The Treo Pro’s screen isn’t the best we’ve seen and looks a little grainy to our eyes, but it’s both bright and clear enough, even in daylight. Its square shape is unusual for a Windows Mobile device, but it’s one Palm has used on its other Windows Mobile smartphones. It has increased the resolution from 240 x 240 to 320 x 320, but the screen is still physically smaller than on other Windows Mobile devices. The extra pixels are obviously welcome, but the aspect ratio means that it can’t display widescreen video or web pages as well as a taller, lower-resolution display (most WM devices have a 240 x 320 screen).

There’s much to like about the Palm Treo Pro – it’s sleek, highly pocketable and is packed with connectivity options. Battery life could be better (the claimed 250 hour standby time worked was more like 100 hours in our tests) and we’d have liked to see at least some attempt to mask Windows Mobile, but these are hardly complaints that are unique to Palm.

At around £400 unlocked, however, the Treo Pro is on the pricey side. The HTC Touch Pro is only £95 more and is a much, much nicer Windows Mobile smartphone, while the excellent Symbian-powered Nokia E71 is £70 less. T-Mobile will soon be offering the Treo Pro for nothing on an 18-month £35/month tariff, but that’s on a par with the iPhone 3G's cost – and again, that’s a much better smartphone.

So, while it’s good to see a Palm smartphone that catches up with the competition, it still has a way to go before it will worry the likes of HTC.

Related: Hands-on with the Palm Treo Pro (video)

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