Fluence
12-08-2007, 12:54 AM
I had a Treo for a little while and switched to a Touch, so here's my comparison of the two phones.
The web browser on the Treo is of very poor quality, and does not load the majority of even slightly technical pages at all, or if it loads, then too poorly to view. This was one of several reasons I switched from the 755p. Another was the bluetooth, and another was the battery, but neither of these is substantially better on the Touch.
As a phone and text messager, the Treo wins (by a large margin) for ease of use, but not for sound quality or features. Specifically, the Treo's phone is much, much easier to use, as in to dial a number, redial, access contacts and dial from contacts, etc., and the text messaging program is far superior. It is much faster to load, also sends messages more quickly, and stores and displays old messages in a much more intuitive interface. One huge part of this is that the Treo has a button on the phone to access SMS, whereas with the Touch you have to go through a menu unless you map one of your precious 3 configurable button options to SMS.
Bluetooth is worse on the Treo, and only 1.1, so you can't use voice dial and some other features. Sound quality on the Touch is slightly better both through the handset and bluetooth, but not overly so. Both the Touch and Treo are far worse sound-wise than more traditional phones. I came from an a900, which was extremely clear and could be set loud enough to easily hear the other end; neither the Treo nor Touch have adequate volume control, making it difficult to hear some people, depending on their connection and phone, and your environment. Ie: It's hard to hear a phone call in a crowd with either phone. This goes for ringtones as well, though the Touch can play ringtones much louder than the Treo natively. I did find a program to get around this issue on the Treo.
Overall, there are more freeware applications for the Treo, but both phones have pretty good 3rd party support. Depends what you need in this area. I've found an alarm and some other good programs. The native alarms on both phones are awful, I liked the freeware program I found for the Treo (TreoAlarm) better than the best I've found for the Touch so far (Pocket Wakeup).
Battery life seems slightly better on the Touch. I listen to music on it (and it has exceptional quality sound through the headset--USB headset ONLY, by the way, there's no 2.55 or 3.5 or whatever jack), and I can play music for a full hour and drain only 30% of the battery. My Treo kept running out battery by the end of the day, with mostly just sleep mode, a few text messages, and leaving bluetooth on.
What do I like more about the Touch now that I have it? The web browser, by far. The screen size, as well as how nice the screen and OS looks. The Touch has vivid, vibrant colors, compared to the Treo's early '90s look and feel. Also voice dial from bluetooth and music sound quality.
I dislike some things about the Touch, though. The keypad really is a burden, don't believe anyone if they say it's as good as the 755p. The Touch keyboard is adequate and does work well most of the time, but is still much worse than the Treo's. I've also encountered some annoying bugs or issues with the keypad, such as that it won't let me use its XT9 mode with the Opera browser (which would otherwise be much better than PocketIE).
The speed of switching apps is also much worse on the Touch. This only bothers me with regard to the phone, which takes about 5 seconds to load, whereas on the Treo it took 1 second to switch to phone mode. Dialing is also slower with the Touch, as each keypress takes a few seconds to register, and this right here is my personal biggest complaint about the Touch.
Finally, the text messaging program, aside from the keyboard, is much worse on the Touch. With the Treo, minus all the typing, I could easily send a message in less than 5 seconds. With the Touch, it takes at least 15 seconds, as it's about 5 to switch to the SMS app or to contacts, another 5 to load the contact and select Send Text or type in their number, and another 5 to send the message. The Treo lists contacts as you message them and stores the text history for each, the Touch (and WM6 in general) stores it like an Outlook Inbox, which is cumbersome.
As for build quality, the Touch is smaller and sleeker, the Treo looks very nice as well, and both phones feel very sturdy and well-built. The Touch is much smaller, actually, and much lighter. Part of this is traded off in available buttons on the phone, but the Treo only has 3 more options, and so this isn't a big deal. You can map three functions on the Touch to your choice of program, for example, my camera button brings up the Today screen (the main screen) instead of the camera, and this works well for me.
One final important point is that some of the applications on the Touch have crashed, and I mean the text messaging, windows media player, the e-mail program, and keypad. I estimate about 6 such annoyances have occurred since I got my phone a week ago. The Treo crashed only with some 3rd party applications, and I had it about a month. So... it's ugly, but a much more stable OS.
And one final unimporant point to most of you, Palm desktop does not work with a 64-bit OS like Vista-64. Supposedly it can be synched via Bluetooth, but I never tried. It's been going on a lot of months without a fix, so don't expect it any time soon. Specifically, the driver for the phone just will not load in Vista-64. I've had no problem synching my Touch to Vista-64.
A quick tip, if you get the Touch: you can see what programs are running and end them with the little drop down icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen (it has three bars and a down arrow).
To sum up...
Main advantage of the Touch: usable, very good web browser for a phone, beautiful screen and OS.
Main advantage of the Treo: much easier to use as a phone and for sending text messages (SMS).
These are the main points for me, ask if you want more info and if I see it I'll respond. I definitely prefer the Touch to the Treo, but I really wish the phone application were better. Everything else is either manageable or better on the Touch.
