluation I found no memory bottlenecks, at all.

Windows Mobile 5

The Treo 700wx uses the same OS as the Treo 700w, Windows Mobile 5. There is a lot to like about WM5, especially for Exchange users. WM5 integrates nicely with Exchanges servers, allowing for easy synchronization of contacts, calendars, and email. WM5 also synchronizes beautifully with Outlook. The Treo 700wx includes mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Advanced users will appreciate the included Terminal Services Client for remote administration. The Treo 700wx also comes with Mobile versions of Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 10. The Treo 700wx is truly a productivity powerhouse with excellent multimedia capabilities.

While the Treo’s Internet Explorer Mobile rendered WebPages much faster than the Blazer browser on my Treo 700p, I had difficulty streaming multimedia files. I would have expected Internet Explorer Mobile and Windows Media Player 10 Mobile to work in tandem to open media files. Sadly, this did not happen. When I attempted to access a link to supported multimedia files one of two things occurred; either nothing happened or a blank page loaded. After three weeks with the Treo 700wx, I have only successfully streamed multimedia files from the Windows Media Player 10 Mobile webpage. The only information available in the User’s Manual is a sentence stating that the Treo 700wx is capable of streaming multimedia files from the Windows Media Player 10 Mobile website. While it is very likely that I am missing something in the process, the process should be more intuitive with descriptive error messages that aid in diagnosing the problem.

Phone Features

The Treo 700wx offers a robust set of phone features and exceptional call quality. Signal Strength was consistently strong on Sprint’s EVDO network. The popular PhotoDial and voicemail controls features of the 700w are carried over to the 700wx. While many love the PhotoDial feature of the Treo 700wx, I found it to be a bit gimmicky instead of useful. Honestly, how often will you take a picture of a contact? In my opinion, the Photodial feature consumes valuable real-estate on the Today screen. I would have much preferred a shortcut pane to launch applications with one click or a bookmarks pane opposed to PhotoDial. While I am less than impressed with PhotoDial, I love the voicemail controls for pausing, rewinding and fast forwarding through messages. The only problem I found specific to the phone features is the speakerphone. The speakerphone is significantly weaker than the speakerphone of the Treo 700p, but voices were still loud and clear.

Conclusion

While the 700wx addresses the memory problems of the 700w, the antiquated screen is still an issue for me. WM5 is an excellent OS, but requires more “clicks” to navigate than the Palm OS on the Treo 700p. Using the 700wx, I also missed the dedicated Calendar and Email buttons on the 700p. The Treo 700wx is probably best suited for business users who use Exchange and depend on seamless integration. For most other, users I believe that the Treo 700p is by far a better choice.

Related Links

Purchase a Treo 700p

Purchase the Treo 700w

Purchase the Treo 700wx

Discuss the Treo 700w/wx in the mytreo.net/forum.

Filed under: Editorials