Well, it's taken me longer to get this comparison review done, but here it is - and thanks to reader Pamela for asking about it and thereby prompting me to get it done!
Please note that I’m focusing on “out of the box” features – I look at the capabilities of each phone using the original software with which it was sold. I mention some 3rd party software for the Treo, but this is really to reference some basic things I wish the Treo came with. I know that many Treo users heavily use 3rd party applications to modify the contacts list and calendar to enhance the capability of their Treo, and for other functionality (email, expense tracking, medical reference, document creation and editing, etc.). I am *NOT* a power user who relies on her Treo for work – I’m a personal user who wants smartphone capabilities. I don’t use an extensive number of many 3rd party applications (eReader, SplashID, FileZ, MiniTones, Butler and a couple of games are really it).
(A couple of quick notes: a.) I'm a terrible photographer - I admit it. b.) I'm short a few pictures here to illustrate the differences between all of the functions I compare between the two devices - I'll take more shortly and add them.)
First impressions of the iPhone
After getting my iPhone, I rushed home to open the box and sync it with my MacBook. The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous. It’s sleek and substantial in the hand without being uncomfortable or awkward to hold to your ear. The interface is smooth and a pure pleasure to use. As a gadget fix, the iPhone is potent and sweet!
Setting up the iPhone via iTunes was quick and painless. I encountered no delays whatsoever in activating it. I think that this can be attributed to the fact that I purchased it on the East Coast before the rest of the country was even able to buy one given the time zone differences, so there was no overload on their servers or activation system. Plus, I hustled home from the AT&T store and focused on setting the iPhone up right away.
Connecting to my MacBook
The iPhone connects via USB to the proprietary 30-pin connector also used on recent iPods. iTunes is the sync conduit where you select the media, contacts, and calendars to go on your iPhone. If you have an iPod, the menu layout and options are very similar.
As I expected, syncing the iPhone is painless and glitch-free in comparison to my Treo. I have selected to sync all my calendars (I keep several to track home, work, birthdays, and other categories of events) and all of my contact groups (also broken down into categories like Businesses, Friends, Family, etc.). I sync a few selected music playlists, the latest episode of all TV shows and podcasts not yet viewed/heard and a movie or two. The iPhone does have a neat feature that allows you to remove movies, TV shows, or podcasts right on the device itself to free up space. If you’re taking lots of pictures or somehow need space for something else on your iPhone, deleting media like this can be useful.
The Treo connects to my MacBook via a USB/proprietary Palm connector cable. As previously mentioned in my Preamble, I use The Missing Sync software ($39.95 from Mark/Space) to sync my calendar, contacts, music, and memos. They map to iCal, Address Book, iTunes, and Mark/Space Memos, respectively, on my MacBook. Overall, I’ve found syncing to be unreliable, as I described in my Preamble to this review. More specifically, The Missing Sync interface is fine (the set-up assistant to walk you through what should be synced is particularly helpful), but the actual syncing usually works for some time (with rapid, painless syncs), then eventually slows down (I’ve seen a sync take up to 1 hour to complete, with only a week’s worth of changes for a non-power user), and then stops altogether. Re-installing iSync (after extracting it first from the install disks that came with my MacBook using Pacifist) fixes it for a time, but then the problem starts all over again. This has been my experience, but I’m sure there are others out there who may have no problems whatsoever using this software to sync their Treos.
There are a few issues with syncing contacts and calendar items with my Treo, which is a function of the Treo’s limitations and The Missing Sync’s interface with it, as I understand it. The first is that recurring calendar items often don’t sync correctly. The second is that contacts that are in multiple categories on my Mac will only show up in the first (alphabetically) category on the Treo. For example, I created a contact group named “Treo” to hold the numbers I use most often or am more likely to need as I’m out and about. And I also have a Family contact group. My husband is in both contact groups, but on my Treo, he only shows up in the Family group and not the Treo group based on the alphabetical order of the groups and what the Treo is capable of showing. So, if I only want to view my Treo contact group, it will be incomplete, since my husband’s information is not included. So much for organizing my contacts by group on the Treo! Yes, I could redo my contacts to ensure that each one only appears in a single group. But I use my contacts groups for other things as well, such as creating a Christmas cards group each year to have all the names and addresses of recipients in one place, so this would be impractical and inconvenient for me.
