Palm's new Treo 700p may look like older Treos, but it is loaded with internal improvements that Treo fans have been waiting for. The 700p, available in two versions,adds high-speed EV-DO networking, a better camera, and updated software to our Editors' Choice Palm Treo 650. That's enough to keep Palm in the lead for the best-balanced, easiest-to-use smartphone in the USA.
The Treo 700p looks just like its Windows Mobile cousin, the Treo 700w, which in turn looks almost exactly like the familiar and much-loved Treo 650. The main difference between the 650 and the 700p is the keyboard. The 700p's keys are squarer, making them a hair more susceptible to mistyping. The five-way rocker above the keyboard is bigger, and the activity keys near the rocker have been juggled around a bit; the Menu button has been moved down to replace the right Shift key, and the power/hang-up button and phone pick-up button are now at the top of the button stack. The 700p's sharp, 320-by-320 color screen is identical to the 650's (and much higher-res than the 700w's). At 4.4 by 2.3 by 0.9 inches and 6.4 ounces, all three phones could easily be mistaken for each other.

The advances in the Treo 700p are in software. It takes the 700w's advantages—fast EV-DO networking and a 1.3-megapixel camera—and marries them to the latest in easy-to-use Palm OS software. Yes, the Palm OS is getting old; most notably, it doesn't support multitasking, which is annoying when you're downloading e-mail and want to do something else. But it's still tremendously responsive and requires relatively few keypresses or stylus taps to do what you want.

The 700p is also the first smartphone to access Sprint TV streaming video service. The live TV channels look blocky on the 700p's high-res screen; they're transmitted in 176-by-132, and the 700p is 320-by-320. But they stream, and they work. Handmark's On Demand information service also comes with the Treo, delivering maps, weather, movie times, and news headlines.

Because DocumentsToGo is burned into ROM, the 700p has 60MB of memory available. That's not much in the Microsoft Windows world, but it's plenty for smaller Palm apps. You can add an SD card for more storage. The 700p supports the FAT32 file system, so it should work with current SD cards up to 4GB, but not with next-generation SD cards that use the SDHC standrad.
Although the Treo syncs easily with both Macs (with iSync or Palm Desktop) and PCs (with Palm Desktop or Microsoft Outlook), Mac users don't get the ultimate prize—the ability to use the Treo as a USB modem on Sprint's EV-DO network. With it hooked up to a PC using Sprint's Connection Manager, I got excellent speeds of 900 to 1,100 Kbps. That's awesome. But when I connected to a Mac using Bluetooth, speeds slowed down to about 200 to 300 Kbps. The problem is the Treo's Bluetooth 1.2 stack, which is just too slow to handle the full speed of EV-DO.

You won't get that full speed in Palm's Blazer browser, either. Blazer's not-so-fast rendering engine kept effective speeds on bandwidth-test Web sites down to about 200 Kbps. But the device as a whole feels very responsive, and it's fast enough to play music or stream video. (Streaming media appears in a customized version of Kinoma's media player, which can handle MP3 , WMA , WMV , and MPEG4 streams.) In both processor and video benchmarking tests, the 700p came out slightly faster than both the Treo 650 and the Palm TX, the Editors' Choice standalone PDA.

The 700p has plenty of messaging options. The simple VersaMail POP3 /IMAP mail client now syncs e-mail and contacts with Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers, remembers recently used addresses, and hooks into DocumentsToGo for attachment reading. There are also hooks on board for Good's GoodLink corporate e-mail system and Sprint's own Business Connection push e-mail. The separate SMS / MMS app now has a threaded, conversation-based view, where messages from the same address are grouped together.

Also on board are a file manager, the popular Bejeweled game, and a basic version of the Pocket Tunes MP3 player, which you can upgrade for $24.95 to support WMA files, music purchased from Microsoft-compatible stores, and streaming radio stations. Palm also includes the Avvenu remote-file-access service (check PCMag.com soon for our review of Avvenu).

