Computerworld — Let's cut to the chase: The best Palm (PALM) Treo available today is a Droid Pro.

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The iPhone's great and all -- it's got a first class ecosystem, lots of apps and great audio/video. But up until 2008, if you wanted a phone phone, the Treo was the bee's knees. It wasn't so hot with music, movies or games, but it was brilliant at what it was supposed to do -- let you make phone calls, send texts and e-mails, and create schedules and notes. It even synced with your computer. You could even buy one unlocked, so you could make calls anywhere in the world. In fact, until the old Palm blew up, nothing touched it.

Motorola's Droid Pro follows the Treo model of businesslike simplicity. A hard keyboard sits underneath a good-enough 3.1-inch display with 320 x 480 resolution. The UI is straight-ahead Android 2.2, with Motorola's usual modest ability to integrate social networking services Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. There is a blessed lack of crapware. And the phone's Exchange support (with encryption coming in early 2011, Motorola says) is fully integrated.

How old school is the Droid Pro? Out of the box, the standard side button doesn't activate the camera, as it does on most Android phones. It activates the Calendar.

Like the Treo, the Droid Pro isn't a physical lightweight. There's no slide-out keyboard or other tricky frippery. It's about the same height and width as an iPhone. At about 0.4 inches thick, it's roughly the same weight and somewhat thicker -- at least partly due to its SIM card.

SIM card?

But this is a Verizon Wireless phone, I hear you saying -- CDMA doesn't need a SIM card. That may be the Droid Pro's neatest trick.

This is a world phone. Step into the civilized world where they use GSM, and you can use the GSM circuitry with the included Vodaphone SIM card. (Vodaphone, you'll remember, owns 49% of Verizon Wireless.) The service isn't cheap -- prices vary by country -- but you'll be reachable. Also, if you're a customer in good standing for more than 60 days, Verizon will let you use your own SIM, though you'll lose support and direct billing while you're using it.

How does the Droid Pro work? Quite well, mostly. Holding the phone requires a bit more physical effort than I've gotten used to expending. The keyboard feels a little cramped, and in portrait mode there's no soft keyboard available. In landscape mode, a soft keyboard appears when needed, but it's just a standard keyboard; no Swype here.

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