connecting*the*dots

Yes, that’s about as obvious of a statement as George Bush declaring that John Kerry wants to raise taxes. Of course good product design is good. But you never truly know how good you have it, until you’ve experienced the bad.

The Treo 300 was terrbile.
The Treo 600 is good… really good.

I’m probably 6 months behind the curve on reviewing this piece of work, but hey, I’m a busy guy, remember? Here’s the tape-measure comparison:

Round 1: Casing
Treo 300: A big, plastic, flip-top toy. I was afraid that if I dropped it, I would have a thousand pieces of mula resting at my feet. The lid broke on me twice, and without insurance, you have to buy a replacement. Apparently, Handspring can’t fix lids. Bogus excuse for poor product design/engineering.

Treo 600: A little weighty, but sturdy, smaller, and sans-lid. When resting it in your hand, the shell feels as though it’s a part of the technology itself. Seemless design.

Round 2: Speaker/Input
Treo 300: The speaker phone was pretty weak. Actually, I think the volume of the speaker phone option was just as loud as when I held the phone 3 feet away from my head on the default setting. And that leads right into the big problem; every word spoken by the other party could be heard by anyone standing near me when I had the 300 *pressed against my ear*. The speaker was located at the top of the lid and reverberated big time against the cheap plastic. On more than one occasion, a person told me that they could accurately document my conversations from 5ft away. My international man of mystery lifestyle can’t afford such invasions of privacy.

Treo 600: Tre chic. No lid and the top of the device has a slightly raised speaker mound that is positioned to fit within the ear itself. The sound leakage is curbed dramatically and I can now breathe easy when communicating "incommunicado." And for when I’m kicking back in my palatial 697 sq. foot apartment? You guessed it–a speaker phone that has the power of a real speaker. What will they think of next?

Round 3: Keypad
Treo 300: The keypad was qwerty styled and large enough to keep your thumbs accurate while inputing characters. Unfortunately, the keypad made the phone extra-wide and unmanageable in size and the layout of the extraneous buttons/characters are a bit strange.

Treo 600: Qwerty is still the style, but the arrangement of all the input is much more streamlined. The keyboard is smaller, which would make you think that using the keypad for SMS would more difficult, but PalmOne really worked hard on the ergonomics to make the down-shift in size. Each button comes to a very slight rounded tip, which enables for increased accuracy on a smaller keypad. The only problem I am having is when I attempt to access an IVR system and enter account numbers or the such. The volume on input is so low that unless you have reflection of input on the screen, you’re somewhat guessing if your input was right on.

There’s more I could get into, but I’ve already painted myself a bit too geeky. If you’re heading into the G3 phone realm, take a long look at the Treo 600.