Review: Palm Treo Pro, takes on the Blackberry Bold

The Palm Treo Pro features a 2.5 inch display, roughly the same as the Treo 750 but with the resolution boosted to 320x320. It also sports a faster processor and double the RAM.

The new Treo also comes in 85 mm thinner and 20 grams lighter -- making it significantly more pocket-friendly. The keys are slightly smaller than the Treo 750, but still more user-friendly than those on the tiny Palm Centro.

The Treo Pro runs Windows Mobile 6.1 with a few handy modifications, such as missed message alerts on the screen saver and drop-down Task Manager, which makes it easy to access advanced settings and kill applications running in the background.

The Treo Pro is a touchscreen device but it lacks a touchy feely GUI such as HTC's TouchFLO. Its key new features are GPS (standalone and assisted) plus 802.11b/g wifi with WPA, WPA2, and 801.1x authentication.

Initially available exclusively from Telstra, the Treo Pro is a quad-band GSM, tri-band UMTS device running on the high speed Next G network. It comes bundled with a range of Telstra services including Mobile FOXTEL, BigPond Music and the very impressive Whereis Navigator sat-nav software (on a stingy seven day trial).

The phone features a 2 megapixel camera with video capture but no front camera for making video calls. This is the first Treo to feature a 3.5 mm headphone jack, but the trade-off is the loss of the multi-connector in favour of microUSB for charging and syncing.

The phone also features Bluetooth 2.0+ EDR, infrared, 256 MB of onboard storage and a microSDHC slot supporting cards up to 32 GB.

The Treo Pro is an admirable addition to the Treo lineup, but it's expensive and those after a companion for both work and play should also consider the likes of the BlackBerry Bold.

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