The iPhone syncs all of my contacts groups and shows me each group in its entirety regardless of how many groups each contact may be in. I’ve now renamed that “Treo” contact group to “iPhone” and can set this as the main group visible at all times, but still view my other contact groups when I want.
Application Comparisons
1. Phone
The Treo’s phone application was modified for the 680. It has 5 tabs (you can select which tab is visible first when you switch to the phone application) and can be accessed by pressing the phone button, the green call button (when you’re in another application), or by selecting the Phone application from the applications list. The 5 tabs are: dial pad, Favorites, main screen (just a screen with a user-selected picture background, and the next upcoming appointment, if you select this option), Contacts, and the call log. The main screen has received a lot of criticism on the Treo forums I visit since it has very little functionality and can’t really be viewed as essential to the phone application. Each tab shows your carrier’s name in the top left, Bluetooth status, and cell signal strength in the top right. The current date and time are visible in the top right only in the main screen tab.
In day-to-day use, the phone application is definitely use-able. I call mostly friends and family from my contacts list. Searching the contacts list is easy – typing in the letter of the person’s first and last name (e.g., JS for John Smith) gets you to the desired contact most quickly. One thing that does bother me about the contacts list is each contact always shows the all of the phone numbers for every one of my contacts below the name. In other words, I can’t view just a list of all of my contacts, and then later select which phone number I’d like to call. I’m a bit anal, and this makes the contacts list look a bit messy, in my opinion. Also, there only two sorting options – I can only sort by Last Name, First Name or Company, Last Name. Oddly enough, I actually like to view my contacts sorted by First Name, Last Name (probably because I think of all of my friends and family by first name only, rarely by last name), but this is not possible with the Treo.
Calling someone is as easy as selecting the number you’d like to dial in the contacts list and pressing the green call button (if you press the center button of the 4-way navigation pad, you can choose to dial or send a text message to that number). If you select a contact’s name (such that it is highlighted to show where your “cursor” is), your only option is to press the center button of the navigation pad to view the contact’s full details. You cannot dial using the green call button by selecting only a contact’s name.
Dialing a number not in your contact list can be done on-screen using the dial pad, or using the number buttons on the physical keypad. I tend to use the physical keypad, unless I need to enter letters for numbers – the letters are only visible on the virtual dial pad on-screen. The small physical keypad makes it hard to dial without looking, at least for me, so I never physically dial a number while I’m driving and instead rely on the voice-dialing by number available through my car’s Bluetooth system. Or better yet, I skip making the call until I’ve stopped.
On the iPhone, the phone application is accessed only from the home screen, or with the latest firmware update firmware update from Apple, you can set the Favorites screen of the Phone application to open by double-clicking the home button. Like the Treo, the iPhone’s phone application is also organized into 5 tabs. They are labeled Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail. When you switch to the phone application, the tab you see is the last one viewed when the application was last used. Unlike the Treo, you cannot set a default tab that will consistently be shown first upon opening the phone application.
Favorites can be added in two ways – directly in the Favorites tab by pressing the plus sign in the top right, which then reveals your contacts list from which to make a selection; or within an individual contact in the Contacts tab where there is an “Add to Favorites” button at the bottom. When a contact’s phone number is a Favorite, a small blue star shows up next to the selected number in the Contacts section.
The Recents tab shows all of your latest incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. Missed calls are shown in red text. There are 2 buttons at the top to allow you to toggle between viewing all recent calls or only missed calls. To the right of each entry is a blue arrow and pressing this arrow will show more details. If the number belongs to a contact, the arrow will reveal the full contact entry. If the number does not belong to anyone in your contacts list, pressing the arrow shows the number, the city and state of the caller (based on their area code, I assume), and then 4 buttons allowing you the option to call, text message, and create a new contact using that number or add the number to an existing contact.