As a phone, the Treo 700p is fine but not great. Sound through the earpiece in a noisy location was a little wobbly, and transmissions were clear but a bit tinny. There's no in-ear voice feedback or noise cancellation. The Treo paired well with my Plantronics Bluetooth headset (though I've heard Treos have some trouble with Motorola headsets), and the speakerphone is loud and powerful. Battery life is its one standout strength: The beefy battery gives it 5 hours 16 minutes of talk time. That's especially impressive considering that the screen no longer completely turns off when you're in a call. A new "ignore with text" feature lets you send a quick SMS to someone calling you if, for example, you're in a meeting. And that the phone vibrates when you hit its mute switch is a nice touch.

Excellent navigation software sets the handsome Motorola V325 apart from the general pack of Verizon voice phones. Though it lacks features that power users will demand, such as Bluetooth , it's an attractive, good-sounding phone that will help you get around with its GPS functions. Of course, you'll pay extra for that feature, so make sure you really need it.

The V325 is a solid, well-designed flip phone. The velvety-black, soft-touch plastic and grooved metal construction give the handset a classy, businesslike look-and-feel. The keys inside are flat but large, and the 176-by-220 screen, although not huge, is quite bright. A two-line text display on the outside shows time (but not date), battery, and Caller ID information, just like the displays on the Motorola V557 and V330. When the V325 receives a call, lights on the outside of the flip pulse seductively.

The VGA camera on the outside has no flash, but it does have a self-portrait mirror. (The self-portrait mirror is the little mirror next to the camera on a cameraphone that lets you take pictures of yourself. It's on a lot of models that don't have color external screens. If you have a color external screen, you can use it as a viewfinder; if there's no viewfinder on the outside of the flip, the mirror helps you position yourself.) Side buttons control the volume, speakerphone, and voice recorder.

Reception and call quality through the earpiece and speakerphone are both fine, though the lack of Bluetooth or voice dialing in such a car-focused phone hurts. Battery life, at 3 hours 50 minutes of continuous talk time, is in the midrange for Verizon phones.

The driving-directions service is better than Sprint Nextel's competing TeleNav software (as seen on the Nextel i605), with clear, colorful on-screen maps and loudly shouted directions.

Maps look good, and they load within a few seconds. Like Sprint's service, VZ Navigator uses a two-step process for finding its location. First it uses cell-tower triangulation to get a quick but less accurate fix on your location. Then it gets a slower but more accurate fix via a satellite GPS. I found the triangulation to be quite good even in Manhattan.

You get multiple routing choices, including the fastest, the shortest, car, bicycle, and truck options, as well as the option to avoid highways, tolls, and HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes. The "avoid toll roads" option didn't seem to avoid toll bridges and tunnels, and the "on foot" option sent me on some unfortunately roundabout routes. Still, basic driving directions were accurate, and VZ Navigator even corrected us when we went off route. A "local search" function lets you find points of interest near you, including ATMs, restaurants, gas stations, movie theaters, and anything that pops up in a Yellow Pages search, such as the Ziff-Davis offices.

The service costs $9.99 per month or $2.99 per day. We just wish the phone had Bluetooth, so it could integrate better into an automotive setup. Right now, VZ Navigator is Verizon's only GPS-enabled app; though Verizon also sells MapQuest Mobile and Vindigo city guides, these guides don't use GPS.

Otherwise, the V325's functions are basic. The VGA camera isn't very good, taking photos that manage to be dim and overexposed in the same shot. There is no video recording or playback option. To retrieve your photos, you must e-mail them to yourself using Verizon's picture messaging service. You can play MP3 ringtones, but only if you buy them from Verizon. Gaming was a little annoying because there's no way to mute the keypad sounds, though that's not a rare problem. The 33.6MB of storage has plenty of room for photos, ringtones, and games. There's no high-speed networking.

