December 28th, 2005
I have been a Treo user since the Handspring Treo 300 first came out. Moved to the Treo 600 right when it became available, then the 650 once again right away. I love the ability to use the entire smartphone with one hand and no stylus (of course, I can use a stylus if needed). The only thing I don’t like about the Treo is the fact that it runs atop Palm OS, which in my mind is severely lacking.
Enter the Sprint PPC-6700 Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone. It has most everything I like about the Treo, a keyboard, nice screen, 5-way navigation button, and wireless options to connect to headsets, car kits, etc. The PPC-6700 even has an option I wish my Treo had: WiFi. When I was in a local Sprint store recently I decided to pick one up. I have 14 days to try it before I can no longer return it, and the end of those 14 days is almost upon me. Do I keep it or return it?
Before making this decision, I analyzed exactly how I use the smartphone in my everyday life. My largest usage of the device is e-mail, followed by the phone itself, then calendar and contacts. Being able to run the device for a full day without charging it is a pretty big deal as well, I can’t be stopping every 4 hours to wait for my smartphone to get a charge, and I don’t want to carry an extra battery with me everywhere I go.
The PPC-6700 does a fantastic job at contact management; she thinks exactly like I do when syncing all of my contact and calendar data. Unlike the awful Palm hotsync process, the 6700 keeps everything in sync while you’re plugged into the computer. If you’re plugged in and you make a change to your Outlook calendar, that change will appear in real time on your 6700. Add or change a contact, it changes in real time on the 6700 as well. You can browse the device and even view the miniSD card, or install applications on it directly from the Windows desktop. This is a vast improvement over the Palm way of doing things: hotsync, pray, repeat. If I didn’t know better, I would say that Apple built the syncing software for it runs a lot like an iPod: plug it in and it just works (sorta). My only gripe here is that unlike an iPod, the 6700 would randomly disconnect from the computer. For no reason it would just stop syncing. I would have to unplug the smartphone and plug it back it to get my computer to recognize it for 10 minutes, maybe an hour, then it would stop syncing again. Minor annoyance, but still a vast improvement over the Palm hotsync process (if you can’t tell by now, I hate the hotsync process).
But what about my 2 big items: e-mail and phone? E-mail is severely lacking on the 6700. On the Treo 600 and 650 I have access to a fantastic e-mail program called Chatter E-mail. This program allows for true push e-mail without the need for any special software on the server or any NOC. It uses the IMAP Idle command to keep your smartphone and e-mail client constantly up to date. This works great with Exchange (even 5.5), and most IMAP servers out there. If the e-mail server your service provider uses does not support IMAP Idle, then you can do a scheduled pull, but not push e-mail. No monthly fee, no complex setup, true push e-mail from almost any server that supports IMAP Idle (I have only found a handful of mail servers that don’t support this). Push e-mail is a huge deal to me as I need access to server downtime information. If a single server under my control dies, I need to know in real time. SMS messages work here, but there is typically a 2 minute lag. With push e-mail I typically know is a server is down within 30 seconds. One would think that being a Microsoft OS and the huge Microsoft base of programmers someone would have created a push e-mail solution for Windows Mobile 5.0. One would be thinking wrong. There’s GoodLink, but it does not work on WM 5.0. There’s the built in Exchange push, but we’re still waiting for a component to be released in early 2006 to fully enable this feature (although it is hacked together a bit now). So from an e-mail standpoint, the PPC-6700, due to its use of Windows Mobile 5.0, has no good program.
How about the phone itself? Honestly, this is a wash between the Treo 650 and the PPC-6700. When the 650 was first released there was a huge problem with audio quality, but that has since been resolved. Now it’s OK. Not great, but OK. The PPC-6700 is about the same. The sound quality is not nearly as good as my wife’s cell phone, but it’s not bad. I wish someone would build these devices with the thought of phone first, PDA second, but they all seem to get it backwards.
The next problem I have with the 6700 is the battery power. I can run my Treo 650 for about 1 full day, or in my world 16 full hours before I need to recharge it. Most people can run their Treo for 2 to 3 days between charges, but due to the mass amount of e-mail and phone calls I make, the battery gets drained fast. The PPC-6700 ran about 3 to 4 hours before I had to charge it, and that was with most of the wireless radios off (Bluetooth and WiFi). This is a jarring experience and simply won’t work. What happens when I’m at CES and need to send messages back and forth? I suppose I could just work in the morning, then take the afternoon off since my phone would be completely dead at that point. The battery power in the 6700 is sad to say the least.
