iPhone Review Part 2: Treo Vs iPhone

Full disclosure to start off with. We here at iPod Tips are long long long time Palm users. We started off with the Palm Professional 5000 and have had one ever since. We loved our Vx, TX, Treo 650, 680 and 755. We brought it with us everywhere and would never went a day without it for over 11 years.

For us now, though, the Palm is dead.

We will break down our comparison into four basic areas and decide on a winner in each area.

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)

The Palm brought the PDA to life and has kept it alive every since. Sure it has moved from PDA to Smartphone but the core functionality of Calendar, Address Book, Notes and Tasks has always been there. On the Treo 680 all of these things worked well and would sync back up to our Mac using Missing Sync. Calendar supported multiple calendars. Address Book had photos and lots of fields. Notes and Tasks were basic, but worked on our 680.

The iPhone doesn't compete very well in the PDA arena. While it does have a nice calendar, it has no year or today view. While it does have a great address book it is missing quick search and categories. The iPhone really falls on it's pretty little face when it comes to notes and tasks. While the notes application can support multiple notes that can be emailed and nice effects, it doesn't sync to the computer and doesn't support categories. Tasks are completely missing from the iPhone. None. Zero. To do nothing.

The iPhone just doesn't stand up well as a PDA and to be fair that was never something Apple or Steve Jobs said it would do. Still, we hope Apple is working on these few points.

Applications

This comes down to installed applications vs third party. Since Palm has tens of thousands of third party applications that is an easy win for the Treo 680. The iPhone competes but having really wonderful applications that work on a whole new level. Where the Treo has Blazer as a web browser (if it can be called that) the iPhone has Safari which is awesome. Where Palm has a photo and video viewer, the iPhone has Photos and the iPod. No match at all. Both have Google Maps but the iPhone version integrates with your address book with so much ease it wins. The iPhone and Treo both have email applications as well, but the Treo doesn't sync your settings, provide rich text or

Sure we miss a few third party applications but those will come and while we wait the other installed iPhone applications just give us too much to be happy about.

Phone

With all the other hype around the iPhone it is hard not to forget that it is an actual phone. The Treo is also a phone which can make calls from the address book and send text messages but it always felt like some application they threw not really well thought out. The iPhone points to a new direction in smart phone by intergrating