New Treos on Cingular in October?

Erm, is that a joke? The Treo has a bloody fantastic battery life currently; it's certainly streets ahead of your usual dumbphone/iPod.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

-More of a focus on style/colors/bling

-Palm will take the basic trappings of the 700P and shoehorn it into a sleeker package. They will also replace the EVDO stack with the "old" EDGE bits from the Treo 650 GSM.

-I would not be surprised if Palm threw in some onboard storage memory and/or bundled an SD card with it. Even a full size headphone jack wouldn't be totally out of the picture. Either that or a hacked BT 1.2 stack with A2DP support for wireless BT headphones. Basically expect Palm to make amends for the lack of UMTS/HSDPA under FrankenGarnet by putting a few cool bits of tech that will appeal to the media savvy younger crowd. I doubt this will be a $200 smartphone...I predict $300 w/ 2 year contract, essentially slotting into the spot vacated by the outgoing Treo 650. To hit $200 would require Treo 600 & Z22 type screen and RAM technology.

-The final "classic" Palm OS model to be released aside from perhaps a final PDA model (TX2 or T|E3) alongside the new Treos in the fall.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

That's what everyone says and I thought it might be the case when I first palmed one, but after a month or so I've decided that the form is much more of a liability than a benefit for me. It's awkward to open and hold, it's hard to get the earpiece centered enough on your ear to hear the call (partly a problem of insufficient volume), and the total lack of contour on the flat dialing keypad makes it impossible to use without looking at the phone. I'm obviously in a minority, but I find it hard to understand why people think this is a usable form factor. Pretty as jewelry, perhaps, but not usable as a phone.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...

As to the RAZR, David, I agree: it's formfactor is pretty but it's not a particular great phone. A very overrated device.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

Buy yourself a Krusell leather/elastic case. I've got one for my Motorola v360, and it's great. You can leave the phone in all the time, and it's form-fitting, so you don't have to deal with slippage.

Exactly. I have the same beef with the Treo. I sacrifice too much "phone" to get my "smart" OS. The Samsung i500 (which I mentioned is my usual Palm OS smartphone) doesn't have this problem because it has a nice 12-button keypad with fat, raised buttons.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

I guess you are talking about the MSRP, right? Because Amazon is offering Verizon Treo 700P at $299 after rebate. I truly hope there will be a $200 smartphone, for street price at least.

By the way, could somebody explain me why that PalmOS can not handle mutitasking stops 3G support? Treo 700P does support EVDO and it runs on PalmOS, why UTMS/HSDPA makes difference?

On a related note, CompUSA stores are now selling unlocked GSM phones. I saw a few Nokias, SLVR and a RAZR there last week. Maybe a sign of things to come for th retail cell phone market?

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

EV-DO is from the CDMA2000 family of standards. It theory it supports data speeds of up to 2.5mbps, but most users seem to report about 300-700kbps data rates. It is limited to a 1.25mhz carrier signal. Does not currently support simultaneous voice and data, but that will change with Revision A which will also boost the on-paper data rate to 3.1mbps.

Original Flavour UMTS is a GSM standard limited to 384kbps, but allows simultaneous voice and data (provided you've got total UMTS coverage and there aren't any standard GSM towers lurking about). UMTS uses a 5mhz carrier for it's signal, which means it can handle greater numbers of users better than EVDO which in theory should allow for better average data rates for users.

HSPDA Flavour UMTS could and sometimes is called 3.5G. Pretty much any carrier who supports UMTS will have devices that support it. In theory it operates at 3.6mbs, but I haven't read much about such devices and thus couldn't tell you what the real-world results would be like.

In short: don't believe the American telcos BS about CDMA fool you. It's a decent but inferior technology and GSM has been the obvious global winner for quite some time now.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

Cobalt is what Palm needed... TWO YEARS AGO. Trying to scale back the ambitious plans of Cobalt and producing a stripped-down PalmLinux also makes little sense other than the need to once again have ownership of the OS.