There are a lot of other interesting points to be made on the design itself. I had to hack around and find a good balance between memory usage and display cache to get the device to work at a speed that was acceptable. Oddly enough, when you first take the 6700 out of the box, it feels very, very slow. To fix this one must go into the registry, change the display memory, and soft-restart the device. Once this is done, it’s actually faster than the Treo 650, in my opinion. This should have been done for me from the start. The keyboard slides out from the side, which then rotates the screen. I thought I would love this as it’s the natural way you want to view web pages. Instead I found that the web pages rendered just as poorly at 320×240 as they did at 240×320, but now since the keyboard was sideways and longer, I could no longer type with one hand. You must use both hands to type on the 6700, whereas on the Treo 650 this can be done with just a singe hand. I also found that the 6700 can not be used without the stylus. The 5 way navigation will work well most of the time, but in many applications such as Pocket Outlook and Pocket IE the navigation would not go where I needed it to, or just get stuck. Once again, two hands were needed to operate the device.
The hard part for me is letting this device go. I could live with two handed operation, possibly wait for a push e-mail client or for MS to finish their push support in Exchange, but the extremely poor battery life makes this device a dud for me. I love the way the system syncs, it’s done so well that my schedule has been dead on for the last week and a half. No more forgetting to hotsync, no more forgetting appointments or contacts, this device is darn sexy when it comes to syncing. Upon reflection, I found that most of what I liked about the device was a Windows Mobile 5.0 feature, and most of what I didn’t like was a hardware problem. I guess I’ll just need to wait for the Palm Treo 700w to come out on Sprint (or beg and plead TE to get me a Verizon version). I love Windows Mobile 5.0, I just need one-handed operation, a better mail client, and much longer battery life.
Share This
Posted by:
Roald Marth on
December 29th, 2005 12:52 am
My comment is being written on my TREO 600 using Novara nWeb browser since the Treo’s built in browser - Blazer is so useless. The point of my comment is that it is from my VERY useful yet dated TREO…..please compare the TREO 700 to the 6700…..I look forward to that post….Ro
Posted by:
Ed Kohler on
December 29th, 2005 10:22 am
Great review! I’m a fairly heavy user of email, web (for bloglines), phone, and SMS in that order. The battery issue definitely turns me off, and I’m not sure I could switch to using two hands. Relying on the stylus as much as you describe doesn’t interest me at all.
Posted by:
Benjamin Higginbotham on
December 29th, 2005 12:55 pm
As soon as I have my hands on a Treo 700, I’ll compare the two… But I agree, I think that would be a great comparison.
Posted by:
Jt on
December 30th, 2005 5:23 pm
Great review you have and a great site. Thanks for stopping by our site and I hope to see you again.
Posted by:
Merlin on
January 3rd, 2006 11:31 pm
Nice post.
Please explain in a bit more detail how to change the display memory to enhance the response time. Is RegEdit available on WinMobile? Where are the parameters, and how does changing the values affect other programs?
Thanks
Posted by:
Maria S on
January 4th, 2006 1:39 pm
Nice review, thanks for the information.
I have difficulty with the IMAP email not working properly. It doesn’t display html emails. Any idea if this will ever get fixed? Or, if there is any workaround?
Posted by:
jacinda on
January 6th, 2006 1:32 pm
i’m so torn between the treo 650 and pocket pc (6700). everyone has such different expirences. . . some call the 6700 a treo killer, but others shipped their 6700 back in like 2 days. I have been reading and studying articles on both for about an entire month now and in my heart i really want the 6700 but my mind says treo 650.
