Palm did well to enhance the standard Windows Mobile 5 operating system with some well-placed add-ons, including Today Screen plug-ins for speed dialing, photo ID speed dialing, and a Google search bar. Sprint also added a speakerphone short cut to the main in-call menu, something which was oddly missing from the Verizon 700w.
The 700wx of course includes the standard WinMob 5 application suite, including mobile versions of MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel, Picsel PDF viewer, Internet Explorer, MSN Explorer, and ActiveSync. Sprint also added the On Demand application to serve as a Web home screen that provides news, weather, sports, and entertainment updates customized according to your location (by zip code).
Outlook mobile handles email, contacts, and organizer functionality, and should be familiar territory to users of its desktop counterpart. Caller and photo caller ID are supported. Microsoft's Voice Command application is also installed on the 700wx, and it's one of the better implementations of a voice control system I've tried on a mobile handset. The phone also supports recording of voice memos.
Windows Media Player 10 Mobile handles audio/video playback, and it worked well with media files loaded onto the Treo via Bluetooth and SD memory card, as well as those downloaded directly from the Net. Windows Media works well as a digital audio player, supporting playlists and album art display. One negative about using the 700wx as a media player, though, is that its square-shaped display isn't as nice for viewing widescreen videos as standard QVGA screens are.
The Treo 700wx comes with two games pre-installed, but literally hundreds more area available as pay or freeware downloads from the Web. Similarly, a myriad of productivity and entertainment applications that work with WinMob 5 can be had with a few Google searches.
The Treo 700wx features a 1.3 megapixel camera housed in its rear panel. There is no flash or camera light, but a small piece of mirrored plastic mounted next to the camera sensor is handy for snapping self-portraits.
Most people probably won't buy a Treo 700 for its camera, and that's good. The camera takes rather lousy pictures. Compared to images captured with better 1.3 MP cameraphones, the 700wx's photos lack overall color depth, brightness, and crispness. Compared to high-end 3 MP cameraphones? Well, never mind. Brightness and quality settings provide a limited amount of adjustment when taking pictures, but they only go so far. The 700wx's camera is fine for capturing images for photo caller ID and "proof of concept" type applications, but that's about it.
A video capture mode is available, as well, and movies can be captured with or without sound. Movies are saved at resolutions of up to 352 x 288 pixels, and while the picture quality of movies was no better than that of still images, movies were generally smooth and stutter-free.
A camera-less 700wx is also available from Sprint, which should appeal to security-conscious IT departments and executives.
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4.5
