Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I finally posted on eBay an auction for my Treo 600, a 512MB SD Memory Card, a Vaja case, and a GPS bundle. If you read this blog regularly, you know that this phone served me well for the last 8 months or so. I’m hoping to get one Meeeelion dollars for it. But considering the phone itself was purchased for a low price from a friend, I’d be happy with a lot less. Anyway, aside from the auction, here are some nice shots me and my wife took of the Treo and the bundled stuff (with her Fuji S2):

Update: Well, wouldn’t you know it! My auction went well, but the guy who won wanted to pay using bidpay. I had never heard of them, but apparently they use Western Union to transmit money. It looked legit so I said ok. But after he won and tried to send money, bidpay for some reason rejected the transfer. Twice. He asked to post it again so that he could start fresh and he would buy it and then try the same thing. I took a chance and did this. He bought it, tried to transfer money and again got rejected. Apparently this was the only way he could send money. He was located in the Ukraine. He had a perfect 60+ feedback, but go figure, this was the time his usual payment option decided to balk on him!

It reminds me of my first ever experience with eBay which soured me to it so much that I didn’t use it for at least a year. It was back in 1997 and I sold an old VCR to a guy in Texas. I checked my bank account for days after I deposited his check and when I saw it listed, I thought it was a done deal. So I sent off the VCR. A week or so later I get a notice from the bank that the check had bounced and they were charging me $5. I wrote the guy who said that he was moving and so had to transfer money out of that bank, but put money back in so told me to ask them to try it again. I did, and the same thing happened. I tried reaching him again about it, but was not getting a response. I wanted a money order in order to guarentee payment. Finally he wrote back (this was probably about two months after he had won) to say that he was being harrassed and that I was somehow being a jerk for asking for my money. He said it was my fault for sending him the VCR before his check had really cleared! He said he still intended to send the money, but of course I never got either that nor any further correspondence. I even had a friend who was a lawyer send him a letter mentioning legal action if he didn’t send the money, but still never got a penny. Thus I receive one of only two negative feedbacks on my account. The other one was from someone who bought something but never responded to several of my emails. I eventually had to give them negative feedback and of course they returned the favor. For this reason, I’m leary about leaving negative feedback unless someone does something really aggregious because it’s almost a given that they will do the same to you, which will hurt your chances of selling things in the future.

Anyway, I had to go ahead and relist the Treo. This time I put a much lower Buy It Now price of $399.99, which is actually less than what the auction was won for last time

Back to Part I
(Note: I’ve split this article into two pages due to its length and limitations within my weblog editing environment – plus the fact that updates may be neccessary periodically)
While this list may look like it gives an edge to TomTom, the list is somewhat arbitrary and subjective. My suggestion is to be even more subjective than this, but a lot less arbitrary and look at these applications yourself. One can download a copy of Mapopolis 2 with demo maps that expire after 9 days. The interface will not be exactly like the Navcard, but it will be close enough. You’ll just have to keep in mind that the detail control and the 3D maps are things that aren’t available on the Navcard, and that map file management (which is kind of a pain in Mapopolis 2) is no longer an issue with the NavCard. As for TomTom, unfortunately there is no trial software, which is unfortunate. However, you might actually be able to test a very similar software out by going to your local Circuit City, Best Buy, or Car Audio/GPS shop. These places often carry the

Update: As you may have seen in one of the comments below, Doug Kozlowsky has added a couple of important clarifications to my review regarding TomTom Navigator. Specifically he says:

“TomTom has a battery display that kicks in when the battery gets low (it alternates with the signal strength display). It turns yellow, then orange, then red as the battery level drops.”

But more importantly:

“Mapopolis has a huge incompatibility with the Treo 650 in that it loads maps into memory to work with. Any map over 12 MB or so crashes the 650. I couldn’t use it in LA for example since the LA County map is over that size. Perhaps it is related to what else I had loaded.”

If this is accurate, while this will probably only be a problem for a few very dense maps like LA, it is still a big problem considering the Treo 650′s memory issues. Those memory issues will probably be alleviated some on GSM models as they already have with Sprint models via a firmware update, but 12MB is still a lot to keep free even so.

Another Update: There has been a lot of talks in the comments about another version of TomTom coming out, called TomTom 5, which apparently fixes some of the previous limitations (like address book interaction), and adds some tantalizing new possibilities, like access to traffic and other information. This supposedly will be a free upgrade to current TomTom 2004 customers, but I’m not counting on anything until there is an definitive official statement, which there really hasn’t been yet. The new TomTom 5 comes with a GPS which contains a newer chipset than the 2004 package, one that theoretically should mean even better reception, faster response, etc. Any additional news I get will be posted as another update.

As a gadget lover AND a map lover, I have long had a passion for GPS, or Global Positioning System devices. These allow you to know where you are on the planet within a fair degree of accuracy, allow you to map out a route from where you are to any destination and sometimes even let you look up various landmarks or businesses or see them as you travel. My first GPS was a monochrome Garmin StreetPilot that I bought back in 2000. When I first heard that I could make my Treo 600 act like a GPS receiver back last summer, I was entreagued. When I heard the raves about a product called Mapopolis that offered voiced turn-by-turn directions and the ability to download maps for anywhere in the U.S., all for half the price I paid (including the actual GPS receiver) for the StreetPilot years earlier, I jumped at the chance! The possibility that I could use this amazing phone for yet another important need made it even more of a convergence device. At the time, Mapopolis provided the only real GPS solution that I could find for the Treo. I purchased the program and a subscription to download maps for a year and started using it immediately. Mapopolis provided many things that my Garmin (which was at least five times the size and weight of my Treo) could not do, such as those voice-prompted directions I mentioned, displaying maps in color (albeit on a smaller screen) and allowing you to actually type addresses in instead of scrolling through a virtual keyboard on the screen.

While I was mostly happy with this software, the one big disadvantage was that Mapopolis’s maps were county-based. You had to know what counties you would be traveling to or through if you wanted to get specific directions to an exact endpoint, and also be able to stop along the way and drive around a little without losing your map detail. Unless you are on a truely long-term trek, you are going from point A to point B, so really you only need the county-level map for where you start and where you end for a good set of directions. The other set of maps you need are state-level maps that contain the “major roads” for the states you will be traveling in. In any case, if I wanted to use Mapopolis during a trip, I would have to sit down with a map and figure out which states and counties I wanted access to. Initially I tried simply putting in all the counties between me and my destination of some 500 miles away, but due to the limitations of the program, this was unworkable. These maps are not small, of course, and with the Treos limited memory, the best place for them are on an external memory card.

Luckily, when I purchased Mapopolis last summer they had just made a beta version available that made it possible to use maps on your SD card more or less painlessly. However, using the SD card, especially on a Treo 600 (as opposed to faster devices like the Treo 650), meant things generally took longer to happen. Every additional map that Mapopolis had to load and look at while figuring out your route made trips with more than a handful of county-level maps and state major road maps so slow that they really weren’t worth the effort. And even with a relatively small mapset, it could still take a few minutes to map my route to work – a trip that only takes a half hour!

Flash forward six months or so when I first started contemplating buying a Treo 650 (ok, maybe I was contemplating it when it was first announced in October!). One consideration I had, although admittedly not my primary one, was how upgrading would affect my experience with GPS. I knew that the Treo 650′s faster processor would mean that maps would load much faster and routes could be planned much more quickly – at least in theory. I also knew that with its higher resolution screen, I could see more map in more detail, thus giving me a better idea of what was ahead as I drove, and what was around me.

I didn’t think at all about the Treo 650′s support for Bluetooth because I simply didn’t know that there were Bluetooth-enabled GPS units. Even if I did, I don’t think I would have been all that concerned because after all it’s simply a way to cut down on the numbers wires in your car, a feature that while nice is not a big deal to someone who’s relatively low maintenance like myself! Then again, one big problem I had when using the Treo 600 with my wired GPS receiver was that sometimes a bump would dislodge a cable and if I didn’t get it plugged back in quickly enough, I would have to reroute the trip all over again!

