GSM Users Rejoice-Treo 750 Released!

“unfortunate souls stuck on cingular/tmobile”?
Phhbbbtt. Dude, I love my t-mobile, and their signiture MDA kicks the proverbial pants off of any Treo in both reviews, user testimonials, and in size/looks.
And as far as the internal antannae goes… Another advantage of GSM is that they work better with a large surface based antannae (that fits inside) as opposed to CDMA which works best with an unsightly stub that sticks out. That’s just the physics of radio waves, and its why GSM phones always look nicer.
The only GSM phones that have a stub antannae (ala older TREOs) were there because they had the plastic moldings already designed for the CDMA version and it wasn’t worth re-designing the phone.

And one more thing… Sprint’s Sero plans are great, but where I live you have to practically plug your phone into the tower to get a signal with them! And their high speed data is only in larger markets. If you live out in the boonies, you revert to 1x, which is around 100k- T-mobile and Cingular’s EDGE gets me 200+k, and its active everwhere that they have a signal.

But enough of my ranting. I’m not blaming you for having sprint, its a good plan you have. I just could never go back to CDMA phones, so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not excited that they’re porting another dull one to GSM.

PS. I’m an avid HowardForums poster, in case you couldn’t tell!

Phhbbbtt. Dude, I love my t-mobile, and their signiture MDA kicks the proverbial pants off of any Treo in both reviews, user testimonials, and in size/looks.
Size and looks are subjective, i think the mda keyboard design is stupid. And Which reviews?
According to cnet the mda got a 6.7, the treo 700p got a 7.7
Mda:
The bottom line: Hobbled by a poorly designed QWERTY keypad and sometimes sluggish performance, the Wi-Fi and EDGE-enabled T-Mobile MDA makes for an enticing but ultimately mediocre addition to T-Mobile’s smart-phone lineup.
http://reviews.cnet.com/T_Mobile_MDA/4505-6452_7-31678156.html
700p:
The bottom line: With EV-DO support, increased memory, and enhanced multimedia capabilities, the Palm Treo 700p makes a powerful smart phone even better. Sure, it’s not perfect, but the solid performance and new features make it worth the upgrade.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Palm_Treo_700p_Sprint/4505-6452_7-31878928.html

Another advantage of GSM is that they work better with a large surface based antannae (that fits inside) as opposed to CDMA which works best with an unsightly stub that sticks out. That’s just the physics of radio waves, and its why GSM phones always look nicer.
Again, “gsm phones always look nicer” is subjective. I have yet to see the GSM phone that competes with a samsung a900/blade, and that phone has an internal antenna, and it has a top notch RF signal, so your cdma antenna theory is wrong.

And one more thing… Sprint’s Sero plans are great, but where I live you have to practically plug your phone into the tower to get a signal with them!

Another ridiculous statement, i can tell you that in fact in the LA yeshiva tmobile was the only company that didnt have a signal…sucked for those guys, however this is just one place, every city will have different results…
Also sprint has been adding many towers, and besides with SERO you have free verizon roaming, and with a phone like the blade you can even force it to use verizon.

And their high speed data is only in larger markets. If you live out in the boonies, you revert to 1x, which is around 100k- T-mobile and Cingular’s EDGE gets me 200+k, and its active everwhere that they have a signal.
Ive been to plenty of boonies where i had perfect evdo. Besides for that my 1x as a modem registered in at 150kbps, the first hit on google for mda edge speed brings up a thread where people say speeds from 30-140kbps are typical, but a ppc6700 user reports evdo speeds for 600-1500kbps!
http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/cinglar-8125-i-mate-k-jam-qtek-9100-t-mobile-mda/70221-edge-speed.html
I’m playing with a friend’s MDA as we speak, and going from edge to evdo is like dial up to dsl…and i dont pay a cent for using the evdo as a modem!
1 more thing, and youre more than welcome to argue with this, but imho windoze just doesnt belong on a phone!

Mordy, I may have a been a little blunt about defending sprint (Rabbi Chaikin does call me the “Sprint’er Rebbe after all) but I look forward to your response!

LOL,
I’ve started a fight, nice!

Its ok, I get the same way with T-mobile, although I’ll admit that as far as GSM coverage goes, they have a lot to go to catch up with the likes of Cingular/ATT. I’m with them mostly because I love GSM, they’re cheaper than Cingular, and gosh darn it they’re nice to me when I take advantage of them! When’s the last time Sprint called you to warn you that you’re getting close to your minute limit? How about they offer you an extra 50 minutes free because they want to make sure you stay a happy customer and not get billed overages? The big pink T does that kind of stuff.

Back to our comparison:
I hate CDMA because of the lack of device portability. Ok, obviously its a phone, its portable… but I’m talking about SIM cards. I own a few phones that I switch around to depending upon my situation. Normally I’ll carry my windows mobile phone. If I’m wearing a suit and want something slim that won’t show, I’ll pop my sim card into a tiny nokia that I have. If I’m going hiking or boating, I’ll put my sim into this other cheapo phone I have to use as a “knock around” phone. Then, when I get back to my car, pop the sim back in and voila… back to normal.
Also, because GSM is a world-wide standard, I have the ability to buy phones from other vendors (my last phone was a cingular exclusive that I unlocked), or even other countries! (currently using a european I-mate phone)
This means that there is much more competition, which brings out the newest stuff faster and cheaper. CDMA phones have a narrower worldwide market, and you have to buy handsets made for your service most of the time which makes for monopolistic pricing. They also tend to get features (like bluetooth) last.

