I have officially replaced my Treo 650 with the Sprint PPC-6700. The 650 was the third Treo I owned and I honestly would have continued to use it had Palm dealt with one major shortcoming: lack of WiFi connectivity via the SDIO slot. I am aware of a lot of the reasons for Palm not developing WiFi drivers and/or not providing a WiFi SDIO card for the 650, but I finally quit caring. There were many times where accessing a WiFi network above the CDMA2K data network was needed and those times I had to turn to another PDA to resolve the issue I was working on. This happened enough times that when the PPC-6700 came out, I saw the inclusion of not only WiFi, but also EV-DO and jumped at it. I think the looks of the device is a bit ridiculous. It isn't actually any larger than the 650 - except in thickness. But, the fact that Microsoft has improved one-handed operations and many of the quirks I found Pocket PC/Windows Mobile phones to exhibit, the extra heft has been worth it. I won't delve into a long description of why I like the PPC-6700 and will instead provide you with a list of pros and cons:
Pros:
- WiFi and Bluetooth - both actually work well
- Windows Mobile 5 one-handed functionality is much better than before
- Slider keyboard is fantastic to use for relatively long periods of typing
- Where EV-DO is available, downloading email or surfing the web is very quick - light years better than 1xRTT
- Text and Picture messaging easy to use
Cons:
- Major quirkiness with lagging responses with the UI
- Lack of Windows Mobile 5 support at the time of release for many software packages
- Keyboard backlight interferes with seeing key labels in well-lit areas
- Please, please, please - someone come up with an Internet Explorer replacement that is stable - Pocket IE is horrible
List last updated Nov. 3rd, 2005.