Not having done a lot of reading about GPS since buying Mapopolis in the summer, I just assumed I would keep using my old GPS receiver with the Mapopolis maps. I didn’t know there were other options until perusing the discussion forums again as the time neared for when I might actually be able to purchase the Treo 650. I happened across people talking about a new product from a company called TomTom. TomTom makes a stand-alone GPS unit called the “TomTom Go” which I had looked at a bit and even considered buying when I was looking at stand-alones last month after buying a new car. However, the TomTom’s pricetag, even though it was one of the cheaper units out there for its full feature set, was still between $600 and $1000 depending on the store you bought it at and the options you chose, and since I knew I’d be spending a good chunk of cash on the Treo 650 soon enough, I had to hold off. I’m glad I did, because as I found out, TomTom makes software for handhelds (PalmOS and PocketPC devices) that is the basically the same as what is in their stand-alone TomTom Go. The price is also much more reasonable than any of the stand-alone devices you can get, including TomTom’s.

What I also had to decide was what kind of GPS receiver to buy, because as it turned out I could not use my old GPS receiver with the Treo 650 due to Pa1mOne’s decision to change the port used for plugging in such accessories to the phone. Since Bluetooth GPS receivers are not prohibitive and because I heard good things about TomTom’s own Bluetooth GPS receiver, which came either separately or bundled with the software and maps, I opted to get the bundle from Amazon.com and have it shipped to my house for free while I waited for my Treo 650 to get out of backorder status and get shipped to me. As it turns out TomTom’s Bluetooth receiver has some of the latest GPS features, accuracy and performance enhancements via a recent chipset called “SiRF IIe/LP.” (I believe an even more advanced SiRF III has just gone into production) Among its more impressive features is its ability to get a GPS signal without having to have line-of-sight to the satellites. So I can put it in my glove compartment, and since there are no wires, shut it, and it still will get a signal and send it to my Treo 650.

After receiving the TomTom package and actually getting the software to work on my Treo 600 (a feat that I hadn’t seen anyone even attempting), I found out that Mapoplis actually made a product that was a more direct competitor to TomTom! It was too late to return TomTom and do further research before making a decision, so I contacted Mapopolis and they were nice enough to send me their product so that I could review it for potential customers and compare it to the TomTom Navigator software and maps. Mapopolis’s product, called U.S. NavCard for PalmOS, is actually an external Secure Digital memory card that contains the software and street-level maps for the entire U.S. One can also buy cards that contain only parts of the U.S. for significantly less. I felt compelled to compare the two products not only for myself but for others out there who are looking for a new (or a first) GPS system for their Treo and who may not have known about the Mapopolis product – while there’s been more buzz lately about TomTom because of it being the new kid on the block and having some nice features, I didn’t see much discussion about this relatively new product from Mapopolis.

Installation

The Mapopolis Navcard is the winner here, of course. All you do is plop the card in. The first time it installs some files into your Treo’s main memory (subsequent insertions just cause it to start right up) but all the maps are maintained on the card itself, which is necessary for a device with such a limited amount of main memory. While this is process is very easy, there are some downsides to the approach. One is that the files that it installs in memory take up a pretty good chunk of space – over 3MB! With the Treo 650′s memory issues, this is significant! Also, while using the Navcard, you won’t have access to programs that you may have installed on a separate external memory card. I’ve put as many programs as possible on my external card in order to keep the free the main memory on the Treo due to it’s memory issues. But perhaps this isn’t that big an issue. If you are using a GPS during a trip, for the most part you aren’t going to be doing anything with the Treo, aside from maybe using the phone which doesn’t require any external program. Ideally, having at least the possibility open for doing other things like playing some music or audio books that are on a memory card while using the GPS would be nice, but the lack of multitasking on the Treos as well as lack of great stability with either of these products mean that this was never going to be a real possibility at this point anyway. Initially I thought having the software on an SD card meant that it wasn’t meant for updates, however, Mapopolis is currently working on updates that can be installed on the card, and I tried out a beta of this update successfully – you just need to switch the write-protect tab on the SD card.

TomTom Navigator’s installation is not nearly as straightforward. One receives Eight CD’s worth of maps, voices, and the application. Any of these CD’s acts as an installation program, but nothing gets installed on your computer. Rather, when you put one of these CD’s in, it runs an installation program off of the CD and asks you want you want to install. It gives you the choice of installing in main memory, on a storage card or “other (advanced)” That third option then gives you further choices to install to a directory on your hard drive (which you can later transfer to an SD card via a card reader for example), or directly to the SD card. All these options are a bit confusing and I had to play with the install process a bit before I got it to work the way I wanted. Installing to Storage Card initially did not let me have access to the application. I had to go back and install it to main memory, but then it took up a big chunk of memory. I then deleted this, and tried installing to the storage card again and this time it seemed to work. The process also seems to require at least a couple of hotsynchs so you really need to play close aattention to the directions the installer is giving you and don’t just assume you hit install and then do one hotsynch. The reason I knew there shouldn’t be a big chunk of memory taken up in the Treos main memory is from what I’d read on the discussion forums. Nowhere is any of this explained during the installation process or in the manuals.

Once you install the program itself, you also have to install maps. You can install a map for a single state, or for groups of states. This is relatively painless, as you just select from a list and it will prompt you to insert a different CD if necessary. You can also install a large variety of voices for the voice prompts. Unfortunately installing each map and each voice prompt requires a separate install process, and you have to basically tell TomTom that you’ve hotsynched when you really haven’t, otherwise you would have to hotsynch after each one!

Documentation

The documentation for both of these units is not the best. The Navcard comes with one sheet of paper that with some basic instructions. A “Quickstart Guide” which isn’t much longer but at least as some screen captures, is available on the Mapopolis website. Mapopolis is apparently working on an a more in-depth user guide, but in the mean time the user guide for Mapopolis 2 will serve to answer most of your questions. TomTom’s “manual” is a slick, professional printing, but is not all that thorough. It definitely beats Mapopolis’s single sheet, and one can download a slightly expanded User Guide from the TomTom website that’s a bit more helpful. Unfortunately, TomTom includes no documentation for their Bluetooth GPS unit, which was part of the bundle; something I thought was a bit odd.

GPS Unit Compatibility

Surprisingly, I found that the Mapopolis product was much easier to get working with the TomTom Bluetooth GPS unit than TomTom’s Navigator. Once I figured out that you needed to set it so that it would always look for the GPS as soon as you enter the program, and also set the it for a Bluetooth GPS (as opposed to a serial GPS) connection, it worked flawlessly. You do have to pick the TomTom from list of Bluetooth devices each time you start it up – the Navcard can’t seem to remember which device you set it to the last time – but this is not much of a hassle.

The TomTom, on the other hand, was much more finicky. I would have to exit out sometimes or go in and change the GPS setting because it just wasn’t finding the device. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is, but it can be quite annoying. Once TomTom sees the GPS, everything’s fine, but it just seemed to take a much longer time than necessary sometimes. Other times it picked it up right away, and unlike Mapopolis, it remembers your settings, so as soon as you start running the software sometimes you’re all set and don’t need to do anything more to get things working.

Planning a Route

This is one place where the TomTom Navigator outperforms Mapopolis in most, although not every aspect. The interface to TomTom is one that doesn’t look anything like any PalmOS application that you’ve seen, and that is because it is not exactly a PalmOS application. Instead, TomTom uses its own environment, bypassing the PalmOS. You start by choosing what kind of destination to pick, including an address, your home (if you’ve programmed that in when prompted when you are first setting TomTom up), a destination you’ve navigated to recently, a “Favorite,” (predefined location), a “Point of Interest,” or just an address. For now, let’s look at just a plain old address as your destination. First you are asked what city your destination is in. You can start typing with the Treo keyboard or with a virtual one on the screen. As you type, a list of cities pops up that correspond to what you’ve typed so far, and as you continue typing that lists gets smaller, since, for example, fewer cities start with “Spring” than start with just “S.” Once you see and pick your city from the list, it then asks you what street your destination is on and a similar list comes up as you type out the street. Finally it asks for the number or a cross-street. The routing system also remembers the last place you routed to, and so when you first start to route again, it brings up a list of recent places, so that you can quickly choose that place without having to manually enter it again from scratch.

