vB Easy Archive - Smart Phone Recs: Treo 650/HP 6510/BB8700C

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Smart Phone Recs: Treo 650/HP 6510/BB8700C
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Posted by: bd24627

Through my office I have the choice of these three smartphones from Cingular:

Treo650
HP Ipaq 6510 or
Blackberry 8700 C.

I will be using it primarily for e-mail, contacts, calendar, but not as a phone.

Any recs?

Posted by: 2k1s

for email, 8700c, no questions asked. But once the service goes out, it is pretty much worthless. I had a 6515, which is the 6510 with a camera, and it eats batteries, so I'd get the treo 650.

Posted by: ceebz

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2k1s

for email, 8700c, no questions asked. But once the service goes out, it is pretty much worthless. I had a 6515, which is the 6510 with a camera, and it eats batteries, so I'd get the treo 650.

Why would the service go out?

Posted by: xcboi02

I think what he means, is Blackberry's push email service is one of its higher points, and that's what draws people to blackberry, but with recent court rulings against Blackberry, there's a good chance (if it hasn't been decided already --all due to patent infringement) that the service will be terminated ... thus taking away the advantage that blackberry's have had over its non blackberry/rim counterparts. Newer reports say that it will create software to overcome the patent stuff, anyways. you can search it, but it's fairly recent.

Posted by: ceebz

Quote:

Originally Posted by xcboi02

I think what he means, is Blackberry's push email service is one of its higher points, and that's what draws people to blackberry, but with recent court rulings against Blackberry, there's a good chance (if it hasn't been decided already --all due to patent infringement) that the service will be terminated ... thus taking away the advantage that blackberry's have had over its non blackberry/rim counterparts. Newer reports say that it will create software to overcome the patent stuff, anyways. you can search it, but it's fairly recent.

Anyone who's kept up with the NTP patent infringement case, knows that the injunction will not take place.

The US Patent Office has already ruled that 5 of the 6 patents in question are invalid.

Posted by: 2k1s

I haven't been reading up on it... but if thats the case, get the 8700c. If you can get use to the user interface, its alot better of a phone.

Posted by: Seltzer

Quote:

Originally Posted by bd24627

Through my office I have the choice of these three smartphones from Cingular:

Treo650
HP Ipaq 6510 or
Blackberry 8700 C.

I will be using it primarily for e-mail, contacts, calendar, but not as a phone.

Any recs?

E-mail, contacts, and calendar? The BB 8700c is an excellent choice. I've used all three of them, and the ease of use plus stability of the BB is the best out of the three.

Posted by: 2k1s

I've owned all three at one point. I just sold my 6515, like I said, out of all of my devices, my blackberry is by far the best for what you want to use it for. The 6515 is more of a nerd's wetdream, its loaded with features, but isn't very practical to carry around

Posted by: bd24627

I have an older, monochrome bb now, and love it, but wasn't sure if the features of the other devices trumped the new bb. One other thing--all of our faxes come in as PDFs, and I'd like to be able to view them on my Smartphone. Any thoughts about that feature.

Posted by: jg70124

This is about the Blackberry vs. the Treo. I'm a long time Treo user, but I recently trialed a Cingular Blackberry 8700c for several weeks.

1) The Blackberry's PIM functions (contacts, calendar, tasks, memos) are much more limited than the Treo's. For instance:
- with the blackberry, you can't assign categories to calendar appointments
- tasks can be shown on the calendar only on the day they are due (even if they are not complete)
- there's no way to select a contact's mobile phone number without first viewing the contact (and thus jumping out of the phone app).

2) The Blackberry also has an odd way of handling time zones - it's always on GMT with an offset. If you travel to a new time zone, you must manually change the time zone in the blackberry, which will cause all your appointments to have the wrong time; if you don't change the time zone, then your emails will have the wrong time stamp. Obviously, there are plenty of work-arounds, but on the Treo, all of this is automatic.

3) Also, the Blackberry's email is only better if you're on a corporate server (what RIM calls the "Blackberry Enterprise Server" or BES), which your company would have to set up. Without that, emails deleted on the Blackberry still show up in your Outlook inbox, and emails that you read on your Blackberry show up in Outlook as unread. If you get more that 10-15 emails a day, this becomes a huge problem. On the Treo, you can use the great 3rd party app Chatter with an IMAP account, and your email will always be in sync.

4) The Treo has a much better selection of 3rd party apps available. Want a weather browser? Treo has many to choose from, Blackberry might have 1 or 2. Want a restaurant locator? Vindigo is available for Palm, not BB. Want to track flights? On the BB, there's only one app available, and it's $70/year. On the Treo, there are many free alternatives.

On the other hand,
5) the Blackberry is much more stable than the Treo, which for many people has been prone to crashing and resets. (Mine resets about once or twice a week).

6) The Blackberry is easier to use as a phone than the Treo.

7) - and this is the big one - With the blackberry, you can get a flat-rate international email plan for about $25/month extra. With the Treo, you must pay by the KB for international data usage. If an email with no attachments is about 25kb, and you get 25 a day, that's about $10/day just for email.