What's in the box?

The 700wx comes with the standard Treo accessories - a USB sync cable (which doesn't seem to charge the phone), a power cable, and a pair of hybrid headphones. I'm glad to see that Palm's including hybrid headphones now. I've always been unhappy with the 2.5mm jack on the bottom of the Treo. I had been hoping that with the popularity of bluetooth headsets they might consider just moving it up to the standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

The 700wx also comes with a manual and a software CD with Active Sync and various other little extra pieces of software (a puzzle game called "Cubis" is on it and I'm addicted). Later in the article you'll see some "opening the box" photos.

Overall feel of the 700wx

I put off the hardware section of this review a little later than usual because there's not much new here. The Treo 700wx maintains the same tried-and-true shape of Treos since the Treo 600. Like the other Treos in the 700 series, it has a slightly squarer feel than previous Treos.

The Sprint version of the Treo 650 was blue. I'm happy to say that this Treo is a much more professional grey tone - though actually with a hint of blue to it. We'll call it gunmetal, just slightly darker than its 700 series cousins. It's easily the most professional-feeling and looking Treo I've ever owned (and I've owned nearly all of them).

The only other difference is that there is a tiny foam pad on the inside of the battery cover - which makes the 700wx feel more solid - it passes the "creak test" with flying colors. Palm has really come a long-way in terms of build-quality since their early days. The buttons all have a great feel to them. The ringer switch even feels better than on previous Treos - Palm has added a little orange paint beneath the switch so you can more easily see whether it's on vibrate-mode or not (alas, neither the 700w or 700wx have the 700p's little vibration reminder when you move the switch).

The keyboard is very easy to type on. Again, Palm has done a good job hanging on to what's important (Handspring's much-touted "oval-domed keys") while evolving the design to look more professional (squaring up the keys and allowing the entire keyboard to angle up instead of go straight across at the top).

Screen and backlight

The 700wx maintains the 240x240 resolution screen. There are times when this relatively lower-resolution doesn't bother me at all. But when I'm browsing the web the lack of screen space does sometimes become noticeable. However, there is no "grid" between the pixels - the screen is very sharp. It also looks fine in sunlight, definitely on par with other modern color screens. The backlight on the screen is pretty-much what you'd expect: bright and crisp if you set the brightness very high, slightly dull if you set it low. I just leave it in the middle.

What's interesting to note about the backlight is how there seem to be subtle color differences from Treo to Treo, especially on the keyboard. When reading the boards I'm seeing a wide array of opinions on all the 700 series Treos - people will say that it's too blue, too purple, too yellow. I'm sure that part of that is just differing perception of color. Yet it does seem odd that there doesn't seem to be much consistency.

In the photo here you're looking at a Treo 700w and then two 700wx Treos - all ostensibly with nearly identical hardware. Though it's likely difficult to tell from the photo, the widest variation between keyboard brightness and color is between the two new 700wx Treos. Odd. Anyway, you can probably tell I'm quibbling here. The screen, keyboard, and backlight are all great on all three Treos - assuming you're happy with 240x240 resolution. Most of the time, I am.

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