VZ Navigator makes the V325 a unique product in Verizon's lineup. But if you don't need the driving directions, this is an expensive phone for what you get. Other phones in its price range, such as the Motorola E815 and LG VX8100, have megapixel cameras and Bluetooth. Phones with similar feature sets to the V325 but without GPS navigation, such as the LG VX5200 , are generally cheaper. Pick up the V325 to help you get around, but turn to one of those other models if you're looking for a more complete or more affordable phone.

Samsung's SCH-A950 brings a jaunty jog-dial navigator to Verizon's V Cast downloadable music service and has plenty of power for a Verizon phone. If you're looking to play Windows Media format songs on your phone, it'll be tough to choose between this model and the LG VX8100, though we still prefer the Motorola E815 as our overall favorite Verizon model.

The SCH-A950 is a slightly bulky 4-ounce flip phone, but as long as you like its tomato-red color, it's still attractive. When it's flipped closed, there's a color screen on the outside that doubles as a camera viewfinder, a large jog wheel with music-control buttons under it, and two oval-shaped stereo speakers on either side at the top. On the sides of the phone, you'll find volume buttons, a TransFlash memory card slot, and a camera button. Flip the phone open to find a bright, medium-sized, 176-by-220 screen and a keypad of very close-set buttons, including a dedicated speakerphone key.

The A950 connects calls as well as the competing LG VX8100 does, though it isn't quite up to the Motorola E815's reception standards. The earpiece and especially the speakerphone (which works with the flip open or closed) are unusually loud and clear. As on most Verizon phones, the Bluetooth functionality is crippled; it works with headsets, but not for dial-up networking or file transfer. Our A950 worked well with both Logitech and Plantronics headsets. It uses VoiceSignal's excellent voice-dialing technology, which requires no training.

One problem you should be aware of: Our first A950 had more audio dropouts than we found acceptable. Verizon sent us a second one which didn't have that problem, so we're not downgrading the phone's rating. If your A950's audio drops out more than you'd like, Verizon lets you exchange the phone, no questions asked, within the first 15 days of usage.

The A950's flagship feature is Verizon's V Cast Music store, where you can either download songs for $1.99 each over the phone or sync your music from a PC with Windows Media Player 10 using a $29.99 add-on kit. The phone doesn't natively support MP3 files—the kit converts all your music to WMA format when it transfers the songs to the phone. The phone's stereo speakers play music at pretty high volume, and you can listen to music through a wired headset, but using a Bluetooth headset. You also can't assign your own music as ringtones, a typical Verizon move.

The on-phone V Cast interface is almost painfully sluggish, but V Cast Music is still the most elegant and complete music-phone solution available today. You can use the buttons on the outside of the phone's flip to play phone-created playlists. Unfortunately, the jog dial is tragically underused; its only functions are to scroll through a set of playlists and to fast-forward or rewind a song while paused. We would have loved to see a jog-dial interface that would have let us manipulate more of the phone's functions with the flip closed.

The SCH-A950's 1.3-megapixel camera takes very sharp, if slightly dim, indoor photos and very sharp, if slightly overexposed, outdoor shots. It's better than the VX8100's camera. The camcorder mode takes the usual videos you see on most phones, at 176-by-144 and 15 frames per second, and you can save photos and videos to the TransFlash card for easy transfer to your PC.

We downloaded Need For Speed Most Wanted, a 3D game, and it played with aplomb, as did TV news clips from the V Cast Video service. For serious gaming, however, you may want to check out the VX8100 because of its better-spaced keys.

The Motorola E815 and Motorola RAZR V3c are still our favorite Verizon phones, largely because of their excellent reception and voice quality. They also play MP3s, although they don't sync with Verizon's music store. If you're looking for a V Cast Music phone, it makes sense to compare the A950 with the very similar LG VX8100. The phones are about the same size, with similar stereo speakers and screens. The VX8100 uses the more convenient miniSD memory-card format and has a better-spaced keypad. Verizon offers a modem plan for the VX8100 that lets you use the phone to connect your laptop to their high-speed EV-DO service. On the other hand, the A950 has better battery life and a better camera than the VX8100.