The Contacts application is tailor-made to work seamlessly with the Address Book application on a Mac. It handles contacts the exact same way as Address Book in terms of grouping capabilities and the data fields available for each contact. Address Book has worked well for me for years now, so this similarity is a welcome feature to me. And, oh joy of joys, I can choose to view my contacts by first name! A group of contacts or all contacts are shown in list format with grey separators for each letter. There’s a neat animation as you scroll through your contacts – when you reach another letter, the grey bar containing the letter smoothly replaces the previous letter and sticks there until it is “bumped” away by the next letter. To get to a certain letter quickly, you can scroll through the alphabet shown on the right side.
One thing I’d grown used to on the Treo and now miss is the ability to search through my contacts by typing the first letters of the first or last name. Searching through the contacts (or anything, for that matter) in this manner is not possible on the iPhone.
The Keypad features large virtual buttons for each number, with the alphabet characters assigned to each shown as well. On the bottom right, there’s a delete button to make corrections when you’ve mistyped a number. On the bottom left, there’s a button that allows you to add the number you’ve just entered to an existing contact or to create a new contact from that number.
The Voicemail tab shows a list of all your voicemails by name or by phone number if the caller is not in your Contacts. Visual Voicemail is really one of my favorite features. No more dialing in to your voicemail and hearing the “You have – 5 – new – messages. First unheard message… To delete, press 7, to save press 9, to hear more options, press 5…”
In the top left is a “Greeting” button that allows you to create a personalized voicemail greeting or to select a system standard greeting. In the top right is the Speaker button so you can listen to your messages via the speaker phone or Bluetooth headset. Just like the Recents list, each voicemail message listed has a blue arrow next to it that shows you the contact’s full information (or the options to Call, Text Message, etc. the number if the caller is not in your Contacts list). At the bottom of the screen are some controls. The first one is a slider that allows you to fast forward or rewind the message as you wish. Two buttons below this slider allow you to call back or delete the message.
I have read some comments online that the audio quality of the messages is sub-par to some users. I have to say I don’t find the audio quality to be an issue – I have had no trouble understanding any of the messages I’ve retrieved so far. For a description of how Visual Voicemail works, see here.
If either the Treo or the iPhone had voice-dialing capability, the next section I would cover would be that feature. But, neither of them have this, so I have nothing to say in this area, correspondingly. And I am seriously bummed that I don't have anything to say in this area, since voice dialing is a great feature to have. But I've learned to deal without it, mostly since I have a bit of a "crutch" in that my car has built-in Bluetooth with voice dialing that works with both my Treo and my iPhone. So, I have voice dialing available when I use it most anyway. And I'm sure that I'll never buy another car without Bluetooth at this point. ;)
In terms of call quality, I've find the iPhone and the Treo to be equal. The Treo has great call quality in comparison to previous cell phones, and set the bar pretty high for me. But the iPhone matches it. There are times when I'm amazed that I'm talking on a cell phone given the clarity, and I get no complaints whatsoever about how I sound from the people I'm talking to. I will say that the signal reception of the iPhone is a bit less than the Treo, though. At work at my desk where I'm more toward the center of the building, the signal strength isn't that great - my Treo would consistently show more bars than my iPhone does. And the iPhone always loses the signal in elevators - this was not the case with my Treo where I would still have at least one bar. Otherwise, I do live in an area where the AT&T coverage is pretty darn good - it show 5 bars in most places, and there's only one point where coverage drops entirely and that's when I'm on the train to/from the city and I lose the cell signal for a couple of minutes.
2. Calendar
The Treo’s calendar application has 5 views. The first, the Agenda view, is my favorite and is set as the default calendar view when I open the application. It shows upcoming appointments, outstanding Tasks, and a count of unread emails (of whatever accounts you have set up in Versamail). All of this is over a background photo of your choice, with the current date and time at the top. The other calendar views are day, week, month, and year views. This is a very straightforward application where events can only be added in the day view. Graphically, it’s not particularly pretty, but definitely functional.
The iPhone’s calendar application also has multiple views – day, month, and list. The list view is not one I’ve seen on other phones or PDAs I’ve had – it simply shows all upcoming events in a list format, as the name implies. You can scroll ahead or forward easily, and pressing the Today button in the top left causes the list to scroll quickly by itself to place the current day at the top of the list. The same neat animation I described in the Contacts description for the grey bars separating the alphabetical sections is also in here for the grey date bars separating events by day. Any view of the iPhone’s calendar is more visually appealing than its counterpart on the Treo, though functionality is essentially the same.
