treo

There are 2 posts tagged treo.

Old smartphones never die, they just get new software

Take the Treo 650.

Launched four years ago, the smartphone has proven itself more popular than its previous incarnations, even helping rivals widen the appeal of a digital organizer doubling as a mobile phone or vice versa.

However, because of its unmistakably masculine qualities—it is wider and bulkier than most phones—the Treo 650 isn’t exactly the portable communication device for everyone. This was not helped by the fact
that a brand new unit in 2004 cost about twice the price of a mid-end mobile phone.

Never an early adopter but nonetheless a former Palm Pilot owner (I got myself a IIIX in 2000), I waited for the right time to get my hands on a Treo 650, used or otherwise.

The fateful moment arrived a little more than two years ago when a professor-friend of mine decided to ditch his device because he had, in his words, “grown tired of it.”

He then offered to sell me his 650—including a spare battery, a desktop charger, an adapter for a regular earphone jack, among others—for a very friendly price.

I bit.

It was one of the best decisions of my electronic life, inaugurating what may well be the start of my—pardon the exaggeration—mobile digital odyssey.

Besides allowing me to surf via GPRS (whatever that means), the Treo 650 enabled me to write a draft of a blog entry while inside a fastfood outlet. (Naturally, it was about the benefits of having an easily accessible handheld computer while waiting for the rain to subside.)

And thanks to Documents to Go, I was able to edit a feature story on the fly, beating a deadline in the process.

But that’s not all.

After having installed TCPMP—The Core Pocket Media Player, one of the best free apps around—I have seen episodes of my favorite shows on the Treo while in transit. Not to mention the fact that I have regularly beaten the computer in the Palm version of Monopoly.

To this day, the Treo 650 helps me keep track of my schedules, website passwords, and titles of the books I’ve read since 2007.

Indeed, the Treo 650’s usefulness knows no bounds.

About a week ago, I installed two new software apps that have made me grateful that the phone’s technology—despite its age—has not been rendered obsolete.

The first app I installed was Life As I See It, a digital diary best suited for the phone’s extended keyboard.
Not only does it allow users to type in their thoughts instantly, the app’s also features password protection, allowing secrets to remain that way.

While no such privacy guarantees exist in HiMoney, its features as a personal expense software far exceed expectations.

With provisions for both income and expense accounts, HiMoney 1.0a assists users in categorizing costs and, if so desired, putting them in graphs and pie charts.

Both old but free, the applications have made me feel proud that I have three Palms, two organic and one digital.

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Picture of the actual Treo 650 that I use taken with the 2 MP camera of a Nokia 6120. Picture was enhanced using my newly-acquired Adobe Photoshop skills. And by the way, the person featured on my Treo is Colonel Saul Tigh, one of the toughest guys onboard the Battlestar Galactica.

Stranded

Treo 650

SMARTPHONES can be useful.
Especially if a summer downpour catches you unawares, leaving your underpants wet and forcing you to seek refuge in a fastfood outlet whose airconditioning is slightly above the temperature needed to produce ice.
Which is exactly what happened to me Tuesday night in Quezon City on the way home.
Immediately after getting off a jeep at Philcoa, I had nowhere to go. A small body of dirty water had formed right in the middle of a tricycle terminal where the last leg of my journey home usually begins. In the meantime, the rain gave no indication that it was letting up anytime soon: it poured continuously from the moment the train I was on pulled into the Quezon Avenue station until my untimely arrival via jeep at Philcoa.
Although I could take an alternative route to the apartment from Philcoa, it involved a far too complex process to be appreciated by greedy, predatory cabdrivers intent on making a quick buck or two from desperate commuters such as myself.
Besides convincing a cabdriver that the road home was free from flood, traffic, zealous policemen, and criminals, I was expected to fork out extra for his kindness, that is, if he actually decided to take me.
Unfortunately, since I was already drenched and stranded, my extra reserve of goodwill was in dire need of replenishment. It absolutely dried up when another driver told me that the leg room of his cab’s front passenger area was inundated with rainwater. It was drier than the humor of columnist Conrado de Quiros.
Incensed, I ran for cover, which was an exercise in futility—if there was one—since I was already gearing up to become a finalist for a wet t-shirt contest: the fat Filipino male version. I then whipped out my smartphone, and continuously pressed just one single button to dial a pre-programmed number: my wife’s. Upon being connected, I told her that I would be unable to pick her up immediately because I couldn’t get to Charing—a 1994 midnight blue Toyota sedan we inherited from her parents—who was parked at home. (As it turned out, my wife was given a lift by a very close friend who had an errand to run. Thanks, Barry. And Maya too for her thoughtfulness.)
In the meantime, since I was already stranded in the area, I told my wife that I might as well have dinner at a nearby fastfood outlet where I proceeded to freeze my balls off, as earlier mentioned.
After I ate a hasty supper of chicken and spaghetti, I once more unsheated my underutilized smartphone—a Treo 650. With two hands, I began to do the finger mambo on the unit’s qwerty keyboard using the Documents to Go application.
As I whiled the storm away, I eventually produced a short but nevertheless workable draft of a piece whose parts were enhanced to produce the blog entry which you are reading now.
Moral of the story: it pays to have a smartphone handy especially if you’re going to be stranded in a cold fastfood restaurant—it keeps your mind off from your freezing balls.
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FROM THE ENGLISH USAGE DEPT. Re: phrase “catches you unawares.” Is it catches you unawares or unaware?