Michael writes:

I read your article about the Treo 700 with great interest as I debated much between the Treo 650 [available at palmOne Treo 650 PDA Phone] and the Audiovox 6700 [available at: PCS Phone Audiovox PPC-6700] when I bought my phone four months ago. I did many hours of research and decided the 6700 was right for me. I admit the phone has it's faults, but through a few on-line forums I've been able to "hack" my way to a better phone. The new rom update (for Sprint customers) helped considerably also.

Have you done hacks to your phone to improve performance? Based on your writing I would assume that you have but I wanted to ask as http://www.pdaphonehome.com as helped my phone tremendously.

I have done hacks, yes. Some of my favorite Audiovox 6700 forum sites are at pdaphonehome and shadowmite and, for the technical, the Windows Mobile Team developer blog. The hacks I've done are to remove unneeded Sprint software (which take up valuable memory with no significant benefit) and to make a few registry tweaks for performance boosts. (Note: Messing around with system-level phone settings could permanently damage your phone. Make sure you understand what you're doing.)

Until I heard about the Audiovox 6700 Sprint ROM update, I was pretty sure my phone was performing at its best, which, in my opinion, wasn't good enough.

I should clarify: I like the Audiovox 6700. It's a good device. It's fun to show off to people. Coming from the Treo 600, the phone has increased my productivity. But yes, it does have drawbacks. For me, my pet peeves with the 6700 are:

1) Battery life (in and out of roaming)

2) Overall system speed (including refresh rates, phone "wake up" time coming out of standby, portrait / landscape rotation speed)

3) Bugs or lack of features in Windows Mobile 5.0 (compared with the PalmOS Treos, as well as my own preferences on what makes a good phone)

Granted, options 1 and 2 are due to the phone design, and is one of the reasons the Treo 700w surprised and impressed me - it does better with both issues. Number 3 can be somewhat addressed by system hacks and third-party tweaks, but only to a certain extent.