As far the antenae thing goes… I’m no electrical engineer, although I have a few in the family. I noticed back when I had Verizon years ago(good riddance!) that the latest ATT phones were much smaller and seemed to be missing any protrusion at all. When I inquired about why that is, suddenly there were lectures, pictures on the back of napkins, I was given diagrams of radio waves and elecrical components… basically, I was sorry that I asked (never ask my family a technical question- hehe), but somehow they explained that the way the antannae is shaped effects the effeciency of different frequencies. While I don’t claim to understand why that is, it appears that GSM works best with a flat square-shape, CDMA with a long stub.
Yes, looks are subjective, but I don’t think anyone would argue that they rather their phone HAD a stub!
The a900 is something of a “tzaruch Iyun”… they must have figured out some nifty trick. Maybe hding it in the bulk! (sorry, that was a
cheap shot…)

I will agree that the MDA’s keyboard is not the best… in fact, I don’t even like the MDA. I just brought it up because I dislike the TREO’s even more. And don’t even get me started on the brick that is the PPC6700… By the way, both of those phones are made by the same company, HTC. The PPC6700 is the HTC Apache, and the MDA is the HTC Wizard. The Wizard actually came after the Apache, and was supposed to fix some things about it.
Personally, I’m a smartphone kind of guy.
Coming from a long line of Pocket PC’s, I eventually realized that the one thing I didn’t like about PDA’s is that touch screens need too much attention to be used casually, and are too delicate. Americans are kinda superficial though, and we’ll buy equipment just because it has a snazzy feature like touchscreen or RAZeR thin design (and then mispell it on purpose, cuz that’s cool!), so while popular in europe, MS Smartphones haven’t really been so popular here. We generally get bought into show-off fads like touch-screens and RAZR phones, while our friends over the pond get superior cell technology and laugh at us. That’s a whole other story though, and if you’re interested I’ll go into it with you later.
HTC’s lineup of smartphones are all really nice, and they look like real phones instead of large brick-built devices that sport full keyboards. So, I currently have an imate SP5m, if you’re interested. And if you think that using t9 to type out a message is rediculous, I’ll have you know that I’ve posted in message boards and even left comments for this blog on it before.

Reception… why are you comparing LA to northern NY? All I said was that out here sprint has very poor signal. My reception was perfect when I was in LA, but to each their own I suppose.
Sprint roams on Verizon like T-mobile roams on Cingular… they naver have a roaming agreement in the places you need it!

And finally, as far as “windoze” goes… that’s the oldest complaint in the book. Please, all the posers in the IT world are so quick to bash M$. I’m no PC-loyalist, I’m a fan of unix and MAC, amd I’ll admit the stability of desktop windows is not something I’d want to rely on with my phone, but Windows CE is a completely different beast, and those that work with it on a regular basis know that. I wrote an article about this that was published back when I was in college. I think it may be online somewhere, so if I can find it posted, I’ll link it here.

Anyway, I gotta get back to work, but if you want to announce something REALLY cool, talk about the latest HTC smartphone to hit our shores… the HTC StrTrk (they got lazy with names) which comes in the form of the Cingular 3125. Now THAT’s hot… all the goodness of windows mobile in the shape of a RAZR.

Oh, one more thing:
Windows Mobile + WiFi rocks for using skype on my handset… I even have a WinMobile Soft-phone that connects to my home’s VOIP service with broadvoice, so I can take my house phone with me when I travel.
Lets see you do THAT on your treo!!

mordy well sorry but on my treo I can do the same and on a cingular 8125 or a nokia 6010 that I know of and that’s some of what I have from dan jr

mordy well sorry but on my treo I can do the same and on a cingular 8125 or a nokia 6010 that I know of and that’s some of what I have from dan jr
Huh?
I’m not entirely sure what you’re trying to say. Are you trying to say you’ve made VOIP calls on your treo? I doubt that because Palm OS has limitations on the hardware layer that makes coding a proper voip application nearly impossible. However, Windows Mobile has very familiar win32 libraries that make porting real desktop applications over to pocket pc fairly easy. Because of this, developers have already written programs like skype or SJphone that allow you to make free calls wherever you have internet service. Imagine taking your phone to Israel, finding a WiFi spot, and suddenly your home phone service with Vonage is running on your cell phone! This is something that Palm OS doesn’t allow, and therefore the TREO can’t do.
The Cingular 8125 is the same thing as the MDA… its an HTC Wizard with a different shell that says Cingular. Its VOIP ready.
The Nokia 6010… whoa dude, this is why I’m lost on your point. This is an entry level (cheapo) series 40 phone that barely even runs Java applets on a 95pixel screen, and class 4 GPRS that yeilds about 35k a sec. There’s no way in gehennom this phone can do VoIP. (this is actually what I use for my bang-around phone, cuz its $10-20 to replace it if I smash it up).

what is the cheapest price for the treo 700 for a existing sprint custemer

I simply dont have the time these days to go respond to all of your aguments(as much as i would like to!) but a couple quick things.

The option to force vzw roaming for sprint customers is not like forcing cingular for tmobile customers at all. afaik cingular rejects tmobile customers trying to register on them in most parts of the country. I have yet to be rejected from forcing my sprint phone onto verizon.

It would be nice to swap my number with a sim, but on the other hand its nice to have sprint actually return a stolen phone to me(on gsm that could never happen) and the security to be able to lock down my phone ota. Also its just a 30 second call to do a sprint phone swap if you know what youre doing.

There are treo’s(like this 750v) that run windows, so they would be able to voip.

One more thing, i was not trying to bash windows, all i am saying is that i’ve tried windows and palm os phones, and imo the palm integration with the phone feels very natural, while the windows just doesnt.