The web browser on the Treo is of very poor quality, and does not load the majority of even slightly technical pages at all, or if it loads, then too poorly to view. This was one of several reasons I switched from the 755p. Another was the bluetooth, and another was the battery, but neither of these is substantially better on the Touch.
As a phone and text messager, the Treo wins (by a large margin) for ease of use, but not for sound quality or features. Specifically, the Treo's phone is much, much easier to use, as in to dial a number, redial, access contacts and dial from contacts, etc., and the text messaging program is far superior. It is much faster to load, also sends messages more quickly, and stores and displays old messages in a much more intuitive interface. One huge part of this is that the Treo has a button on the phone to access SMS, whereas with the Touch you have to go through a menu unless you map one of your precious 3 configurable button options to SMS.
Bluetooth is worse on the Treo, and only 1.1, so you can't use voice dial and some other features. Sound quality on the Touch is slightly better both through the handset and bluetooth, but not overly so. Both the Touch and Treo are far worse sound-wise than more traditional phones. I came from an a900, which was extremely clear and could be set loud enough to easily hear the other end; neither the Treo nor Touch have adequate volume control, making it difficult to hear some people, depending on their connection and phone, and your environment. Ie: It's hard to hear a phone call in a crowd with either phone. This goes for ringtones as well, though the Touch can play ringtones much louder than the Treo natively. I did find a program to get around this issue on the Treo.
Overall, there are more freeware applications for the Treo, but both phones have pretty good 3rd party support. Depends what you need in this area. I've found an alarm and some other good programs. The native alarms on both phones are awful, I liked the freeware program I found for the Treo (TreoAlarm) better than the best I've found for the Touch so far (Pocket Wakeup).
Battery life seems slightly better on the Touch. I listen to music on it (and it has exceptional quality sound through the headset--USB headset ONLY, by the way, there's no 2.55 or 3.5 or whatever jack), and I can play music for a full hour and drain only 30% of the battery. My Treo kept running out battery by the end of the day, with mostly just sleep mode, a few text messages, and leaving bluetooth on.
What do I like more about the Touch now that I have it? The web browser, by far. The screen size, as well as how nice the screen and OS looks. The Touch has vivid, vibrant colors, compared to the Treo's early '90s look and feel. Also voice dial from bluetooth and music sound quality.
I dislike some things about the Touch, though. The keypad really is a burden, don't believe anyone if they say it's as good as the 755p. The Touch keyboard is adequate and does work well most of the time, but is still much worse than the Treo's. I've also encountered some annoying bugs or issues with the keypad, such as that it won't let me use its XT9 mode with the Opera browser (which would otherwise be much better than PocketIE).
The speed of switching apps is also much worse on the Touch. This only bothers me with regard to the phone, which takes about 5 seconds to load, whereas on the Treo it took 1 second to switch to phone mode. Dialing is also slower with the Touch, as each keypress takes a few seconds to register, and this right here is my personal biggest complaint about the Touch.
Finally, the text messaging program, aside from the keyboard, is much worse on the Touch. With the Treo, minus all the typing, I could easily send a message in less than 5 seconds. With the Touch, it takes at least 15 seconds, as it's about 5 to switch to the SMS app or to contacts, another 5 to load the contact and select Send Text or type in their number, and another 5 to send the message. The Treo lists contacts as you message them and stores the text history for each, the Touch (and WM6 in general) stores it like an Outlook Inbox, which is cumbersome.
As for build quality, the Touch is smaller and sleeker, the Treo looks very nice as well, and both phones feel very sturdy and well-built. The Touch is much smaller, actually, and much lighter. Part of this is traded off in available buttons on the phone, but the Treo only has 3 more options, and so this isn't a big deal. You can map three functions on the Touch to your choice of program, for example, my camera button brings up the Today screen (the main screen) instead of the camera, and this works well for me.
One final important point is that some of the applications on the Touch have crashed, and I mean the text messaging, windows media player, the e-mail program, and keypad. I estimate about 6 such annoyances have occurred since I got my phone a week ago. The Treo crashed only with some 3rd party applications, and I had it about a month. So... it's ugly, but a much more stable OS.
And one final unimporant point to most of you, Palm desktop does not work with a 64-bit OS like Vista-64. Supposedly it can be synched via Bluetooth, but I never tried. It's been going on a lot of months without a fix, so don't expect it any time soon. Specifically, the driver for the phone just will not load in Vista-64. I've had no problem synching my Touch to Vista-64.
A quick tip, if you get the Touch: you can see what programs are running and end them with the little drop down icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen (it has three bars and a down arrow).
To sum up...
Main advantage of the Touch: usable, very good web browser for a phone, beautiful screen and OS.
Main advantage of the Treo: much easier to use as a phone and for sending text messages (SMS).
These are the main points for me, ask if you want more info and if I see it I'll respond. I definitely prefer the Touch to the Treo, but I really wish the phone application were better. Everything else is either manageable or better on the Touch.