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Handspring's Treo 300 for Sprint PCS service is the fourth wireless Treo to hit the market, and it's arguably the most appealing to date. Though it's almost identical to the GSM/GPRS Treo 270 from a design perspective, the 300 offers a slightly slicker user interface and superior Internet performance that comes courtesy of Sprint's nationwide 3G network. While the price of the PDA is still steep, Sprint's PCS Visions Services' monthly fee of $10 for unlimited data makes it a more appealing investment. To house the CDMA radio, Handspring had to make the single-band (CDMA 1900) 300 a hair larger and heavier than the 270. But at 4.4 by 2.8 by 0.8 inches and 5.7 ounces, the 300 is still nice and compact and easily fits in a pants pocket. As with other Treos, the 300 has a flip-phone design, with the lid doing double duty as a protective screen cover and an earpiece. Instead of a Graffiti-writing area, there's a backlit miniature keyboard, which becomes easier to use with time.
On the side of the unit, you'll find a convenient scroll wheel that allows for stylus-free, one-handed operation, as well as a jack for the included headset. There are two buttons on the 300's top; one activates/deactivates the wireless connection, and the other enables the ringer or puts the device in vibrate mode. The 300 doesn't ship with a cradle, but it does come with a USB cable that has a dongle for attaching an AC adapter or the included car-cigarette-lighter power adapter, which is a nice bonus.
Like other wireless Treos, the 300 is comfortable to talk on, even though it's bigger than today's standard flip phones. Unfortunately, there's no slot for adding memory, so you'll have to live with the onboard 16MB.
When you flip open the 300's protective cover, the display turns on to show the speed-dial menu, which can store up to 50 names. As with all Palm OS-based smart phones, you can dial a person in the phone book by simply tapping their number. The Treo 300's phone book puts a space between entries, resulting in a look that's not as clean as that of the Palm Address Book. However, it's easy to locate a desired contact: just type the letter of the person's first or last name, and a short list of entries appears. You can also dial numbers manually by tapping them out on a virtual keypad.
The 300 offers the same blend of phone and PDA features as Handspring's earlier wireless Treo models. It runs on a 33MHz Motorola DragonBall processor and comes with 16MB of memory and Palm OS 3.52, both of which are nonupgradable.
Thanks to Sprint's PCS Vision Services, the wireless-data experience is the best to date among wireless handhelds. As soon as you subscribe to that service--it's pointless to get this model if you don't--you're good to go; no ISP setup is required because Sprint is the ISP. You get Handspring's Blazer browser, which allows you to access the Internet at speeds of around 50Kbps to 60Kbps using Sprint's 1xRTT networks. That's nowhere near broadband velocity, but we can finally say that the surfing experience is acceptable, and the fact that you can't use Web-clipping applications developed for Palm's wireless handhelds is less of an issue. Click the Home icon in the browser, and you're taken to Sprint's wireless Web portal, which retains a WAP-like, text-only feel but is jazzed up with color icons and a slicker interface.
The only application on the included CD-ROM is Sprint's PCS Business Connect, which allows you to access your Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes company e-mail, as well as your contacts and calendar info. This app was easy enough to install, and within 15 minutes, we were receiving our Outlook mail on the device. You must have your computer or another machine--say, the PC that your company uses as a server--on in order for you to receive e-mails, with Sprint's servers acting as a go-between for your computer and phone. The personal version of the e-mail service is included if you opt for a PCS Vision Services plan in excess of $84.99 per month; otherwise, you have to pay a $5 monthly fee. An enterprise version of Business Connect is also available.
Other e-mail options include Handspring's Treo Mail application, as well as third-party POP3 programs such as JP Mobile One-Touch Mail, which allows you to forward e-mail to the device from existing POP3 accounts. We also had no trouble getting our AOL mail after we installed AOL Mail for Palm OS, and we were able to send SMS messages to e-mail addresses and other SMS-enabled cell phones in the United States and abroad.
As noted, the PCS Vision Service plans aren't cheap. For this device, Sprint recommends a minimum of an $84.99 plan, which includes a pool of voice minutes, plus an 8MB pool of data. To be clear, when you're e-mailing or surfing the Web, only your data pool--not your voice pool--takes the hit. We suspect that in time Sprint will lower its prices or at least offer a bigger data pool for the money, but for now, these plans are much more geared toward business users than average consumers.