(Clicking on “Navigate To” on the Main Menu will give you these options)

(When you click on “Address” you can start entering the city name to bring up a list)

Without actually experiencing it yourself, it’s hard to get a feel for how easy setting a destination is, compared to many GPS systems I’ve used in the past, but trust me; it is very fast and easy. The actual amount of time it takes for the TomTom software to create the route with all the directions is astonishingly fast. Routing my 35-minute same-county trip from home to work or back takes less than 3 seconds. Even mapping a trip from Virginia to New York took around 5 seconds! In addition to your straightforward route, TomTom has the ability to include a “waypoint” or a point in between the beginning and the end points through which you want to travel, even if this will take you out of your way based on the optimal route. As a waypoint you can pick any address, favorite, a recent destination, point of interest, etc. I’ve never personally found a big reason to use waypoints while driving, but my trips are usually pretty straightforward – go visit a family member or friend, come home.

For those who have used Mapopolis 2 with the Treo 600, you will be right at home with the Mapopolis NavCard. The NavCard has basically the same exact interface with a few minor differences. The only major difference is that you don’t have to fiddle with maps, map directories, etc. (There are also a couple of features that have been left out but I’ll get into that later) – in fact the “Maps” button in the settings menu is simply gone. This is because you already have all the maps at your disposal preinstalled on the SD card. The screen that lets you pick where to route to is definitely one of Mapopolis’s weakest points. It’s not intuitive, and takes a bit of fiddling with to get what you want. It’s something that you can get over as you get more accustomed to using it, but it is certainly an area where Mapopolis could make some big improvements. For example, there’s the issue that while looking for an address, you may have missed the pull-down list where you specify which state to look in, a particularly annoying problem. For some reason, when you go to set an address to find, it defaults to looking in Malibu, California. A better choice would be to use a recent destination city or even the current city according to the GPS. In addition, Mapopolis seems very finicky about addresses. For example spelling out East or Lane instead of abbreviating these yielded a “nothing found” message. This may be even be true of TomTom as well, but because of the way it works by offering you choices rather than having you input an address to find an exact match for, it avoids the issue.

(notice no “Maps” button)

(intermediate screen – you have to click “find” to set up your destination)

That being said, Mapopolis does have some routing features that aren’t available in TomTom. In particular you can look up someone’s name in your address book and it will plop their address into the find field. Of course, it only does this for their actual address. You still need to make sure you are looking for it in the proper city and state (or zip code), since these are in separate fields from the address, and setting these each time is not a very fast and easy process. You can also tell Mapopolis to avoid highways, favor them, or be neutral to them when creating a route, something TomTom cannot do. Neither program has the flexibility of the online programs that allow you to find the shortest route vs. the quickest route. Routing times for Mapopolis, while a lot faster using the Navcard on my Treo 650 than with the county-level maps with Mapopolis 2 on my Treo 600, is still significantly slower than the TomTom. Routes from Virginia to New York took at least 30 seconds, perhaps as much as a minute, whereas routes between a local computer store and my house about two miles away took about 5 seconds. The route from my house to work (a 30-minute ride within the same county) took about 10 seconds. Mapopolis, however, is working on an update that improves routing and searching speeds. I was able to look at the beta for this update and for a longer route (DC to NYC) it did seem to shave it down from about 1 minute to 30 seconds, but shorter routes that took 10 seconds or less with the regular version didn’t seem to gain much discernable benefit.

Traveling the Route

Once you set off on your route, the main features available are the actual screen display of the map, the written directions and other information, and finally the audible voice prompts. Oh yes, and then there’s the overriding accuracy of the directions themselves! Let’s tackle these one by one.

For the written directional information, I preferred the Mapopolis, both because their color scheme of blue letters on a white background was more readable from a distance than TomTom’s white on dark blue. Both applications have directional arrows that tell you what kind of turn is coming and how far you have to go till the turn, and for these Mapopolis’s seemed a bit easier to read. Part of the reason why Mapopolis might have the edge here is that these instructions take up more screen real estate and so allow for bigger and clearer fonts. This has the disadvantage, though, of making the space taken up by the map smaller. TomTom does have a nice feature though which allows you to see only the directional arrow and the direction text over the entire screen, making it even more readable than Mapopolis (although unlike Mapopolis it shows absolutely no map). You can set this on or off, or even to come on automatically when you travel above a certain speed.

(Mapopolis NavCard Navigating a Route)

(TomTom Navigator Navigating a Route – using its 3D Map Mode)

As far as directional accuracy, I found that both programs would sometimes give directions that didn’t make sense, or that I just wasn’t expecting. Normally these will actually get you to where you want to go, but they often seem less intuitive than what you may be used to just guessing yourself. Sometimes they might even save you a bit of time, sometimes they might take longer. I think it would take weeks to determine with any kind of confidence whether one of these products are better at figuring out directions on whole better than the other, although you might be able to do that very quickly for a given area and set of routes that you travel on a regular basis. The other issue that both seem to have (although in different places) is that they occasionally give you directions where none are needed. I’ve gotten stuff like “in 1 mile continue along X” where X is the road I’m currently on. However, looking around, there’s no way NOT to continue along X unless you want to barrel through some guardrail and off the side of the road! Much of this depends on the type of mapping data that these programs use. Mapopolis uses data from NavTeq, whereas TomTom uses data from a company called TeleAtlas. Both of these companies have one annoying problem for me – they put my house 5 houses east of where it should be! I even notified NavTeq about this error, but even though the big online mapping apps like Mapquest use NavTeq data (so you think they would have the latest), they still show my house incorrectly placed. I can only imagine how many other inaccuracies there are, especially for never roads – my road (and house) is at least 50 years old so I don’t think that’s the problem there!

A closely related aspect to this is how the directions are actually explained to the driver. For this Mapopolis is the hands-down winner. They simply make more sense to my U.S. roadmapped brain. TomTom is a Dutch company, so perhaps in Europe these kinds of directions might be more comfortable, but not as much in the U.S. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t that bad, but Mapopolis’s are just more descriptive and helpful. Also, while you can set TomTom to use miles instead of kilometers, when you get under 1/3 of a mile or so, it switches to yards, a measurement that is only familiar in the sense of football to most U.S. residents! Unfortunately there is no way to switch this to feet, which is the unit that Mapopolis uses for its sub 1/3-mile directions.

As far as the map part of the display, TomTom is probably the winner, but not by much when you consider all the related features. On TomTom the maps just look better to my eye, are faster to browse, scroll better, and zoom in and out more fluidly. In addition one can choose from the standard overhead view that one would see on a paper map, or a special “3-D” view, as if one were traveling in a plane above the vehicle. Initially I was a bit dubious about whether this feature would actually be very useful. In fact I felt that these views gave you less information because you couldn’t see as far ahead. But this is not the case with TomTom’s 3D view. Something about the way it uses perspective and the fluidity of it’s animation really add to this view to allow you to sense what’s coming up in front of you much easier than with the top-down type of map. I still think the top-down view is good and switch off between the two, but having the choice is great. A slick feature that TomTom has but which I wish there was a way to turn off is a type of “auto-zooming.” Depending on how fast the car is going, TomTom senses this and zooms out in order to give you a wider view of what’s to come. If one is zoomed in too much while, say stopped in traffic, one can override this and zoom out for a wider view, however within several seconds TomTom will automatically zoom back in to a “speed-appropriate” level. TomTom’s map display while on a route is also a bit larger due to more space given to the directional text for Mapopolis’s display. However, when using these programs just driving around without a route programmed, Mapopolis’s map display is a bit larger.

Mapopolis’s maps are a bit jerkier when animating your travels, and are not as “pretty,” although I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. There is no 3D view, even though the older Mapopolis 2 has such a view. I’m not sure why Mapopolis chose to leave it out. Perhaps there were stability issues or even memory issues due to the size limits of the SD card and the Treo 650′s main memory issues. Also missing from Mapopolis 2 is the ability to control the amount of detail on the map, but then TomTom doesn’t have this either. Mapopolis does have some things that TomTom doesn’t. For one, you can scroll on the map while you are traveling a route, zoom out to view more of your route, and even click on parts of the map to get more information about them – the name of a park or a point of interest, etc. In order to do something similar in TomTom, you have to go into a separate Browse Map mode found in the menu, which is just a static view of the map, not a dynamic one showing your position as you travel. Mapopolis also allows you to choose whether the map should be oriented according to the direction your car is driving, or rather as a static North-Up orientation. Finally, Mapopolis gives you a legend that puts things in perspective. You can estimate how far it might be from where you are to an arbitrary spot on your route which you cannot do in TomTom. As mentioned, the written directions take up more space on Mapopolis than TomTom, so the map itself is smaller, which makes it harder to read while driving.