3. Contacts
The Treo’s contacts application is also described in the Phone application section above. For each contact, you can include the contact’s company and title, but you are limited to 5 phone numbers and/or email addresses, one instant messaging handle, one website field, and one address field. You can also include a birthday and anniversary for the contact (which will be added to the calendar application), and you can also select to be reminded about either date in advance. After these fields, there are 4 Custom fields that you can rename. One feature I like is the ability to set a custom ringtone for each contact (or even by contact group, if you’d like). However, this feature has never worked consistently on my Treo, and I’ve never been able to fix this. At first, I thought it was the mp3 ringtone of the Star Wars Imperial March I’d created using MiniTones that I selected for my husband’s contact entry. But even when I select one of the standard ringtones that came with my Treo, it usually rings with the default ringtone I have set for all known callers.
And I should note here that the Treo cannot use mp3 files as ringtones without some 3rd party application help (at the time of this review). As I mentioned, I used MiniTones. But I'm astounded how a cellphone released in late 2006 can't use an mp3 file as a ringtone. Palm really needs to catch up to the current cell phone market. But I won't get started on how I feel about Palm right now, lest I completely sidetrack this review with my exceptional irritation with how a company that used to be innovative can fail on so many levels with its current product line...
You can also add a note to each contact – this is essentially an open text attachment added to each note. I use these notes to list names of children and spouses, or other random information for which there is no field in the main section of the contact entry.
A picture can also be selected for each contact. You can add one taken with the Treo’s own camera, or on Mac, you can add on in the Address Book on your computer and it will sync to your Treo.
See the Phone application section above for some detail on the iPhone’s contacts application. Beyond what is described there, I like the way contacts are displayed and edited. Like the Treo, I can select a specific ringtone for each contact (and they always work!), as well as add a note and a picture to a contact. These notes and pictures also sync with Address Book on my Mac. And there’s a trick to getting a contact’s picture to appear in full-screen mode, versus a thumbnail when pictures are added through Address Book through syncing – simply add a picture to a contact from any photo album directly on the iPhone itself.
I have always enjoyed the ability to add custom ringtones to different contacts to know who’s calling before I even get a chance to look at the screen to see who’s calling. However, the custom ringtone functionality on the iPhone is limited. You can purchase ringtones through iTunes, which is currently the only "legitimate" way to put custom ringtones on the iPhone, though the availability of songs that can be converted into ringtones in iTunes is limited at the moment. Otherwise, you can use 3rd party software to add ringtones, such as iPhoneRingtoneMaker or iToner. I've used iToner to add ringtones, and up until the recent firmware update to 1.1.1., it worked like a charm. I'm actually fine paying for new ringtones through iTunes - before the iPhone, Cingular/AT&T charged at least $2.50 for ringtones through their store, so the iTunes option is less expensive comparatively. But, with so few ringtone-able songs available through iTunes (ones that I want to use, anyway), I'll continue to seek out other ways to put my own ringtones on my iPhone.
4. Tasks
The Treo’s Tasks application is straightforward and basic. You can create tasks and assign a priority (on a scale of 1 to 5), a due date (and a reminder alarm), a category, and a repeat setting. Tasks can also be marked as private so they can be viewed only after entering a password. At the top of the screen, you can choose to view your tasks sorted by due date and category. As with contacts, you can add a note to each task to include more detail, such as a shopping list to go along with a “stop by CVS” task.
Tasks that are due (with a specific due date specified) are shown in the Agenda calendar view. However, the more appointments you have upcoming, the fewer Tasks will be shown on this view. Also, if you have Tasks that are past due as well as newer tasks that are due soon, it will default to showing you the newer tasks due soon, not the past-due tasks not yet completed. I would prefer if it would continue to show me the past-due tasks so I can remember them before it shows me anything else. Also, tasks with no due date are never shown on this view, which I find a bit irritating. I would like to have a more comprehensive Agenda view that shows me a wider range of tasks without these types of restrictions.
On the iPhone, there is no Tasks application or a way to view To Do items in iCal in the calendar. This is disappointing to me, since I do like to make to do lists and frequently use the alarm function on my Treo to remind me of something I need to do. But I have my fingers crossed that the release of the Leopard operating system will address this - the new Mail application will have Notes and Tasks, and it makes sense to me that some sync function with the iPhone will be possible.
