Palm Treo 700p Versus T-Mobile Sidekick II

Snartphone Showdown: A First Hand Look at the New Palm Treo 700p in Comparison to the T-Mobile Sidekick II

Change has been never my strong point. Case in point, until recently, I owned the same cell phone for nearly five years. In November 2001, I purchased the Samsung SCH-8500 phone with Sprint service for under $150. At this time, it was one of the better phones on the market and had been available to the public for about a year. It replaced another Samsung model that I had purchased as my first cell phone two years earlier. To say the Samsung SCH-8500 was reliable is an understatement. The phone traveled with me daily for five years and provided near impeccable service and quality (despite what some say, I firmly believe some phone models produce better than service than other models on the same network). As cell phones matured, the fancy phone features of the Samsung SCH-8500 were few and far between. Even simple SMS text messaging was a struggle at times. The lack of a color screen made it a fossil in today’s world of cell phones that stream live television. But the phone itself never let me down and proved its durability once and for all by surviving a trip to the bottom of a swimming pool. Two days later, it was business as you usual. Despite picking up the Sidekick II from T-Mobile along the way, the Samsung SCH-8500 had become my trusted sidekick.

Alas, it was finally time for a change. Having not purchased a new phone in nearly five years, Sprint offered some nice rebates and discounts to consider upgrading my antique. After plenty of due diligence, I decided to leap into the modern world of cellular phones with both feet and pick up the recently released Treo 700p smartphone by Palm.