Introduction

As staples among busy professionals, the Treo, iPAQ, and BlackBerry lines have been the epitome of business on the road. With PDA / phone combinations, travelers can stay in touch with the office without losing productivity.

Having loyal followers, the Treo 650 has been a much anticipated release from Palm. Being released for Sprint, the Treo 650 has high expectations as the successor to the hugely popular Treo 600.

Externally, the Treo 650 differs little from the Treo 600. And with the runaway popularity of the Treo 600, features that made it so successful a year ago were kept; while minor improvements made sure the Treo 650 will please the Palm faithful as well as turn a few converts.

Design

Visually functional as it is beautiful, the Treo 650 features clean lines and a sense of professionalism that makes it ideal for the business environment.

Retaining the basic form of the Treo 600, at 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches and 6.3 oz, the Treo 650 is practically identical in size and weight; being large enough to type comfortably while small enough to carry with convenience.

On the front, the 65K color screen displays information at 320 x 320 pixels; significantly sharper and higher resolution than the Treo 600's 160 x 160 pixel screen. A familiar QWERTY keypad is located below with minor improvements to allow effortless typing. Slightly curved for ergonomic design, the Treo 650 conforms more naturally to the placement of the hands, making emails simpler to type on the larger keys than ever before. Additionally, messaging in the dark is much easier with the improved backlight; illuminating the keypad clearly with a bright white glow. To navigate through the menu structure, a 5-way keypad is conveniently placed above.

The back of the Treo 650 sits the lens to the built-in VGA camera, capable of capturing photos at 640 x 480 px. A mirror next to the lens provides a reference when taking self-portraits. A speaker is located on the back as well; used for everything from ringers, to alarms, to the handsfree speakerphone. Additionally, a battery release door is a much welcomed sight, allowing users to swap replacement batteries if need be. Previous models contained permanently-attached batteries.

For ease, volume and side buttons are positioned on the left; providing quick access to useful functions such as playing or pausing MP3 files, or reprogramming to open up frequently used applications.

On the bottom, consumers can go handsfree with a stereo 2.5mm headset jack, or connect the USB sync cable and AC charger to the multi-connector port. The stylus, infrared port, expansion card slot, and ringer switch are placed along the top.

Camera

In times of need when a picture would save a thousand words, the Palm Treo 650's built-in 330K pixel VGA camera is able to capture photos at sizes of either QVGA (320 x 240 px), or VGA (640 x 480 px) resolutions, providing 16-bit color depth at 64K colors.

When taking pictures, the screen becomes the viewfinder; with the lower portion displaying useful information such as available memory. Shutterbugs can get closer to the action with the 2X digital zoom, which opposed to optical zoom, merely crops the image.

Should users want to take self-portraits, or just be included in the pictures; a mirror located beside the lens can be used. Additionally, filters and controls such as Special Effects (Normal, Sepia, Black and White), and Light Balance, allow users to stylize and correct their photos. Approximate image file sizes are 50 KB for VGA and 16K for QVGA, encoded in JPG file format.

Noticeably absent from the Treo 600 but fortunately included on the Treo 650, video clips can be recorded at either QVGA (320 x 240 px) or QCIF (176 x 144 px) resolution; encoded in MPEG-4 format.

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