Palm Unveils Unlocked, But Pricey Treo Pro Smartphone
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Palm, treo, price, unlocked
Sunnyvale (CA) - The Handspring Treo is considered to have been the pioneer of the smartphone category and long before the iPhone, the Treo was the fanciest and most functional cellphone you could buy. The iPhone changed the smartphone landscape, but if you are among those who just don’t like an iPhone or Blackberry, the new Palm Treo Pro is certainly worth a look.
Palm recently struggled to find its direction. After ill-fated concepts such as the Foleo, the company seems to be on a promising path again with its Centro entry-level phone and today’s announcement of the Treo Pro.
Based on Windows Mobile 6.1, the Pro comes in a familiar Treo form factor that splits the front cover real estate between a physical keyboard and a color screen in half. It is without doubt the sleekest Treo Palm has come up with so far and, subjectively, will not look out of place next to an iPhone or the latest Blackberries. Running a 400 MHz Qualcomm processor, the device includes a 320x320 pixel display, 3G (HSDPA) support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and a microSDHC expansion slot.
The most significant downsides compared to the iPhone are the Pro’s memory and price. There are only 100 MB available as storage space, which means that you will have to purchase extra memory cards in addition to the $549 price (subsidized pricing should be $399.) But, other than the iPhone, the Pro is unlocked, enabling buyers to use the device on a GSM network of their choice.
In direct comparison, the Treo Pro is much less a multimedia phone than the iPhone, but has a much greater focus on business applications. Not surprisingly, Palm describes the Pro as effortlessly usable smartphone for businesses that want to simplify their IT infrastructures and lower costs, and for users who want to stay on top of their professional and personal lives.
At first look, the Pro appears to be one of the most compelling smartphones based on Windows Mobile in the market today and could become an interesting alternative to Blackberrys.
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Great but why windows mobile? I wish phones would go the way of PCs - install any OS on them. Hopefully mobile variants of linux and symbian and android will fix this problem soon.
Palm=junk Windows mobile=junk. pull email=junk. poor reception (i live in NE)=junk crappy touchscreen=junk. The only reason palm has made a surge latly is because they charge 50bucks for the Centro. Oh and where does palm get off pricing there phones so expensive (besides the Centro) 400 retail for a 700w. get real no one wants that brick.
Problem is that smartphones don't really have a unified architecture, and hardware can vary widely. Also, space is limited, so you can't just have a large selection of drivers available with the OS, you need it specialized and streamlined for the application. Windows mobile is an attractive base because its one OS and is easy for hardware and software developers to develop for because they already have experience with it, so they aren't starting from scratch each time they make a phone and they don't have to deal with the added complexity of supporting every (or even several) OS's that all behave differently. Palm has been having this problem trying to support both Windows Mobile and Palm OS based smartphones, and from my experience at least, the Palm OS phones are prone to malfunction as they age. But who really wants to use Windows Mobile?