No smartphones Labs would be complete without a Palm device, but in recent times its handsets have been less than impressive. It looks as if things are on the up with the Treo Pro.

It runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional instead of Standard, which means there’s a touchscreen to keep the hardware Qwerty keyboard company, and Palm has left the interface well alone this time. This exposes the awkward and fiddly Windows Mobile front end, but at least there are no extra software elements hogging resources and slowing the phone down.

It’s reasonably well featured, with the usual complement of high-end smartphone hardware: fast mobile data in the shape of HSDPA, Wi-Fi, assisted GPS, Bluetooth and even infrared. Other highlights include a transflective screen, a 3.5mm headphone socket, and an SDHC-compatible microSD slot for the addition of up to 32GB storage. Plus, because it’s a touchscreen phone, you can install Opera Mobile 9.5 for free and improve web browsing no end.

There are some thoughtful touches elsewhere, too. We like the silence switch on the top of the device, for instance; it’s much easier than prodding the fiddly onscreen control. The fact ActiveSync can be installed directly from the phone could be handy for XP users. And the screensaver, which displays the time and message alerts when the phone is in standby, is a genuinely useful feature.

But none of these things can make up for the keyboard, whose rubbery keys are simply too small; the low-resolution screen of just 320 x 320, the distinctly average 2-megapixel camera, and the battery life, which at 58hrs 55mins in our test is below par.

These weaknesses, coupled with a relatively high price and a paucity of contract offerings, serves to place it firmly in the bottom half of the pile this month. It’s by no means an awful phone, it’s just that in terms of looks, design and ease of use it’s nowhere near as good as the best on test.