The Phone Application, Dialer and Favorites views

The first of the hard buttons brings up the Phone application, which gives you easy access to four applications and, by pressing the center select button, a call log. These four applications are customizable, and the wallpaper background can be user defined or replaced with a touch keypad. The menu key also gives you access to a huge amount of phone based options, like settings for answer phone and call waiting. This application also gives you easy access to Contacts and a Favorites menu. The 50 Favorites can be defined as web pages, contacts (either call or message) or applications. Each one can be assigned a hot key that when pressed in the phone application launches the favorite. Contact Favorites can be allocated a picture from the camera application so that image pops up on the screen when that person calls.

 
Camera Application

The camera application takes 640x480 pictures, and I will be honest, the picture quality is poor, however the software is capable, allowing you to downsize the images and store them either in the phone or on an SD card. Images can be emailed or sent via MMS. When viewing the pictures however there is no option to zoom in or see them full screen. To do this you will need to save them to the SD card and view them with an third party application like Acid Image which works well with the Treo 600.

Pressing the first hard key with the option button on the keyboard launches the Blazer web browser. This new version of Blazer is proxy less, downloading all the information and formatting it on the device, rather than relying on a server to do this for it. This means that you can either view pages re-formatted for the Treo 600's small screen, or as they would appear in a desktop browser

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Wide Page and Optimized Mode in Blazer

Unlike previous versions of Blazer it does not render text before images, however images can be turned off. The new version of Blazer supports cookies, Java Script, animated GIFs and some CSS. For browsing non PDA optimized sites I found Blazer slow. PalmOne's latest WebPro browser offers you the option of either browsing with a Proxy - which strips out large content unsuitable for a handheld device, or without in full page mode. It is a shame that Handspring does not offer the same facility, particularly as Blazer pioneered this approach. Having said that, for browsing Palm sized sites Blazer is superb, and it's bookmark approach is very user friendly.

The second hard key takes you to the Datebook application (now known as Calendar), and with the option key Memo Pad is brought up. Apart from Calendar's added views, and full support for the five way navigator these are similar to on other Palm Powered handheld's. The third hard button launches the SMS application:

Chat SMS

For many people SMS is the most cost effective method of communicating with their mobile phone, and Handspring's Chat application is superb. Messages are grouped together in threads similar to a desktop messaging application. Quick texts can be defined (such as "Sorry will be late") and Emoticons are easily selectable. Sadly there is no MSM style Messaging client included with the Treo 600, but PDAApps have confirmed to me that a GPRS version of Verichat will soon be available to purchase that supports MSM, AOL and other systems: watch this space for a full review. Option and hard button three launches the mail software. This is a very capable Pop3 mail application and I found it very easy to set up. It can handle attachments and these can be viewed or launched by helper applications, like the included Documents to Go viewer software.

 
Mail and Word View

Sadly the viewer software only works with attachments, so you will have to email them to yourself if you want to view lots of Office documents on your Treo, or upgrade to the full professional versions of Documents to Go. Handily, Mail can download messages manually or be set to check at a regular interval. Mail does not synchronize with your desktop email application, to do this you will need a third party application like PalmOne's Versamail which offers considerably more features.

The fourth hard key on the Treo 600 allows you to turn of the screen or key lock the Treo 600. All four hard keys can be programmed in Preferences, which also allows you to modify ring tones, color themes and network preferences. A Home icon key by the space bar launches the standard Palm OS launcher which gives access to all applications, including some network utilities - Orange offers a back up suite (via GPRS) an application for downloading software updates and a SIM card address book reader.

   
Orange Applications and some of the preferences available

Other applications included with the Treo 600 are the Pocket Tunes Ogg and Mp3 player, which is available as a download after registering with Handspring. Pocket Tunes offers good sound quality and background play as well as customizable skins. Zap 2016 is also on the CD, which has been updated with sample sound effects and support for the five way pad. Other games are already beginning to offer support for the Treo 600, but we will save that for a later article. City time, another Handspring favorite is useful for those who work across time zones. There is not a video application bundled with the Treo 600, however Kinoma works extremely well, and the latest producer software has a handy quick setting for the device. For those who are confident to resize and encode their own video with third party tools MMPlayer works with a low density skin installed.

   
Pocket Tunes, City Time and Kinoma
 

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