Both applications give you an audible voice that reads turn-by-turn directions as they near. This is a key feature because it allows you to be directed by just listening without having to look at a tiny screen to try to make out directional information. Both programs distinguish themselves in different ways with their voice prompts, and so I had a hard time determining a clear winner.

TomTom has a large variety of clear, human voices which you can install from the CD so that you can pick and choose which voice to hear at any given time. There are usually at least two (one male, one female) voice for a given language, but sometimes as many as four. So if you know where you’re going but want to practice your Italian comprehension a bit, just download Chiara and let her direct you Avante! Aside from this, there are even different accent variations (for English anyway), including U.S., British, Hispanic, and Australian. The vocabulary even changes a bit when you switch from one accent to another. For example, the British voices use the term “motorway” instead of “highway.” Someone at TomTom also has a sense of humor as you can even download from their site valley girl dialect called “Zappa“! Aside from the choice of languages, one can also set the volume level of the voice, something that’s definitely useful if one has an infant in the car or simply a person who wants to sleep and not get woken up by a booming voice saying to take the next right.

The Mapopolis Navcard comes with a computer generated voice, not nearly as nice as any of the human voices of TomTom, but the big advantage it affords the program is that it can pronounce (or at least TRY to pronounce – sometimes it’s pretty humorous to hear some of its attempts!) all the written directions including the actual names of streets, highways, etc. By comparison, TomTom’s voices have a very limited vocabulary – “exit ahead,” “turn left,” “turn right,” “take the highway,” “after 200 yards,” “make a U-Turn,” “turn around when possible,” and “you have reached your destination” are honestly the only things I can recall it saying. So Mapopolis’s computerized voice prompts in general are much more helpful, even if they don’t sound as nice. This isn’t only because of the proper names it can pronounce, but simply the type of directions it gives for turns, as I’ve described above. The one unfortunate thing I discovered with Mapopolis’s computer-generated voice prompts was that there seems to be some kind of malfunction with them on my Treo 650 whereby a decent fraction (I would say at least 5%, maybe as much as 10%) are messed up. Specifically, the voice distorts, getting chopped up a lot like the old Max Headroom stutter! Although pretty humorous the first few times it happens, at a certain point it gets stale, like Max Headroom. Sometimes it’s a very minor stutter that lasts for a second or so, but other times the entire direction stuttered so that something that would have taken a couple of seconds to say took at least ten. Pair that with the inability to modify the volume, and well, it’s not good!

Now, if you don’t really care about proper names of streets, you can avoid the computer voice completely and download human voices similar to TomTom’s. There isn’t as good a selection, but the great thing is that you can actually record your own! Perhaps you could even cobble together sound clips of various celebrities saying the various 50 words that are used for these directions. I’m not sure I’d particularly want Paris Hilton giving me directions, but I’m sure someone would. Unfortunately Mapopolis does not tell people about this option, you have to glean it from discussion forums, which is unfortunate because it is a very nice feature to have. Perhaps the reason is that it’s not as easy to set up as TomTom’s. You have to download a voice file and install it in memory, and delete the computer voice. You can’t have multiple voices available unless you do some renaming, which could be a big pain. Even so, I ran into problems getting the voice to work, but this may be due to my data connection by which I was sending myself the file. I have gotten these voices to work on Mapopolis 2 and so I have no doubt they will work on the Navcard, but you may have to spend some time doing it. Mapopolis, in a sense, makes it a feature more geared towards tinkerers – you can customize it to your heart’s content, but you will have to spend time doing so! Mapopolis also lets you control how verbose you want the prompts. This is a good thing because the normal level would have it telling you maybe five or six times before you reached some turns – warning you that in ½ mile, .3 miles, 300 feet, 200 feet, 100 feet, and so on before you get there. I suppose this is good for when you are very unfamiliar with an area and can give you the reassurance of having and expert who’s just very insistent (nagging?) about telling you where to turn. But it is nice to be able to tone this down. And for those who really need hand-holding (or are just masochistic) you can even make it more verbose. TomTom, on the other hand, seems to have the opposite problem. It will usually tell you exactly twice to turn. Once when you are a few hundred yards away, and then again, when you are right at the turn itself. It seems that their most recent version (4.42) has increased the first warning so that you aren’t having to scramble as much when you first hear that you have to turn, but it would still be nice to have a little more flexibility in how many times one is alerted or how far in advance.
Points of Interest

“Points of Interest” or “POI’s” as they are known in TomTom (or just “Places”) in Mapopolis, are markers for various businesses like restaurants, banks, etc., as well as municipal buildings, religious buildings, hospitals, airports, etc., that might be of interest to someone who is traveling. GPS’s generally have a database of these that you can interact with and TomTom and Navigator have their own, slightly different sets. With TomTom, one can opt to view these (or not) on the map, and decide which POI categories one wants to see. These are represented as graphical icons, like a knife and fork for a restaurant, a blue H for a hospital, etc. A couple of additional features that TomTom has are very nice. One warns you (with a variety of audible alerts) that you are approaching a specific type of POI. You can even tell it down to the yard how close you have to be to have it alert you. So, you can tell it that you want to be alerted if you come within 500 yards of a gas station, for example. The other feature allows you to create your own custom POI’s and even POI categories, with a huge number of icons to pick from. So you could set up, say, a POI category for Wifi hostpots, go online and mark down where all of them are located in a given town.

(TomTom forces you to pick a POI category, after which you can select from individual POI’s)

Mapopolis is more limited in its graphical display of POI’s (they are just colored dots), and its lack of an ability to turn them on or off, or to add new ones. However, as mentioned, you can, while navigating, click on any of these dots and get additional info – the name anyway – of that POI. If you want to get more information with TomTom, you have to get out of the navigational mode. The other big advantage that Mapopolis has over TomTom here is that one can search for and navigate to a point of interest anywhere in the country in one fairly quick step. I’ve done this many times with Mapopolis 2 – say I know I’m traveling to a town where we’ve made reservations at a Holiday Inn, but I don’t have the information in front of me. I can simply search for hotels in Podunk, and pick the Holiday Inn from the list that comes up. This is a very useful feature and yet for some reason TomTom makes it much more difficult – something I had to figure out by playing around with menus (there’s nothing in the documentation about how to do this). Instead of simply saying “search for X in Y” like Mapopolis, you have to go into the Browse Map mode, manually maneuver to what location you want to look in, click on the cursor position icon button, click “Find Nearby POI,” click the type of POI, then finally you get a list to scroll through. Then, once you’ve selected this POI, TomTom locates it on the map. At this point you have to again hit the cursor position icon button, and this time hit “Navigate there.” Maybe there’s a faster way, but after playing for a while and reading all the documentation I could find, I wasn’t able to figure it out. Yes, you can do this, but unlike so many other procedures where TomTom is extremely quick and intuitive, this sticks out as a real bungled feature!

(As you can see, TomTom displays large graphical icons that you will be able to recognize immediately as a particular type of POI)

(Mapopolis only shows colored dots for POI, but they seem more numerous and you can click on them as you travel to display what they are)

I have no idea how MANY POI’s each of these applications have. TomTom specifies “1000′s” whereas Mapopolis doesn’t say, although I’m sure it’s at least equivelent number (it seems like it might be more, but I can’t confirm that). These are actually part of NavTeq’s and TeleAtlas’s data. In terms of organization, TomTom has a total of 43 different categories while Mapopolis has a measly 13. However, that doesn’t mean Mapopolis has fewer POI’s just fewer categories, so it may not be as easy to pinpoint which category a POI is in. On the other hand, Mapopolisis much more powerful in that you can simply enter a name of a POI that you know should be on the list and not bother with the category. TomTom forces you to choose a category first, and if you don’t choose the right one (perhaps it is miscategorized or simply in a different category than YOU would put it in), you will have a much harder time searching for it.

