PalmOS pda/phone w/ Voice Recorder?

December 7, 2006 6:21 AM

Looking for a phone/pda combo that has a Voice Recorder button (or a programmable button). PalmOS only.

I'm a Palm addict since the Palm Personal first came out in 1997 or so. I currently use a Tungsten T3, and am on my 3rd one due to breakage. I just buy them used/cheap on ebay when they die.

I have been craving a phone/pda unit for quite a while. Treos are sexy. But the feature that I can't live without is the easy Voice Recorder. As a GTD guy, this is one of my easiest 'collectors'. Right on the side of my Palm, I press one button and within a second I'm recording. From all the reviews that I've read on different phone/pda's, the Treo and similar units don't have this. If they do have a Voice Recorder app, it's buried in a menu. If I have to dig for it, it's useless to me.

Does anyone know of a phone that runs Palm OS and has a customizable button that I can program to be a dedicated instantaneous voice recorder?

posted by Bradley to Technology (7 answers total)

You can program the buttons on your Treo. I'm not sure of the range of possibilities on the newer models, but on my old Treo 600 it is possible and easy to do.
posted by mikel at 6:53 AM on December 7, 2006

There is a voice-recorder feature on the 700p, but it's not that easy to manage (to my recollection - I don't use the voice recorder on my 700p that often.) There are a plethora of 3rd party voice-recording apps available that would certainly do what you're looking to accomplish.
I know the 700p has a user-configurable side button that can be assigned to any application (mine is assigned to my camera.) It may be a two-click process (hit side button, hit center button to record,) but it's probably the easiest way to get voice-recorder functionality you're looking for.
You also might want to look into the new Treo 680 just released - it's less expensive and seems to be getting great reviews. I don't know what kind of user-configurable buttons it has, though.
posted by itchi23 at 7:04 AM on December 7, 2006

Anther idea... There are a few services that offer free voice mail mailboxes. You could set a speed dial on the Treo to call your voicemail box where you could leave yourself a message. The nice thing about some of these services is that they will email you your message.

One drawback is the time it takes to dial the phone number.
posted by jpep at 7:10 AM on December 7, 2006

Best answer: I have a Treo 650, which is a Palm OS phone. I purchased a small application named mVoice which does this. You can program the side button to record a voice memo while the button is held down, or you can start a continuing recording from a button drawn on the screen. This might be what you are looking for.
posted by procrastination at 7:11 AM on December 7, 2006

The 700p from Sprint has a voice recorder feature; push and hold the side button to activate. I use it all the time.
posted by Merdryn at 7:54 AM on December 7, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks to all of you. This helped me do some more research, and I see a Treo 680 in my future.
posted by Bradley at 11:24 AM on December 7, 2006

Response by poster: Here's a blurb from a review of the Treo 680 on treocentral.com:

Quote:
From the "I don't know why they ever removed it" department is the return of Voice Memo, which shipped with the Palm Tungsten series of PDAs. The memos don't sound great, but they sound significantly better than not being able to do voice memos. You can send memos to others via email, Bluetooth, or SMS / text messaging. You can also use your voice memos as ringtones. EndQuote.
posted by Bradley at 9:24 PM on December 7, 2006