Handspring Treo 90

A compact handheld that comes with plenty of software.

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Price: £229

Manufacturer: Handspring

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Verdict

Pros:
Good software included.
Keyboard saves learning Graffiti.

Cons:
Keyboard small and cramped.
Screen is only 160 x 160.

Overall:
The Treo 90 is compact and supplied with some excellent additional software, but it would benefit from a cradle. Some users might find the keyboard too cramped to use, and the screen doesn't compare well with the competition.

Nigel Whitfield, Personal Computer World 21 Jan 2003

Handspring's Treo 90 is the replacement for the Visor Prism. It is a PalmOS-based organiser with colour screen but, unlike the other Treos, no built-in GSM or GPRS.

It also dispenses with the Graffiti pen input area on most other Palms in favour of a tiny keyboard that you can use with your thumbs. You still need the stylus, though, to tap on-screen icons.

Power is supplied via a rechargeable battery, and syncing is done via USB, with a sync button on the cable that plugs into the Treo. There's also a Secure Digital (SD) card slot, recently updated to SD/IO, allowing you to use things like Bluetooth cards.

As well as the usual PalmOS apps, there's Handspring's version of Datebook 3, giving more views on your calendar; the Blazer web browser; Onetouch email and Wordsmith, an excellent PalmOS word processor.

With its 16MB of memory and 33MHz processor, the Treo 90 is fairly nippy and makes light work of large apps such as Tomtom Citymaps, and the SD slot means you could store a lot of data on here.

Seasoned Palm users, though, might miss Graffiti, and those with chunky fingers may find the keyboard a little cramped. We'd recommend downloading the free Newpen software, which allows you to write Graffiti anywhere on the screen, making Treo more Palm-like.

The STN colour display is still only 160 x 160 pixels, and the backlighting was uneven on our sample; it's also only 4,096 colours, compared to the 64,000 of the old Visor Prism. We would have liked to have seen high resolution and more colours.

The Treo 90 is very compact, with the great ease of use of Palm OS. But set against the similarly priced Sony Clie SJ30 and Palm m130 its only real plus points are its size and the keyboard.

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