Favorites/Geomarks

Another key feature of a GPS is the ability to mark a particular location for later reference. Perhaps while driving you happened upon a great scenic spot, or a new store you want to return to, or perhaps you followed a friend to their place. The ability to record this in your GPS for later reference is a nice feature so that you can quickly route to it by name at some point in the future rather than having to find it on a map or type out an address. You set up a favorite by telling the GPS to mark where you are currently located, or by browsing the map and marking a spot manually. TomTom lets you save this as a “Favorite” which you can name whatever you want.

For Mapopolis, the feature is a little less intuitive, but still functional. Basically, you click on the menu button, hit “GeoMark” button, and then are presented with the map and a prompt to click on the spot you want to mark. Once you select your spot, you are presented with a form to fill in an address book entry including a first name, last name, and company name. This will then become entered into the contacts on your Treo with a work address field specified by the GPS, and a custom field as the geographical coordinates of the spot. The problem with this method is that your contacts get cluttered by these entries which may have nothing to do with friends or business associates, or worse are duplicates of entries that are already in your Contacts database.

(Each Geomark in Mapopolis has to have a standard first name and last name, which is then added to your Contacts Database)

(“Favorites” in Mapopolis are just recent locations that have been searched for and which are accessible via the upside-down triangle on the bottom menu for quick locating)

In fact, Mapopolis has the added benefit of being able to access your contacts addresses from that application on your Treo, so this would be redundant. What Mapopolis really needs is the ability to have favorites separate from your Contacts like TomTom. That being said, TomTom needs to have an interface to Contacts. Mapopolis also has something called “favorites” but they aren’t really the equivalent of favorites in TomTom, rather they are just recently accessed locations that are saved automatically. You can’t delete them, rename them, etc., so they aren’t nearly as powerful as TomTom’s favorites. Also, as with various settings in Mapopolis, in certain circumstances where the phone resets due to instability, these locations are lost.

Rerouting

One of the key features of a GPS is not just the ability to create a route for a trip, but to actually change that route during the trip, even if that change is unintentional. If you make a wrong turn, or intentionally leave the planned route in order to find a gas station or a rest area, or to avoid delays on a horribly backed up highway, you don’t want to have to stop and reprogram the entire route. When it comes to rerouting, TomTom definitely has the upper hand. The main issue with Mapopolis’s rerouting capabilities is its speed, especially when dealing with longer routes. For a relatively short route of, say, less than 25 miles or so, it’s not an issue. The rerouting will take under 10 seconds. However, routes of a couple hundred miles or more could take 30 seconds or more to reroute. At this point it almost makes sense to stop and do the rerouting because by the time the reroute has taken place, you may have missed a turn that the reroute was going to tell you to take, and then the reroute will have to start all over again. This of course won’t happen all the time, only in certain circumstances and for longer trips, but it still is a limitation. TomTom, on the other hand, must have a very efficient engine for routing and rerouting. It seems like this rerouting is simply editing the smallest piece of the route possible while keeping the rest the same, thus making it almost instantaneous in most situations.

TomTom also adds much more functionality over simple rerouting. One can calculate an “alternative route,” which makes TomTom come up with a slightly different way of getting to your destination. The first time one does this, the route is changed from where you currently are, but you can continue to request an alternate route and additional parts of the route will start to change, usually causing your estimated time to go up as further detours are made. A much more controllable and useful rerouting function, though, is to reroute to simply avoid the current road you’re on due to an accident or something else that’s causing heavy traffic. This is called “Avoid Roadblock.” You can set it to various distances ranging from a probably useless 100 yards up to 3 miles. One can also specify a part of the route one wants to avoid – say a particular highway you know will have construction.

Interface

Although I’ve touched on this in general, I thought I’d speak more directly about the user interface for these GPS apps. In general, I would have to say that TomTom’s interface is more user-friendly, faster, and just much better looking than Mapopolis. Of course looks are in the eye of the beholder and I suppose even usability is as well. If you are used to the PalmOS interface with it’s buttons and form fields and so on, you may be right at home with Mapopolis. However, I’m pretty familiar with PalmOS and yet I still found it easier to deal with TomTom because it is so user-friendly. Basically it makes everything a touch with your finger on the screen. You can use some of the buttons and keys on the Treo keyboard to do certain things, but in general, it’s just easier to deal with the touch screen. Everything is very graphical, as you’ve seen on the screenshots here – lots of colorful screens large icons.

Mapopolis is similar in that certain things work better by hitting the screen, but others are really meant for using the keyboard. The forms within Mapopolis act the way you would expect most PalmOS applications to act, however the five-way navigation is not fully implemented. You cannot, for example scroll through the main menu using these keys in Mapopolis, and often you the focus within a form doesn’t go to the field you would expect, requiring a finger or a stylus to actually activate a given field. Then again, TomTom is even less compliant with normal PalmOS navigation techniques. You can’t scroll between individual items in the menus in TomTom and select an item (although you can scroll through different pages) with the navigational keys.

Stability

The stability of either of these programs is not up for debate. The problem is that the Treo 650 is a relatively new device and people have had varying degrees of stability with it. Also, if you run a bunch of applications that do things that might challenge the stability, like push email (Chatteremail) or always-live IM (Verichat), this may cause further issues when running these while using a GPS. Even without running these programs, I have had numerous issues with the phone resetting itself or getting extremely sluggish requiring me to reset it myself. When using these programs, resesets for seemingly no reason did happen occasionally, but not very regularly. When using Mapopolis and receiving a call once, I was able to talk for about 15 seconds while Mapopolis actually worked in the background, but then the phone reset itself – I have a feeling that had to do with a Bluetooth issue which I’ll explain momentarily. Mapopolis did seem to be a bit less stable in some instances, especially when it came to removing and inserting the SD card. I didn’t do anything bad like remove the card while running the program, but sometimes when removing it after I had gotten out of the program, or inserting it to start using it, the phone would reset itself. The other issue around this is that from usage to usage, Mapopolis would often “forget” what I’d set before. In particular, the various settings such as what type of GPS unit I was using, whether I wanted it to resynch with it as soon as I started, whether I wanted to reestablish the last route, etc. Having to reset all of these things is a pain. This didn’t happen all the time, of course, but enough to make it annoying. The other thing it would forget is the “favorites” (recent locations), so this just meant I wouldn’t have the convenience of such shortcuts and would have reprogram a destination manually when this happened.

Receiving Calls

One feature that is constantly asked in discussion forums is whether you can receive calls while using one of these programs. After all, chances are that on a long (or even short) trip, you will want to or need to be in touch with people – people you are traveling to, or whoever. I’m glad to say that each of these programs does allow you to receive calls and will go back to routing once you’re done. Mapopolis simply freezes and lets you choose to answer the call or ignore it. If you answer it, the screen stays on Mapopolis’s frozen map. On TomTom, if you choose to answer, it actually switches you out of Navigator and into the phone application, and once you are done with the call, you have to relaunch the program, which will then automatically pick up your route again. As I mentioned, I did have a problem one time with Mapopolis resetting once. What actually happened was that it allowing me to pick up the call, but instead of freezing, it kept working – the map kept moving as I drove. That happened for about ten seconds until it reset. I’m not sure, but this may have had to do with a Bluetooth conflict. I have a Bluetooth headset and when the call came in, it activated it. But apparently my Bluetooth GPS was still working at the same time. The Treo 650 can only communicate with one Bluetooth device at a time, and so this may have been the issue. So if you do use Mapopolis with a Bluetooth GPS, consider getting a wired hands-free unit or simply picking up the handset to talk (or else use a wired GPS receiver).

Power

I’m not sure whether one of these software packages uses more power than the other. My guess is probably not, or at least not a significantly. However, there is a difference in how these programs deal with power in other ways. The TomTom generally doesn’t care what power source you are using – it will run the same way whether you have it plugged in or just using battery power. Curiously, TomTom has a battery meter, but for some reason, the only place it is visible while navigating is is in a special status screen that you have to manuever to with three clicks. Not exactly convenient. There’s a lot of information that is in the bottom part of the screen under the map when navigating, including how long until the next turn, how much longer the trip will take, how good a signal you have, when the ETA is, etc. While all this info is helpful at certain times, many of them, as I’ve noted, are not that legible unless you are holding the Treo pretty close to you. Lots of numbers in the same vicinity without any good way of labeling them make them not very useful. It would be much more useful to allow users to customize what to see in these informational areas, and also to colorcode them or do something to make them more discernable from one anoter.