5. Music
The Treo comes bundled with PocketTunes. At the time I purchased my Treo, it also came with a special Music Pack bonus that included a wired headset, a 1GB SD card, and the PocketTunes Plus software. However, the software was on a disk with an intstaller for Windows only, so I never upgraded the PocketTunes application on my Treo.
I must admit that I rarely use PocketTunes on my Treo since I have an iPod (3, to be exact). The biggest limitation with PocketTunes for me is its inability to play protected AAC files. I don’t necessarily fault them for this since Apple intentionally prevents music from the iTunes store from playing on anything but an iPod. But I buy nearly all of my music from iTunes (I think I’ve purchased 2 or 3 CD’s maximum since I got my first iPod in 2003), so this is a dealbreaker for me. Other than that, I find it to be a fine player when I do want to listen to a few songs sometimes. I don’t bother with creating playlists in PocketTunes, so I can’t comment on how well this works. I will say that I haven’t had any problems with The Missing Sync software pulling a designated playlist from iTunes onto my Treo (when the syncs are working to begin with, that is).
As an iPod, the iPhone is absolutely fabulous. I have all the music I want (well, at least as much of the 7.24GB of memory I have available after syncing my calendar, contacts, and photos) in the playlists I already have set up, including my iTunes-purchased music, of course. The cover flow view is lovely, and the menu system is mostly intuitive to get around. I say mostly because I’m so used to a regular iPod’s Menu button to take me back to the previous screen that I sometimes get stuck for a moment before I realize I simply need to use one of the buttons at the bottom of the screen to get to a different section (like moving from Podcasts to Videos).
The iPhone’s sound quality is good to my non-audiophile ears, and the screen is a great improvement in viewing videos over the comparatively small screen of my video iPod. I like having the volume up and down buttons on the side that are easily accessible even while the iPhone is in my pocket or purse. And the functionality of the microphone button on the included headphones is really handy – it’s good to be able to easily and unobtrusively pause music to talk to someone briefly or simply hear what’s going on around me.
6. Photos/Camera
The Treo's camera is VGA resolution, and takes correspondingly unexceptional pictures and video. But I never expect to use my cell phone as my main camera, so the pictures it takes are fine in a pinch. And it's nice to be able to send those pictures or videos to others through MMS messages. I use this feature most when out with friends to send pictures/videos of what silliness we're up to to other friends or my husband. Call me mean, but I love rubbing in a fun day of snowboarding by sending a picture to my husband, who usually chooses to stay at home instead of coming to the mountains with us. ;)
The iPhone has a great camera - on paper, anyway. It has 2 megapixel resolution and you would think it would take fabulous pictures in most conditions. But it doesn't - it takes very good pictures in great light and if you are a being who can remain absolutely motionless while you're taking a picture. I am not always in places with great light, and I'm a bit of a fidgeter, so holding still is not my forte. As a result, most of the pictures I take with my iPhone come out not looking so good. But, they're still on par with the VGA pictures taken by my Treo, overall. And, if I do happen to take a great picture, it's one that I can actually import into iPhoto and be able to send to others without them wondering what the subject of that photo is.
Sending the pictures taken with my iPhone is another story, though. I can easily email a picture (on at a time - there's no way to select more than one photo at a time) to others. But the iPhone has no MMS capability. This is one missing feature that irritates me the most. How and why would Apple not include this feature? I know this topic has been discussed ad infinitum in most Mac and iPhone-related forums and tech blogs, so I won't do a long rant here too. But it does bug me. Apple: if anyone in your iPhone software group happens to stumble across my site and see this review, read my lips - ADD MMS, DAMMIT! This is a must in today's world where almost everyone carries a cell phone with them and sending multimedia messages is one of the most useful ways to share information with others on the fly.
7. Text Messaging
Text messaging on the Treo is nice. You see text messages in threaded conversations so you can see what you're responding to in the same view. It's not graphically pleasing, but it's very effective. I have fairly small fingers, and the Treo's keyboard is great for me using 2 hands. With only 1 hand, it's not so good, but I expect that with a QWERTY keyboard that's meant for 2 hands anyway.