Another small warning: The manual says that you can download games and ring tones wirelessly to the phone, for an extra fee in most cases. However, at launch, Sprint was still working on making these capabilities available through a third-party company. For now, you can add Palm-OS games and applications, including one for creating ring tones, the traditional way--via your PC or Mac using the HotSync application. The screen is 12-bit (4,000 colors) and bright, but it's not nearly as sharp as the high-resolution screens found on Sony's CLIE handhelds. According to Handspring, the screen is transflective, meaning that it is backlit for use indoors but can also reflect ambient light for viewing outdoors. In our tests, however, the screen appeared washed out to the point of being unreadable in direct sunlight. Still, it's a big improvement over the monochrome screen that's found on the Treo 180, and it doesn't seem to adversely affect battery life.
Overall, the Treo 300 performs well as a phone. Callers said that we sounded as if we were on a standard cell phone, and this Treo is just loud enough when set to the highest volume level. We also appreciated the quality of the built-in speakerphone, which can easily be turned on and off by tapping an icon on the screen.
As with the 270, we were satisfied with the 300's battery life. In our tests using Sprint's network in New York and San Francisco, we managed to exceed Handspring's rated talk time of 2.5 hours by almost 30 minutes, and we came close to hitting the five days of rated standby time.
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| Using the keyboard is an all-thumbs affair at first. | The jog dial allows for one-handed scrolling and selection. |
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 Time to grow up: No cradle ships with the Treo. |
Like other wireless Treos, the 300 is comfortable to talk on, even though it's bigger than today's standard flip phones. Unfortunately, there's no slot for adding memory, so you'll have to live with the onboard 16MB.
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 Phony phone: The Treo's virtual keypad interface. |
The 300 offers the same blend of phone and PDA features as Handspring's earlier wireless Treo models. It runs on a 33MHz Motorola DragonBall processor and comes with 16MB of memory and Palm OS 3.52, both of which are nonupgradable.
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 The Blazer browser hearkens back to the early Internet. |
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 You can receive mail via Outlook or Sprint's Business Connect. |
Other e-mail options include Handspring's Treo Mail application, as well as third-party POP3 programs such as JP Mobile One-Touch Mail, which allows you to forward e-mail to the device from existing POP3 accounts. We also had no trouble getting our AOL mail after we installed AOL Mail for Palm OS, and we were able to send SMS messages to e-mail addresses and other SMS-enabled cell phones in the United States and abroad.
As noted, the PCS Vision Service plans aren't cheap. For this device, Sprint recommends a minimum of an $84.99 plan, which includes a pool of voice minutes, plus an 8MB pool of data. To be clear, when you're e-mailing or surfing the Web, only your data pool--not your voice pool--takes the hit. We suspect that in time Sprint will lower its prices or at least offer a bigger data pool for the money, but for now, these plans are much more geared toward business users than average consumers.
Another small warning: The manual says that you can download games and ring tones wirelessly to the phone, for an extra fee in most cases. However, at launch, Sprint was still working on making these capabilities available through a third-party company. For now, you can add Palm-OS games and applications, including one for creating ring tones, the traditional way--via your PC or Mac using the HotSync application. The screen is 12-bit (4,000 colors) and bright, but it's not nearly as sharp as the high-resolution screens found on Sony's CLIE handhelds. According to Handspring, the screen is transflective, meaning that it is backlit for use indoors but can also reflect ambient light for viewing outdoors. In our tests, however, the screen appeared washed out to the point of being unreadable in direct sunlight. Still, it's a big improvement over the monochrome screen that's found on the Treo 180, and it doesn't seem to adversely affect battery life.
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| Using your phone as an image viewer has its limitations. | Silence of the handheld: The Treo's ringer switch. |
Overall, the Treo 300 performs well as a phone. Callers said that we sounded as if we were on a standard cell phone, and this Treo is just loud enough when set to the highest volume level. We also appreciated the quality of the built-in speakerphone, which can easily be turned on and off by tapping an icon on the screen.
As with the 270, we were satisfied with the 300's battery life. In our tests using Sprint's network in New York and San Francisco, we managed to exceed Handspring's rated talk time of 2.5 hours by almost 30 minutes, and we came close to hitting the five days of rated standby time.
