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Small Business Computing (SMB) this week bestowed its Excellence in Technology Awards to products in 24 different categories. For the first time, the online magazine (owned by the same company as this Web site) honored a handheld.

Not surprisingly, the palmOne Treo 650 barely edged out second-place finisher Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ h6315 to be SMB's first Product of the Year in the mobile device category. Both smartphones earned the best reviews from SmartPhoneToday for their respective platforms last year: Windows Mobile for Pocket PC for the iPAQ and the Palm operating system for the Treo.

Treo 650
Although not a reinvention of the Treo 600, the Treo 650 fixed some weaknesses of the earlier model (why reinvent the wheel if it isn't broken), while adding some nice new features. The Treo 650 delivers an improved keyboard, high-resolution screen, e-mail, PIM functionality, Web browser, and phone capabilities.

The smartphone measures 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches, weighs 6.3 ounces, and has an overall appearance similar to the Treo 600's. Treo 650's QWERTY thumb-keyboard has a backlight and a more user-friendly design than the previous model, however. And like the earlier model, there is a Secure Digital slot for peripheral and memory expansion.

Unlike the Treo 600 and its 160 x 160 screen, the Treo 650 uses a high-resolution 320 x 320 display, which makes it easier to read documents and Web pages. The Treo 650 also integrates Bluetooth, a glaring omission in the previous model. Bluetooth lets Treo owners use wireless headsets and print to Bluetooth printers, for example.

As with the Treo 600, the Treo 650 includes a VGA camera for 640 x 480 or 352 x 288 pixel images. The Treo 650's camera is better, however, with improved picture and video taking in low-light situations.

With the Treo 650, you also get a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and twice the memory, 32MB, of the Treo 600. As with the Tungsten T5, the memory is non-volatile, which means you won't lose your data in the event of a power drain.

Unlike the Treo 600's battery, the Treo 650’s is removable. So you can carry an extra battery (sold separately), and swap it out for additional power on the fly.

Although available exclusively from Sprint as a CDMA phone since the fall, we expect GSM carriers like Cingular Wireless will soon offer the Treo 650.

For more information, see Review: palmOne Treo 650 - A Near Perfect Hybrid

iPAQ h6315
Hewlett-Packard's iPAQ h6315 is an international quad-band GSM/GPRS Pocket PC Phone with built-in Wi-Fi for linking to wireless LANs and hotspots, and Bluetooth for connecting to a wireless headset or sending documents to a Bluetooth-equipped printer.

It has a 200 MHz processor, 64MB of RAM, and 20 MB of ROM, with an SDIO-enabled Secure Digital card slot for memory and peripheral expansion. Additional features include excellent audio and visual functions with a built-in VGA camera. The cellular-wireless handheld comes with a case and a thumb keyboard that can be attached for dialing and text messaging.


iPAQ h6315

The device has been available exclusively from T-Mobile since its launch a few months ago

For more details, see Review: HP iPAQ h6315 - The All Everything Pocket PC Phone