Texting on the iPhone is threaded as well, and more visually pleasing than on the Treo. It looks just like iChat on the Mac, although you can't change any colors without hacking the iPhone (which I do not want to do at this point). The keyboard is much better to use than I expected - while I'm still not as fast on its virtual keyboard as on a physical keyboard like the Treo's, I'm still way faster than on a standard numeric keyboard like on my husband's Razr.
If you have SMS sounds turned on in the Settings menu, sending a text message on the iPhone comes with a "whoosh" sound. The latest firmware update allows you to select from 6 sounds to signify when you've received a message (I like the TriTone sound for this).
8. Miscellaneous features/applications
a. Battery life
On an average day, I will spend about 1 hour total on phone calls, 1 to 2 hours browsing the web (with a game or 2 thrown in there), and maybe 30-45 minutes managing my calendar and tasks and other miscellaneous items.
The battery life of my Treo is absolutely dismal, in my opinion. If I neglect to turn off Bluetooth when I get going in the morning, my battery level will typically be around 25% by the time I’m getting ready for bed around 9 or 10 pm at night. If I am careful turning Bluetooth on and off throughout the day only as needed, I can skip charging for 1 night, but absolutely must charge it on that second night. I say this is dismal relative to past experiences with my Blackberry (on which I never turned off Bluetooth in an effort to conserve battery power) that I could easily go 3 to 4 days without charging. Even the Sony Ericsson P990i had significantly better battery life with Bluetooth on all the time (though keeping wifi on put it on par with the Treo).
The battery life of my iPhone is much better than I expected it to be. I can skip a day without charging, even with keeping wifi and Bluetooth on. The longer I've had my iPhone, I find I do use it far more than I used my Treo, so comparative battery life has become harder to gauge over time. Because of the iPod functionality and the ability to see full web pages instead of the crappily-rendered ones in Blazer on the Treo, I use my iPhone almost non-stop during my commute on the train, and even at home when I just don't feel like grabbing my MacBook However, I’m not playing any games (something that I sorely miss) since there are none available, and I’m not able to manage any to-do items except through a make-shift list in the Notes application.
b. Clock
The Treo comes with the World Clock application. I find this to be one of the most useful applications on the Treo. In this application, you can set an alarm, calculate the time in one time zone relative to another, view sunset and sunrise times for a location, set the system time for your Treo, and view a neat graphic that shows daylight and nighttime on a small world map. I used World Clock every weekday to set my alarm to wake me up in the morning (we don’t have a regular alarm clock where we’re staying currently – don’t ask, it’s a long story). In fact, it’s so useful that I wish there was a dedicated World Clock button somewhere on my Treo. Yes, I could re-program one of the existing buttons (Phone, Calendar, or Mail) to open World clock, but those core applications are still slightly more important to me than World Clock.
My only wish for World Clock is the ability to set repeating alarms. For example, I usually want to wake up at the same time each day during the workweek, but I need to set the alarm in World Clock each night since there is no option to set a repeat alarm on certain days. I can do this through a 3rd party application called Butler (and I’m sure a number of other 3rd party applications out there for Palm devices), but it would be a nice feature to have out of the box.
The iPhone also has a Clock application, and I love it. I now use my iPhone as my alarm clock every day, and it has that functionality missing in the Palm's World Clock application - I can set my alarms to be recurring for specific days. So, I don't need to worry about setting my alarm every night before bed, and instead set up a recurring alarm for 5:30 every weekday morning.
The iPhone's Clock application goes beyond the Palm's by adding other useful features. The world clock view allows you to see the time in up to 4 time zones at once (you can add more, but need to scroll to see them). Also, there's a stopwatch and a Timer. The Timer is where you can set the iPod function to sleep after a specified period of time. This isn't the most intuitive location for the iPod sleep function, in my opinion, but it's no problem once you get used to it.