The main things people have said to knock the 6700 is :
-not good one-handed (even the guys in the sprint store were using theirs one-handed)
-some dont like the speakerphone
-some dont like the battery life
thats’s really it
i’m just kinda torn from the price, since i’m eligable to get the sprint $150 rebate i can get the 6700 for 450 plus tax or i could get the treo for 350 minus the $50 palm rebate so that’ll be 300 plus tax.
i just dont know also there are more consumers who hate the treo than people who dislike the 6700. alot of people complain that the treo:
-resets everyday
-isnt high speed
-buttons too small and annoying
thats mainly it.
so to me the main issue comes down to
resets everyday and battery life
reseting would suck, but having to charge it alot would too. so i guess i’ll just have to check it out myslef. . . . i think i may buy the treo since i’m a first time treo user and see how i like it over the next 15 days or so. if it doesnt do what i want it to do i’ll go with the 6700.
oh and im only trying the treo out first because its so much cheaper for me.
Posted by:
Scott on
January 7th, 2006 9:17 pm
Objective & Accurate review… I have not used a Treo, but all that has been said is accurate of my 6700. Very disappointing on the one handed operation. Much of this is due to hardware (no readily available keyboard on the 6700) but also, WM2005. For example, even when I want to use the T9 soft Phone Pad, it is almost impossible to access if I previously left the soft keyboard on a different setting (block recognizer, keyboard, transcriber, etc).
Posted by:
KATHY on
January 18th, 2006 11:38 pm
PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW TO CHANGE THE REGISTRY
To fix this one must go into the registry, change the display memory, and soft-restart the device.
THANKS
Posted by:
Bruce Brown on
January 23rd, 2006 9:52 pm
Fantastic review… and it couldn’t have come at a better time since I am headed to the sprint store in the morning. You have officialy talked me out of the 6700… much to the disppointment of my inner-geek…-Bruce
Posted by:
Jay Holcombe on
January 25th, 2006 4:09 pm
Question for Ben - On the battery, you mentioned a 3-4 hour life. Were you roaming out of network and on the phone most of the time? I know with most of our Sprint phones, roaming chews up our batteries, no matter what device it is.
A few of us in our office received a 6700 demo and played around with it. Granted, we weren’t constantly on the phone, but several of us played around with the device, made calls, etc (Well over 8hours combined on the same device) and it seemed to have plenty of battery life left.
One comment about the 6700 that I’ve also heard the Treo has an advantage - The 6700 does not seem to be as well built and solid as the treo. The 6700 is more bulky, and the plastic encasement also looks like similar devices I’ve tested where there was a cheap injection-molding process involved. Well, I’ve ordered one so time will tell - I’ll keep you posted.
Posted by:
Benjamin Higginbotham on
January 25th, 2006 4:19 pm
Ok couple of things… First the registry. To edit the registry you’ll need to download a registry editor as one is not included with the device. I believe I used this one: http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities/phmregistryeditor.shtml
As for battery life, unfortunatly we were not roaming. Where I primarily work we have excellent Sprint coverage and it’s all on primary network. I do use all devices pretty heavily, which includes not only voice but data as well. My Treo has e-mail pushed to it, so that’s actually an extra battery drain, and still my 650 got 2x the battery life of the 6700. Use of services between the two devices was about equal, and the 6700 just could not keep up when it came to battery life. This is with WiFi off as well as Bluetooth (and BT is actually on with my Treo).
Posted by:
Jay on
January 31st, 2006 8:40 am
PPC6700 - I loaded the registry editor, however, I’m not familiar with registry editing, and I have no idea where to begin. Could you give specific instructions on where to find the display memory settings and what to change it to in the regedit tool in order to improve response time?
Thx,
Posted by:
James on
February 1st, 2006 9:12 pm
I have a treo 600 and I hate this thing, I have a Hitachi g1000 pocket pc and it died in a horrible accident, and from sprint, I got a treo 600, its garbage the sms doesnt work the browser is slow and wont load most pages and the email client built into the phone wont connect to my pop server. So I am considering getting rid of the phone and getting the 6700 - even with a short battery life from what I read its an all around good machine, my only question is did you find that it had a problem working on any paticular wi-fi hotspot? and other than shelling out the $500 most stores want is there anyplace that carries the phone for a better deal or does a trade in that you know of?
Posted by:
Benjamin Higginbotham on
February 2nd, 2006 12:07 am
Ok, commenting on multiple posts here.