(The Status Screen is the only place you can see a battery meter within the TomTom Navigator program)

(You can see a lot of info in a relatively small space while Navigating in TomTom Navigator, but no battery meter, and it’s hard to make out all the information quickly)

When you run Mapopolis, on the other hand, if you aren’t plugged into your car’s charger port, your screen will go off at the interval specified in the Treo’s preferences (the default is 30 seconds). That is unless you change a setting that will let you keep it on for an hour regardless, for which there is a setting. If it is plugged in, the screen will stay on indefinitely. Unfortunately Mapopolis doesn’t offer a battery meter anywhere.

As with other items, I think both companies got it partially right here. Optimally you want to have a setting that lets you switch it from not turning off the screen at all to turning it off at the usual interval, and a bunch of ones in between. Some kind of audible alarm to let you know your batter is at ½, ¾, 5/8 of the way done, etc., might also help.

Companies

I’m not familiar enough with these companies to say this with any confidence, but it seems like Mapopolis is a bit more responsive to its customers. To be honest, I haven’t tried contacting TomTom, and they might be very responsive as well. But I have contacted Mapopolis on a number of occasions (both for this piece and in the past), and they have always been prompt and informative in getting back to me. One might expect this from a smaller company. Then again, Mapopolis was the only game in town for PalmOS users for a while and this did not make them complacent at all in terms of constantly trying to put out a better product. TomTom has a larger number of products, such as a stand-alone device, a GPS Unit, a PocketPC version of their software, and so on. Having to deal with so many different platforms might make it a lot harder logistically to keep communications with their customers regular and efficient. Then again, the fact that they use an identical interface on each of these platforms I’m sure helps. Your perspective may also be different depending on what part of the world you are in. Being a Dutch company means that Europeans will probably be more at home talking to TomTom and dealing with their software, while those from the U.S. may do better with Mapopolis. Then again, it may not matter as long as correspondence is through email and you understand that there’s a time difference in play. Mapopolis does have an official bulletin board, but for some reason they don’t advertise this (or link to it) on their own website. TomTom puts out an occasional newsletter, but the only kind of group “discussion” is via a “Gallery” where users submit pictures of their TomTom units in practice. I think both companies could do a much better job at communicating with their users. I think bulletin boards are a great feedback mechanism for companies, but I suppose they are also a double-edged sword because unless you get volunteers to manage them, they can take away valuable resources. Also, boards tend to magnify issues that only a few people may be having. More people are apt to post about a problem rather than to just say they aren’t having any! But even without a bulletin board, I would expect more newsletter-type communications from these companies, whether they are emailed or posted on their website. The latest “news” on TomTom’s site is a is from last October, and Mapopolis doesn’t have any news at all. In fact, this is why I didn’t know they had made the NavCard available, and it seems like I’m not alone. Many people on the other Treo-related discussion boards are talking a lot about the TomTom unit and comparing it, it seems, to the older Mapopolis 2 because they simply haven’t been informed that the NavCard exists. Sure it’s right on the front of the Mapopolis Website, but unless you have a reason to go there, you would never know.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that both of these products have many nice features, and also many things that weren’t implemented in the best way. In the following table I will try to summarize some of the advantages of each over the other, leaving out features that are basically equivalent:

TomTom Strengths	Mapopolis Strengths
Routing and Rerouting Speed	More useful directions (at least for U.S. drivers)
Rerouting capabilities	Better warning system of upcoming turns.
Ease of Use	Ease of Installation
Small size in main memory	More reliable Bluetooth GPS connects
Large Selection of Voices and Languages and easy selection of these	Voice uses street and location proper names, albeit with glitchy computer voice.
Holding all settings in memory despite resets	Able to record your own voice prompts
“3-D” Map View	Set zoom level permanently while navigating
Prettier looking maps	Use of feet instead of yards and more warnings and earlier warnings for turns
More fluid scrolling	Customize Map Orientation
Points of interest more visible (graphical)	Points of interest clickable (for further info) while navigating
No need to add contacts to mark spots for future reference (“favorites”)	Integration with Contacts
No need to replace SD card which you might be using for other applications	Company more responsive
Will allow you to use only battery power	Can have screen go off when using batteries (to save power)
Ability to add your own points of interest and POI categories	Ability to search for POI’s by name
Larger number of POI cateogies	Easier to navigate to a point of interest outside of current location
Set alerts when close to a given POI category	Customize highway preference
Larger Map Display while on a route	Larger Map Display while driving around (no route)
Favorites more flexible than favorites/geomarks in Mapopolis
Seems slightly more stable
Special Directional info only view

Go to Part 2

My Treo 650 is due to arrive on Friday, maybe Saturday, or if I’m extraordinarily lucky, maybe even Thursday! With that in mind I have been researching upgrade procedures from the Treo 600. It seems the prevailing wisdom right now is not to do the standard, backup and restore procedure, but rather to start from scratch and install applications one by one. Part of this is to avoid potential incompatibility issues. The other is due to the memory issue on Treo 650′s.

As you probably know, the Treo 650 has a different KIND of memory than the Treo 600. This memory is “non-volatile flash” memory which means that it can retain information without power, unlike the Treo 600′s. Unfortunately, the minimum allocation size of this memory is much bigger than the Treo 600′s at 512 bytes. So a file that only has a few bytes of information still takes up 512 bytes. The effective result of this is that the applications that took up only 50K on your Treo 600 may take up 80K on your Treo 650, and so memory gets eaten up much more quickly.

Pa1mOne in their ultimate wisdom for some reason decided that most users did not need any more memory on the Treo 650 than on the Treo 600. Even if we believe that Pa1mOne was unaware of the less efficient memory usage on the Treo 650 (and if this is true I’m not sure whether this is a harsher statement against Pa1mOne than them realizing it but simply ignoring it), the phone still deserved an increase in memory. Pa1mOne’s competition is PocketPC Smartphones that typically come with 64MB of memory (double what’s in Treo’s), and sometimes more. It seems rudimentary that in this day of cheaper and cheaper memory that this was a very cheap method to compete better. But as it stands, the memory has become the chief bottleneck for performance of such phones for power users.

Speaking of power users, it seems that Pa1mOne doesn’t really value them as much as the mass of other users. While this may be a good decision based on standard marketing practices, the problem with this for a company peddling advanced electronics is that those driving the development, hardware and software innovation, and even a lot of the buzz and referred sales for these devices happen to be those power users. I have heard countless users on discussion forums and other websites complaining about this memory issue and about Pa1mOne’s seeming disregard for the issue. There are some who have decided (and are I’m sure advising their friends) that the Treo 650 is not the phone to upgrade to, and that they plan to either wait for a future edition that gets some of these things – especially the memory – right, or even that they are going to vote with their feet and buy a PocketPC phone.

This is truly unfortunate and I hope for Pa1mOne’s sake that they get their act together, but what are we all to do in the mean time – if there even is a mean time? Pa1mOne’s answer to the firestorm that erupted when the memory issue became public was to offer a free 128MB SD card to users who requested it. Since then it seems that even those requesting it (the offer is not really advertised anywhere) haven’t been able to get one. This is not really any compensation either because a 128MB card is probably worth $15 on the open market and really doesn’t go towards fixing the issue. Most power users will want at least a 512MB for their phone, so the 128MB will just be used as an added card for storing some temporary files like MP3′s.

So, my thought this morning was towards fulfilling this need from someone other than Pa1mOne, since I can’t expect them to offer a real solution any time soon. TiVo has worked with a dedicated community of hardware and software hackers and developers since its inception. The result of this is a few companies (the best know of which are Weaknees and pvtupgrade) that offer kits or full installation services that will take your TiVo and expand its storage capacity by leaps and bounds. What I want to know is why aren’t there some enterprising electrical engineers looking into if not starting a company to do this for the Treo, at least trying it out on their own? Is there something inherent in the Treo 650′s design that makes it too difficult to get under the hood and change things? So I would just call on all people who have this kind of technical ability to do this. Unfortunately Pa1mOne made a big mistake, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be fixed by it’s most enterprising and knowledgeable “power users,” despite the lack of regard we seem to garner from Pa1mOne.

So come on people, let’s create our own solution to this problem! I’m not about to try myself because that would require at least four more years of schooling, but I know some of you have the expertise to do this right now!

