Palm Treo 700p Smartphone (Verizon Wireless)

Before you purchase this phone please do your research. If you rely on text messaging...especially to other Verizon "in network" people...DO NOT GET THIS PHONE. TRUST ME.Verizon and Palm both play stupid with the fact that the OS has serious issues with the receipt of text message function between Verizon phones within the Verizon network. As a former IBM IT engineer I can tell you that support on this issue is reprehensible. I doubt very much that they are not aware of the issue since our company has 25 of these phone and after numerous soft resets, hard resets, and phone exchanges...all remains the same. Freezing lasts between 20 seconds to 5 or more minutes. By the way, after half a dozen communications I'm still waiting for a call back from Verizon network support since November. UNACCEPTABLE! It still amazes me that these companies repeat to release phones with such blatant issues.That being said, the phone is otherwise a great phone. An improvement over the 650 at minimum. Many improvements and less technical issues SANS the text freezing debacle and an occasional reboot depending on which third party software you have installed. The EVDO network is fast and this phone works as a great modem for your laptop. All other Palm functionality remains the same.If you do not rely on text messaging or your friends are outside the Verizon network, and you do not rely much on third party software...this phone is the way to go.

Crashes Bluetooth nearly daily. Reboots itself. Looses connection to my headset all the time; never separate the two or you'll cause it to crash. Web browsing is a study in aggravation and learning patience; I've given up on that feature. Nice to have my Address Book and Calendar hotsynced with my PC and be able to dial from it. Nice to not to have to carry a PDA and a phone. Can't wait until these things start working reliably in 10 years or so. No better option that I know of and most people will pretend that it works acceptably, so this will be about as good as it gets. Wish it was better, but it will have to do. I'm sure this will be lost in a sea of glowing paid reviews.

First off, this gets 5 stars because it's so much better than other phones out there. That said, it has problems. This review is for people trying to evaluate between the 650 and upgrading to 700p.I agree with most of the reviews... the phone *IS* more stable than my 650 (that I used for 2 years). The 650 and 700p are clearly the best phones out there for my uses (email, calendar, phone, documents, GPS navigation, etc.). I love it, but the freezing/hanging issues can really be frustrating. I've hung up on people accidentally and the txt messaging and email can be really annoying with these 10-second hangs. EVEN BEJEWELED has slight hangs when I'm playing. Argh!If you're trying to evaluate this between the 650, it may be a toss-up. Big time plus with this is that it crashes less often, but freezes more. The EVDO is definintely fast and helpful. The camera is better, but not great. The increased internal memory is a big plus, but with PowerRun and other apps it's not absolutely necessary.Probably the best reason to upgrade:-EV-DO and PdaNet so I can browse the internet from whereever with my laptop. It's really pretty good.- My Verizon coverage is SO MUCH better than my Cingular service (former AT+T Wireless)- speaker is definitely louder and I can actually HEAR the caller in a crowded room w/o VolumeCare.- Crashes less, but freezes/hangs often- Updated calendar and contacts wirelessly instead of hotsync.Other employees here have looked at it and can't find a great reason to switch. I can't really offer them one over the 650 unless their phone coverage was as bad as mine.

I had a Treo 600 from Sprint for two years before buying my 700p. I had problems with the 600, but having bought it as essentially a "version 1.0" product, I fully expected those problems to be fixed with the 700p. Boy was I disappointed.My first impression of the 700p was that is was SLOW. I mean, they upgraded the processor, right? If you've used the 600 or 650, you will find that, other than the new EvDO chipset (for faster web surfing), there is very little actual functional difference - nothing that would indicate a more taxing software environment for the processor. There are maybe a couple of new apps, and some minor enhancements to older apps, but that's about it. So, maybe 10% more functionality, along with a completely new generation of processor, and it's about 50% SLOWER than my old 600. Amazing. This is most noticeable while switching apps, which used to be instantaneous on my 600. On the 700p, it can take 10 seconds or more to switch between apps, and about the same time to turn on or off the phone. As someone who is used to devices responding quickly to my inputs, I am completely frustrated when I have to sit and wait for my phone to decide to finish whatever train of thought it was on and open my app for me (or switch to the phone so I can dial). It's almost as though the user is considered secondary to whatever the phone wants to do.Another thing I've noticed is that anytime you go out of signal range (say, in a tunnel, elevator, or parking garage), the phone diverts all its processing power to "searching" for the signal. This is indicated by the light under the antenna turning solid red for about 30 seconds or more, during which time you simply can't do anything. The phone is effectively frozen until it either finds a signal or gives up trying. And if you get on a plane and forget to disconnect the phone from the network, it will bleed your battery dry by the time you reach your destination. You will see these long pauses about every two minutes or so. Of course, on a plane you can just "turn off" the phone portion of the device, but it's not worth the hassle (and > 1 minute of time it takes to do so) to do this when, say, going into the subway for 10 minutes.The next issue I had was the lockup problem so many other users have complained about. I have managed to figure out exactly when this happens. If I send an SMS message to another Verizon user, after about 10 seconds it will get a return receipt, showing that the message was delivered. Visually, this is indicated by placing a little green checkmark just to the right of my (sender's) name. The moment this checkmark shows up, my phone locks up for anywhere from 1-10 minutes. I can break out of this by performing a soft reset, but this requires me to open the battery compartment and use my stylus to depress the tiny hidden button. Try doing this while walking down the street, without dropping anything. Unacceptable! This issue has been talked about for months across a number of blogs and message boards, and still Verizon and Palm deny any knowledge of it.This brings me to my next issue: support, or the lack thereof. It took me three months to become completely fed up with my phone. Of course, by then, Verizon refused to allow me to switch to another brand, unless I wanted to pay full price for it (having passed the 14-day window). After several calls, hard resets, etc., they did replace the phone for me. I mistakenly thought that the issues might have been fixed by an update, since I bought my phone the day it was released. Not so! The new phone behaves exactly the same as the old. I have talked to people who have gone through as many as five phones, all with the same problems. Verizon simply disavows any knowledge of the issues, and continues to replace the phone with another faulty phone. They have tried to imply that it was an issue of software I have installed on the phone. First of all, I haven't installed any software other than what came with the product. Second, with all the other users complaining, it's probably safe to say that the issue lies with the only common piece of software that everyone has loaded - the Palm OS! (I will say this: Verizon support is a lot better than, say, Cingular, so I can only imagine the experience those users must be having. [shudder] Still, most Verizon techs don't seem to have any smartphone experience at all, even though they try hard.)This is not simply a case of a bad batch of phones. This is a serious design issue. I am a 15-year veteran software engineer, and I have rarely come across a more pathetic software release than that contained in 700p. It's almost as if they did no testing whatsoever. Worse, Palm won't support users directly (unless they bought the phone straight from Palm), and Verizon disavows any knowledge of issues. ("Fine product! No complaints from our users!" - Bah!) Imagine this happening with a different product line - say, your car. The manufacturer would have recalled the product long ago, and either repaired the problems or issued refunds. This is exactly what Palm is afraid of, and it's exactly why they avoid the issue by existing in a state of perpetual denial. The sad thing is that all these issues could be fixed by a software update, but Palm is too busy focusing on new product development to waste their time supporting existing customers.I, for one, will never buy another Palm product. Hello, Blackberry!