Up and down buttons on the side of the phone (see Figure F) adjust loudness for the ringer or the earpiece.

FIGURE F


Up and down buttons on the left side control ringer and speaker volume, but not music Roll over picture for a larger image.

Unhappily, they don't control volume on the MP3 music player. Holding "down" for a few seconds turns off all sounds on the phone and the PDA, including alarms on the organizer; "up" reverses that. When sound is off, phone calls and alarms vibrate.

The Graffiti area is on the bottom half of the phone while the main screen is on the flip. My only complaint here is that the Graffiti area cannot be set to stay lighted at night. It lights with the phone keys, which can be illuminated for the first 10 or 30 seconds after dialing, or during a call, but not otherwise.

The infrared port is functional but anemic, with range of around two feet.

The phone
The Kyocera 7135 is a tri-mode CDMA phone, which means it is capable of running on Verizon, Sprint, and Alltel networks, among others, and offers analog service when digital is not available. It doesn't work overseas. If you do a lot of international travel, the Treo 270 runs fine on the GSM networks of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

The phone is equipped for high-speed data networks, such as Verizon's recently introduced Express Net. These connections are advertised at "up to" 153 kbps, a speed not actually available on Earth. During PDA use, the modest processing power of the Motorola chip appears to be a bottleneck. My tests with Eudora email and wireless synchronization to AvantGo worked three to four times faster than the usual 14.4 kbps connection, for throughput in perhaps the high 40s. When the phone is used for a wireless connection to a desktop or laptop computer, Express Net is said to be considerably faster. I did not test it that way.

Caller ID can be set to display the name of any caller in your Address Book, or just the number. A small liquid crystal display on top of the phone (see Figure G) shows the same information without requiring you to open the flip. When no call is active, the LCD displays time, battery, and signal strength.

FIGURE G


A small LCD atop the phone displays Caller ID or battery, signal strength, and time. Roll over picture for a larger image.

You can set the phone to vibrate, vibrate then ring, or simply ring. There are many polyphonic ringers built in, including the national anthem, reggae and horror film tunes, Space Cowboy, Fur Elise, and plenty of geeky tech sounds. Let's not get out of hand with this feature, people.

Battery life is advertised as 3.2 hours of digital talk time or 120 hours of standby. I measured real-world performance with a Palm OS application called Runtime (at http://home.arcor.de/uwe.klimmek/manual.html). Brightness was set at medium and the infrared port left on. I pulled out the device as I needed it, which that day included much more standby than talk and plenty of organizer use. There were brief periods (such as in the subway) when the phone used extra power to search for a digital signal. The first low-battery warning came after 24 hours of telephone standby, 25 minutes of talk time, and 5 hours 10 minutes of PDA use. The device went dead at 36 hours standby, 25 minutes talk, and 6 hours 2 minutes of PDA use. Data remained intact after recharging.