Registry
1. Open your registry editor o_n your Pocket PC
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\GDI\GLYPHCACHE\
3. Change the value of ‘limit’ from 8192 to 32768
4. Close registry editor and soft reset.
6700 deals and whatnot
I know of no deals on the phone, other than opening a new line of service. You may want to check Ebay and see if they have anything up for auction.
I didn’t see many WiFi problems other than the additional extreme drain on th ebattery, and it’s not nearly as fast as one would expect. WiFi was only marginally faster than EVDO, so I mostly left it off. I personally didn’t like the keyboard, it made it very hard to do actual work on the device. I have a Treo 700w on the way so I can compare and contrast.
Posted by:
Dano on
February 5th, 2006 2:39 pm
This may sound very stupid, but how do I open the registry editor on my pocket pc.
I cant seem to find out how to do this?
Thanks
Dano
Posted by:
Benjamin Higginbotham on
February 5th, 2006 2:54 pm
There is no registry editor that ships with your PocketPC device. You’ll need o download one. I used PHM RegEdit which I found on Google. There are many options, most of which are free.
Posted by:
Natlie on
June 19th, 2006 9:40 am
I own a 6700 phone and I feel the battery life sucks.
Initially I thought I made a bad decision of purchading the 6700 and not the Treo 650. I thought this because the battery life was horrible. But I decided to keep the phone charged at that solved my problem.
What I use my phone for:
I play solitare and bubble breaker often
I am constantly checking my email, instant messaging and text messaging people
I talk maybe 2 hours max a day
and listen to music a max of 2 hours a day
Before I purchased my car charger I had battery problems. I could not do all of the things listed above as much as wanted.
So, to solve this problem I either keep my phone connected to my computer, plugged up to the wall or plugged into my car charger.
Keeping the 6700 plugged up often is the key to keeping battery life whehter you are roaming or not.
Other than the battery life, I have had no problems with my 6700.
I say the 6700 is a great phone you can choose to either type your on the phone with the stylus or you can use your hands.
In my opinion it’s only natural to not have a rapid internet connection on a mobile phone. If you use the internet a lot maybe you should try to use a desktop or laptop.
The internet on a mobile phone in my opinion is for quick things, not to do actual work.
Posted by:
samantha on
June 28th, 2006 1:44 pm
I recently switched from the treo 650 to the 6700. First let me say if you thought the battery life on the treo was bad this one is absolutely horrible! I am having trouble retaining my “call history” and also sending pictures. I thought I would like the bigger keyboard but I think the buttons are not the most ergonomical. The one thing that is better on the 6700 is the ability to view web pages and the speed. Not to mention NOBODY, in the stores or on the 800 numbers, can help me with any of problems!
Posted by:
Wileyska on
October 5th, 2006 2:38 pm
I am looking for the exact path of the registry to remap bubble breaker. Please if any body knows it, please post it. I did go thur windows, games and deleted the shortcut, but I have to do it to 100 PDA’s and I need to know the registry.
Thanks
W
Posted by:
elle on
February 16th, 2007 3:01 pm
Hey Samantha, i’m sorry u’ve been experiencing trouble with the tech people at sprint and nobody there knowing anything. But i called one day and got probably the smartest guy there and we were on the phone for like an hour, I learned alot. I had the same prob, not being able to send pics. everytime i hit send it kept givin me the option of sending thru email only and text message would not highlite. Is this the same problem for u? Ok, this is sooooooo easy and crazy that 6700 users were never told this by sprint!
1. Click “send” on the pic u wanna send
2. Select an email client to send it thru
3. In the “To” field write the person’s # (their mobile device no.) (MDN) 1234567890@___________
select the persons carrier from this list:
SPRINT: MDN@pm.sprint.com
VERIZON: MDN@vzwpix.com
CINGULAR: MDN@mms.mycingular.com
US CELLULAR: MDN@mms.uscc.net
T-MOBILE: MDN@tmomail.net
NEXTEL: MDN@messaging.nextel.com
Ex: somebody’s cell # is 555-555-1234 and they have nextel,
i would send the pic to 5555551234@messaging.nextel.com
and whats goin on with ur call history exactly? cuz mine holds tons, they show all calls at once, missed, outgoin, incomin, u just have to go to menu then filter em to c the ones u want. And click on each one to see details like duration and stuff.
Hope somthing outta all this hepled 
Recent Comments