Palm’s most stylish smartphone yet, the Palm Treo Pro includes a few neat design features that make using this handset a very enjoyable one.

Physically, this is a dashing handset. Its glossy black colour scheme and curved edges is very reminiscent of the iPhone, and the shape and feel, particularly the back of the handset, makes it hard not to compare the two.
The main difference between the Treo Pro and the iPhone is the Palm includes a physical QWERTY keyboard and regular phone buttons. Those with large fingers may not like the look of the small buttons, but they are actually comfortable enough and provide a good level of tactility.

In the Treo Pro, Palm has built selection buttons into the touchscreen. The screen is flush with the front of the phone, making it fairly easy to touch the bottom of the display with your finger instead of a stylus. The display itself is very well designed and is excellent for both general and multimedia use, especially when viewing pictures and video content.

In great news for music lovers, the Palm Treo Pro has a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a micro-USB connection rather than a proprietary one. There is also a microSD card slot so memory can be increased, but you do have to remove the rear cover to access this slot.

The controls on the handset only add to the stylish look and feel of the Treo Pro. Aside from the big and ergonomic five-way navigational pad, call keys are big and ergonomic, and the four shortcut buttons are flush with the rest of the front, making the handset look and feel clean. There is also a backlit Palm logo in the centre of the navigational pad that lights up when you receive a new voicemail message, which is a nice addition.
Extra physical features include a Wi-Fi button and a silent mode switch. Pressing the Wi-Fi button opens the wireless configuration screen, while pressing and holding it turns the Wi-Fi on or off. The screensaver displays time and date information, as well as a notification of any new SMS or MMS messages. All of this can be seen even when the display is in standby mode.
The Palm Treo Pro uses a version of the Windows Mobile home screen that makes this device very easy to use. The standard collection of Windows Mobile 6.1 applications are all here in the Treo Pro, including Excel, PowerPoint and Word Mobile applications, Windows Media Player and a PDF viewer.

A suite of Windows Live applications including Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, Live Search, plus Telstra Business and My Place shortcuts are also to be found in the Start menu. For email, the Palm Treo Pro is easy to configure for use with Microsoft Exchange. You can also use standard POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts, including Gmail. This is a great smartphone indeed.