With all the excitement over the Pa1mOne’s new Treo 650, forgotten by many is that there’s another phone out there that has a lot of the same functionality and can be found at a pretty darn cheap price. Sure the Treo 600 is now a year and a half old, but it doesn’t make it any less functional. This is the phone I’m currently using (since my Treo 650 hasn’t come in yet), and it serves me very well indeed, as I’ve mentioned maybe a few times here before?

Used Treo 600′s are going for about $300 give or take on eBay these days – I’ve been doing some research as I will be putting my own up for auction hopefully soon enough. But, it appears you can get a brand new one from Amazon.com for as little as $125. Here are the catches: you need to sign up for new service with Cingular, meaning being roped into a two-year contract; secondly, if you want to pay $125 and not $225, you also have to sign up for a subscription to Audible.com. Audible.com, as I’ve mentioned here a number of times, is an audio book download service. You pay $20/month and get two audio books that often could retail for $50 or more each. Huge selection, and they are playable on the Treo itself.

So, if you are looking to switch cell phone carriers anyway (I’m seriously considering doing this myself when my contract runs out with T-Mobile in a few months) and either would be interested in trying out Audible for a year or your already an Audible member but you’ve already fulfilled your commitment, you could enter the Smartphone world on the cheap. And with all the Treo 600 users trading up to the Treo 650, there are tons of accessories available for dirt cheap as well. Aside from this, I’m pretty sure you get the bonus of getting an unlocked phone. Cingular Treo 600′s unless I’m mistaken, are unlocked.

Well, since this day seems to be all about Treos and mobile phones and such, I figured I’d post this excellent in-depth review of the Treo 650 posted just a few days ago on the Singapore Palm Users’ Group (SPUG) Forums:

“The Treo 650 looks almost identical to the Treo 600. I’ve been using the review unit for four days now, and no one has noticed that I’m carrying a different device.

That’s not such a bad thing at all, in fact, I believe the design choice was an intentional one. The Treo 600’s body was almost perfect for me, and in my opinion, has not been surpassed yet by any other handheld device. The presence of the antenna, however (even if slightly reduced in size) still irks me a little…”

Nice work!

 

I guess it was too good to last. The Unlocked GSM Treo 650 has just been marked up by $100, after going on sale for $599 only two days ago. Perhaps Pa1mOne got so many orders in those first two days, they decided to play a little supply-and-demand-flexible-pricing, doh!

I’m not sure about this, but I can’t ever remember a situation where a company decided to increase the price of a released product just a couple days after it was released! Pa1mOne has really been making some major stumbles lately in terms of its PR. We had a bunch of leaks or initial releases of information before they pulled it back in, the memory debacle, and now this. Pa1mOne, really, you need to get your act together. Raising the price after releasing it just does not look good at all.

Luckily, I purchased my phone from Pa1mOne on Tuesday when the price was still $599, and that’s what I’ve been charged, but I do think it’s a bit unfair that others are going to suffer a $100 surcharge for not buying within the first couple of days. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t be that disappointed? Often it is the early adopters who have to pay through nose for the priveledge of playing with a new gadget before most people. Now for once this isn’t the case. Except of course that you could be an early adopter who just took a couple of days before ordering it and have to deal with this increase!

Gizmodo has some additional insight into this suggesting that Cingular may have convinced Pa1mOne to increase the price. Perhaps the differential was just not big enough and they felt they were losing too many people who would have rather bought an unlocked phone. If this is true, it really is a shame, but I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, it’s just speculation. But if it is true, I think this shows the ridiculousness of the whole locking issue, and how the phone subsidy and contracts work. It all serves to give the consumer fewer choices and to lock them into contracts for long periods which they have to pay hefty penalties to break out of. Number portability can only go so far in promoting competition, but the mergers have provided a definite counter to this. Of course the fact that we can get an unlocked phone at any price is better than what CDMA offers with no such portability, but the U.S. still has a long way to go before getting to the competitive environment in the European mobile industry, and when was it that Europe became a more competition-friendly place for consumers?

Link: Treonauts (it’s also all over the forums at myTreo.net and TreoCentral)

Pa1mOne has finally come through and made Treo 650′s available for “the rest of us.” Well, I guess except for Verizon and Nextel, although the Treo 600 was never released for Nextel. Basically, Cingular is now officially offering the Treo 650 on their websites at least, and you can order a 650 directly from Pa1mOne not only for use with Sprint and Cingular/AT&T, but also an unlocked version at a very reasonable $599 without any service agreement.

On the other hand, Amazon.com is also offering the 650, and if you are also signing up for new service, you can usually get a big discount from them. So for example they have the Sprint version of the Treo 650 for only $309.99 for new Sprint customers. A similar offer for other carriers is likely to become available soon, and I’ll post an update when they do, and until then you can now buy the Cingular version right off of Cingular’s website for only $399.99 (if you’re a new customer). Update – ok, you could, but somehow Cingular seems to be playing games with us and has taken the page down at least for the moment! Aside from the new customer offers, one can also get $100 for signing up with Audible.com. For those who haven’t heard me talk about this service before, it’s an audio book service where you download the audio books as files (like MP3′s, but with a copy-protection scheme or DRM) for prices that are considerably less than what you will ever find via retail. Most books are unabridged and you can play these files both on your computer but also on many portable devices like the iPod, the Treo 600, and now the Treo 650. It’s Definitely worth a look. If you are already an Audible.com member, as I am, you can also get the $100 discount if your contract is up = you will just need to sign up for a new year’s commitment to Audible’s subscription fees. I think the way you do this is you have to actually call Audible’s customer service.

So, if you were at all wondering whether I have taken the plunge myself, yes, I have. As soon as I got up this morning and found the news out, I immediately ordered an unlocked 650 from Pa1mOne with a Bluetooth headset. Apparently it will ship in “1 to 2 weeks” but as much as I’ve been longing for this, I opted not to take the express shipping and will simply put it out of my mind until March. Yeah, right! This also means that I will be selling my Treo 600 to defray the costs of the 650. In the past this has meant a trip to eBay. Unless of course one of my friends is interested in buying it from me cheap = I will have to cut you a really good break if I know you, since I was given a similar generosity by the friend I bought mine from.

The model I am buying is the unlocked GSM version of the phone. A quick factoid = there are some different protocols (communication languages) that cell phones use depending on carrier and on what part of the world you live in. The two major ones currently are GSM and CDMA. GSM is used in most of the world = maybe 95+%. CDMA is used in North America and a few countries in South America. But while CDMA used to be the primary protocol in the U.S., it is now becoming much less so = both Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM, whereas Sprint and Verizon use CDMA. There’s lots of debate on the internet regarding which protocol is best, which is complicated by newer versions of these protocols, so called 2.5G or 3G (G for Generation). I can’t speak to the technical differences too much, but GSM does still have two undeniable advantages over CDMA. For one it is used throughout the world, so theoretically one can take one’s phone almost anywhere and it will work, although you might need to call your carrier to activate it for international use. Secondly, GSM phones use SIM modules, which are little postage-stamp cards that contain a tiny chip. This chip is represents your mobile phone account, and can be transferred from phone to phone fairly easily. Whereas CDMA the entire phone is representing your account, so if you want to switch phones, you have to go through your carrier, and if you want to have more than one phone you will probably have to pay more. But SIM cards aren’t always straightforward either. Mobile carriers often lock the phones they sell so that they can only be used with their network. If you want to take your T-Mobile phone and lend it to a friend who has a Cingular account and SIM, you can’t do it. You will have to get the phone “unlocked” first. Sometimes this is not an issue at all. T-Mobile does allow you to do this if your account is in good standing (perhaps also you need to be a customer of theirs for at least 3 months). I remember also hearing that Cingular in general did not lock their phones, however they are locking the Treo 650, so I’m not sure what their policy will be regarding unlocking it. The reason I ordered an unlocked version is primarily because I’ve heard that T-Mobile is not offering the 650 until at least May. Oh well! The added bonus, though, of having an unlocked 650, is, of course, that I could decide to move it over to a Cingular account, and I could do this without any problem with an unlocked device.