As you can see from the pictures, the look of the Clock application on the iPhone is exponentially cleaner and more attractive than the Palm's. The iPhone has most phones and PDA's I've used beat in terms of overall aesthetics. While this has no bearing on actual functionality, it *does* make it more enjoyable to use.
c. Ring profiles/modes
Believe it or not, there is one thing that I do love about my Treo, and that is the silent button (well, sliding button, to be exact). Instead of needing to go into a menu somewhere to turn off my ringer, all I need to do is slide that button and my Treo will be silent. Now the missing feature to accompany this is some visual indication on the screen that it’s on silent. Yes, I can always look at the top of the phone to see if the button is engaged, but I more frequently look at the screen to check for appointments, missed calls, text messages, etc. How hard would it have been to have a small symbol of a bell with a line through it at the top of the screen when the button is toggled?
The Treo really only has 1 profile, and the silent button to toggle it off. You can adjust the volume, ringtone, and vibration mode for this one profile. I’m used to having Outdoor, Meeting, Normal, and other profiles to select from on my cell phones. While the silent button is very useful, I would still like the flexibility to set profiles for my Treo for different circumstances.
I wrote the two previous paragraphs on the Treo before I got my iPhone, and I find it somewhat ironic that I’m still in pretty much the same situation. The iPhone has a toggle button to switch it to silent mode, a feature I loved about the Treo. And while there’s an icon of a bell with a line drawn through it that shows up briefly when you toggle this button (and it vibrates briefly if you have enabled vibration in Settings), there is no ongoing visual indicator on the screen that the iPhone is in silent mode. And the iPhone does not have sound profiles either, just like the Treo. I’ll call this one even Steven.
e. Reminders
Reminder alarms can be set on the Treo via the Tasks and Calendar applications. Reminders can be visual only, or include sound. I almost always set reminders for calendar items to prompt me to leave at the right time to get there and I almost always set them to play an alert sound as well.
The Treo also provides reminders for missed calls and new voicemails. And these cannot be turned off, as far as I can tell. I do want to know if I’ve missed a call and have a new voicemail, but I would like the option to turn the damn things off.
Reminders for the calendar work similarly on the iPhone. When you’ve missed a call, you see a small symbol of a white number (representing the number of calls missed) on a red background appear in the top left corner of the Phone application icon in the Home view. When you switch to the Phone application, you’ll see the same type of symbol over the Voicemail tab icon if any of those missed calls resulted in voicemails. And this same symbol also applies to the Mail and SMS applications to show you how many messages are new. I like how unobtrusive this is – much better than my Treo buzzing and blinking at me every few minutes until I acknowledge it.
I used the 3rd party Butler application on my Treo to turn on the LED indicator on the front of the phone when there was a missed call or message waiting for me. I admit that I miss knowing at a glance with the iPhone if I have a missed call or message. I have to press the sleep/wake button to turn the screen on for this - missed calls or text messages show up on the initial unlock screen, but I have to unlock it and get to the Home screen before I can see if I have any unread emails.
Summary
As I read back through this review, it is very clear that there are many things about the Treo that I don’t like. But I’ve tried to be objective, basing my views on my actual experiences with the device after more than 6 months of regular use. Also, I wrote the sections on the Treo before I even got an iPhone, trying to ensure that I wasn’t being biased against the Treo by a device that is made to work seamlessly with a Mac and one that has such spectacular specifications in comparison. Now that I’ve used the iPhone for over 2 months now, the iPhone has a good amount in common on paper with the Treo in terms of basic use and limitations, as I’ve noted in this comparison review. The areas where the Treo can’t compare are: music & video playback, seamless syncing with my Mac, internet browsing and wifi, and overall ease and pleasure of use.
If you are NOT a power Treo user like me, you will most likely love an iPhone but miss some functionality (Tasks and MMS for me, primarily). You will need to gauge how much you really need and/or use those functions to see if you could live with an iPhone. I live with it, and still enjoy my iPhone immensely. I have a great phone that's wonderful to use and gorgeous to boot, and I carry one less device (my video iPod) around with me.
If you are a power Treo user who uses many 3rd party applications and tethers the iPhone with your laptop for internet access, I can't recommend an iPhone for you at all if you are interested in having one do-it-all device. But if you might consider carrying a PDA (like a Tungsten TX) with you and can do without tethering, you won't be disappointed in the iPhone.
If your'e currently a non-power Treo 680 user wondering if you should jump ship to an iPhone, I hope this review helps you. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have if you want more detail than provided here - just use the Contact Me link at the bottom of this page...