Palm’s Treo 500v isn’t as bad as all that…
UPDATE: Ben Combee just schooled me in the comments. That is a 5-way directional pad around that big center button. It still doesn’t look nearly as comfy and accurate to use as the nice big one on their current lineup, but maybe it is, if it ever makes it to these shores I’ll check it out. Also check out his blog to learn the exciting details of Facepalm!
You know, Palm just launched the Treo 500v and for some reason I don’t hate it. What I said before about the 500v holds. Aesthetically, I think it’s not great - not horrible, but really an improvement over their current form factor only by being 25% thinner (it’s effectively the same width and height as a 680 differing by a millimeter or so in each direction). I don’t like the asymetric curve on the bottom half vs the top, the black border between the bottom of the screen and the silver button bar in the middle, and generally the whole thing is just average.
The lack of touch screen is dumb and the lack of the 5-way directional pad is dumber. But where Palm taketh, it also giveth - so 3G is nice, 2MP camera is good in theory (if they can actually make it take better pictures than the horrendous, horrendous excuse for a camera currently in their lineup) and the new Bluetooth 2 hopefully will work well. It seems pretty cheap - free in the UK, which could help palm out. Shrug, I don’t know why, but I don’t hate it for some reason (as I was expecting to). Saw this link about some custom work that Palm did to the home screen on WM6 for the device, putting waiting things like new texts or emails immediately in front of you, which seems like a very good addition to the OS. Although the video does highlight just how terrible the white version looks.
I don’t know, maybe my expectations for Palm are so low that even a mediocre release seems ok all of a sudden.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
The ring in the center is a five-way direction pad — the middle presses in as a button. It’s similar to what was on the LifeDrive.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Huh, I never handled a life drive. Does it work as well as the nice big d-pad on the 650/680/etc? That was at the top of the list of hardware favourites on my 650 because it was so dead easy to grip and unambiguously push in any direction. This one seems like it might be harder to use.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:36 am
The ring is slightly raised, and it’s pretty easy to press any of the four directions by rolling your thumb. The center button is easy to press, although I don’t think it’s raised.
September 28th, 2007 at 10:13 am
[...] were chatting about this, is that with Palm’s most recent two releases (the other being the Treo 500v), it could be that Palm is racing to the bottom. Putting out cheaper, low end phones is a dead end [...]