Now that I will be getting the 650, I should finally be able to write up my follow up to the Treo 600 vs. Color Sidekick Review I wrote last summer. This one will be about the 650 and the Sidekick II, which my wife currently has. What would be great is if I could also get my hands on one of the newer blackberries and/or even a PocketPC phone and throw those into the mix! But without any real recognition from these manufacturers, I would have to go out and buy these phones, something that my current budget won’t allow for! Heck even major sites that cover gadgets and consumer electronics don’t get a lot in the way of loaner units for review, so I’m not going to be presumptuous and expect this will ever happen for me, but it sure would be nice!

I know that I concentrate on this one phone when there are others out there, but from all I read the Treo 600 and 650 have the most media buzz about them. Is PalmOS the best platform for a smartphone? I don’t know. There are certainly other OS’s out there (Windows Mobile and Symbian) that have larger development communities and phones from major manufacturers who use these. A lot of PocketPC phones also have had Bluetooth and even Wifi (if not built in at least available via expansion card) for quite a while now. Why then am I just concentrating on the Treo 650′s new release? It’s a good question. For one, I’m somewhat biased due to the fact that I have a Treo 600. I’m also biased because I’ve had owned Palm PDA’s, including the Palm V and a Clie model who’s number escapes me. I’ve played with PocketPC devices here and there, but never owned one for an extended period. Aside from this, my inclination is to like Palm because it is not the 1-million ton Gorilla that is Microsoft. In fact until recently it was looking more and more decentralized. Not quite open-source, but the software company PalmSource is separate from the hardware company Pa1mOne, and there were other hardware developers out there like Sony, IBM, Handspring, etc. But more recently there’s seems to be more consolidation. Sony has given up on the PalmOS and is no longer making Clie’s. I’m pretty sure IBM isn’t making their PalmOS PDA’s either. Pa1mOne of course bought Handspring and now they are one company. There are still plenty of third-party developers, but the situation is looking more and more like Microsoft and it’s very tight control over its mobile OS marketplace.

Several events have happened with regards to the Treo 650 have started to erode even more hope in this product. Some have to do with Pa1mOne itself, but others have to do with decisions primarily made by its mobile carrier partners.

1. Pa1mOne decides to have a graduated release of the Treo 650. Sprint gets it in November of 2004, and none other get it until 2005. It’s the end of January and the second mobile carrier to get it, Cingular, has yet to, and it looks like they won’t be for at least a week or two more. T-Mobile will not get until at least May and Verizon will also be late. I’m not sure how much of this is Pa1mOne and how much are the carriers, but I just think it’s ridiculous to have different carriers not be able to have access to basically the same device at the same time. It causes some real resentment and there’s nothing that customers can do because most are locked into contracts that are very costly to walk away from.
2. Sprint disables DUN (Dial-up-Networking) via Bluetooth. Many users, even power users won’t care about this. What this does is allows you to use your mobile phone as a modem. Doing this means that you can basically do data for free (if you are getting unlimited minutes at the time you connect). You don’t get the data from Sprint to your phone, but rather you are just making a phone call and the data travels over that line to the phone, which is then passed to a laptop. Maybe it’s six of one half dozen of another in some ways because with digital phones, everything is really data when you come down to it, although a voice call takes up less bandwidth then Sprint’s higher-speed data network. However, you can still use a cable to connect your phone to your laptop, the only thing you can’t do is to use Bluetooth (wireless) to connect. Not a big deal, but a stupid limitation. Sprint eventually backtracked after a big outcry that propagated over the Internet and promised a “fix” but has yet to come out with one. A user eventually created a hack that did just that, though it is of course unofficial.
3. Memory Deficiency. After the Sprint Treo 650 came out, it was soon discovered that the way it managed memory wasn’t as efficient as the Treo 600. Because it contained the same paltry 32MB of memory (12MB of which were taken up by system files), the effective result was that the 650 was actually a DOWNgrade when it came to memory! The fact that Pa1mOne could not add even a few dollars worth of memory to alleviate this problem and give Treo users more breathing room angered many of its customers including this one. While the 650 is definitely better in some ways, it still lags behind competitors in others, such as memory, ability to handle Wifi (or even have Wifi built in), it’s still somewhat low resolution VGA camera, etc.
4. Now that Cingular is finally coming out with the Treo 650, it seems like they are ignoring the whole debacle with DUN and the Sprint Treo 650 and are planning to disable it as well. Or perhaps they saw how Sprint took a momentary lump for disabling the feature but still hasn’t issued their fix and a lot of people have just forgotten about it. Why they would care enough to disable a feature that only makes DUN a little more convenient (but doesn’t make it impossible by any stretch) is beyond me. I can understand why these carriers might not want you to have DUN if you aren’t paying for a data connection, but just making it a little less convenient doesn’t make sense. I think one big problem is that these carriers have distinct marketing groups. They have power users who are going to take advantage of these things like DUN, and Wifi to circumvent the fees that these carriers normally charge for the equivalent services that their own networks provide. There seems to be an inherent conflict of interest here with these companies battling with some of their customers. But I think they are fighting the inevitable. Eventually we’ll be using very high-speed, high-range wireless networks that blanket the country (the world) and they will use Skype or Voice Over IP technology for voice calls and the same data network for data. I guess until then, these carriers will still be butting heads with the power users who want to push the technology to its limits which also means ostensibly robbing the carriers of money. I would argue, though, that this group of users is very small compared to the overall customer base and also that these users, if they could not take advantage of these loopholes, would mostly not be paying the extra money in order to do the things they are trying to do with the loopholes but via the normal use of the phone.

So, with all this taken into account, I wonder how wise it is to concentrate on this one phone. I would certainly be willing to try out a PocketPC phone, but not having the disposable income to buy a new cell phone every couple of months as some on these mobile phone forums do, I’m probably not going to be looking at one any time soon – unless of course I start getting some sent to me for review purposes, but so far that hasn’t happened. While PocketPC phones have some advantages like those I’ve listed (as well as tighter integration with Windows on your PC, if you happen to use Windows, generally faster processors, etc.), they have disadvantages as well. For one, they generally are a bit bulkier than the Treo, although of course there are exceptions to this. They also tend to be a bit pricier as well. I’m sure there are other pros and cons that I’m missing, and for different users, different platforms will be the right decision. I’m not saying that either is right for everyone. People need to look at their specific needs in a phone/data device and figure this out for themselves. All I’m saying is that the idea of the Treo (or any PalmOS smartphone) being the only phone to look at is being slowly eroded from my mind. Part of this is because I simply can’t buy the phone yet due to what I think is probably a marketing decision or exclusivity deals by Pa1mOne, T-Mobile, or both. I know that PocketPC phones have the same issues and this is why many power users simply skip the branded phones and go for generic unlocked ones (but pay a price for this). Then again, it doesn’t appear that there are such unlocked ones available anywhere for consumers, only branded ones. Perhaps that will eventually turn the tide for some as they get sick of waiting for their own carrier to come out with a model. If I’m waiting months and months for T-Mobile to come out with a Treo 650 and there isn’t even an unlocked one available, maybe I’ll just get fed up and go over to a PocketPC phone. This is the risk that Pa1mOne faces by offering the phone to some but not all who want it. There just seems to be something inherently unfair about that, don’t you think?

It looks like the Treo 650 may soon be available to most of the world. For the last couple of months, it’s been exclusively available in one country (the U.S.) from one provider (Sprint) using a radio protocol (CDMA) that is incompatible with 99% of what the rest of the world uses (GSM). Last week we heard some rumors that Cingular (which uses GSM) would soon be carrying the long-awaited follow-up to the popular Treo 600. Today there is word that Pa1mOne has put up a page about a GSM Treo 600 without specifying a specific carrier, and writing that it is “coming”. This is good news for most smartphone enthusiasts who have been thinking of buying the Treo 650 because what this is saying basically is that Pa1mOne should be at least selling through their own site an unlocked GSM version of the phone which anyone who’s carrier uses GSM (most of the world outside the U.S. does, as well as T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T within the U.S.) should be able to use without any problem. Just swap out your SIM card and plug it in and it should work immediately.

For some reason Pa1mOne has decided to remove the picture they put up, so it now links to a generic page, but Treonauts has a screen capture. Seems similar to another snafu that they made and then retracted later which leads me to think that either they aren’t communicating very well with their web team or else this is yet another stealth marketing move to create more buzz amongst the fanatics!