Hands-on: Palm Treo 800w with Wi-Fi, GPS

The first new Windows Mobile-based Treo in 18 months has arrived, and it's got the Centro's looks plus two features that Treo fans have been clamoring for: Wi-Fi and GPS. Check out my hands-on impressions.

Available now on Sprint for $250 with a two-year service plan, the Treo 800w marks the first new Treo since the Palm OS-based 755p back in May 2007—and we haven't seen a new Windows Mobile-based Treo since the 750 way back in January of last year.

The 800w is also the first of its kind to break with the old Treo look and feel. The phone now more closely resembles the compact Centro, although it's not quite so tiny (it's two-tenths of an inch taller and almost two-tenths of an inch wider), and at five ounces, it’s more than half an ounce heavier. Still, it's the first Treo that you can reasonably fit in a jeans pocket.

The 800w's QWERTY keypad feels pretty tightly packed in, although the domed buttons will be familiar to anyone who's ever wielded a Treo before. Also notable is the 320 by 320-pixel display, which is considerably roomier than the 320-by-240 screen on previous Windows Mobile Treos.

Of course, the big news with the 800w is that it packs in both Wi-Fi and GPS, a pair of features that have been sorely missing from the Treo line. The phone comes with a pair of handy GPS apps—a mapping program that helps you find nearby points of interest, and the TeleNav-powered Sprint Navigation, good for audible turn-by-turn directions.

Running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, the 800w comes with Microsoft's mobile Office suite (including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), along with mobile versions of Outlook and Internet Explorer. In my tests, Windows Mobile felt relatively peppy on the 800w, although I still find Microsoft's mobile OS to be as cumbersome as ever, saddled with tricky-to-navigate menus and submenus. I wish Palm could come up with some kind of user-friendly interface to run on top of Windows Mobile, similar to TouchFlo on HTC's Windows Mobile devices.

Other features on the 800w include Bluetooth (along with stereo Bluetooth support), a 2MP camera, a microSD expansion slot (for up to 8GB of additional storage), access to streaming video clips via Sprint TV, and laptop tethering (you'll need a $15 phone-as-modem add-on plan).

Correction: In my original post, I wrote that Sprint Navigation on the 800w costs $10/month; in fact, the service comes free with any of the 800w's available data plans. Apologies for the goof.

Related:
Product page [Sprint]