The product I went to the show most excited to see has to be the BenQ P50. This PocketPC 2003 phone looks to be the industry’s best bet at a direct compete for the Treo 650 (which I own and like a lot, but is a bit rough around the edges).
I was really hoping that the P50 would be a home run. It’s not.
On the plus side, the phone is very solid. It feels really great in your hand. Nice heft… it feels like a much more durable device than the 650. Beyond that, I was pretty disappointed. This is a phone that will ship in February or March in Taiwan, but the units on display were routinely locking up. The “one hand” navigation is terrible on the phone; you’re going to be using the stylus a lot. The keyboard is decent, but is not as good as the revised keyboard on the 650.
Marcus Adolphsson from TreoCentral has written up a much more detailed side by side comparison. If you’re interested in such things, I recommend taking a look. On a related note, one of the cool things that happened at the show was that Marcus walked right up me to in the DirectTV booth and said “Hey I see you’ve got a Treo, you should stop by my site TreoCentral.com.” He seems like a very nice guy and it was cool to bump into him at the show.
January 10, 2005 at 12:04 pm
I was really hoping the P50 would turn out better than it did. I wouldn’t mind the price so much if it had what I wanted but I will probably get the GSM Treo. How do you like your Treo by the way?
January 10, 2005 at 12:22 pm
I like my Treo pretty well. It’s just about the right size, the keyboard is a huge improvement over the 600 (which, to be fair, I never owned). There are things that are frustrating. For example, sound quality is a problem. The patch on http://www.shadowmite.comshadowmite.com does seem to help. Bluetooth is less than perfect (I have the Moto HS-850 and they’re way too quiet). There’s a kind of workaround for this too, but it’s an annoying hack. I suppose the thing I’m most struck by is that the email part is still not nearly as good as the blackberry solution I was using 5 years ago. There’s lots of nuance things that RIM gets right that everyone else misses.
October 29, 2005 at 6:51 pm
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