More Details on the Treo 800

Pluses:

-This thing's styling isn't THAT bad and has some nice contours going on at the sides and back panels. Offering it in, say, rubberized graphite or black would improve matters considerably. That'd I dislike anything in white other than dress shirts (especially electronics).

-Nice to see the fantastic 680 phone app making a return appearance after being inexplicably omitted from the 755p.

-The thinness is very nice indeed but the battery life worries me greatly. Really, I had no issues with the 700p/w thickness. I wish Palm had stuck with that formfactor and just gotten rid of the antenna.

Minuses:

-That shiny white plastic looks SLICK. I don't like slick handheld devices. Bring on the rubberized paint!

-In less than a year we've gone from fullsize SD (680) to miniSD (750 and 755p), back to fullsize SDHC plus CompactFlash (Fooleo) then to microSD (This 800 whatever).

Does Palm have ANY kind of clear-cut direction going forward?

For years ('01 to '06) you could at least count on SD support from Palm despite the myriad of bottom connectors, OS versions, stylus types etc.

All of this tomfoolery between SD/SDHC/miniSD/microSD shuffling will only confuse consumers, ensour retailers and reinforce the notion that Palm's product strategy is in disarray and lacks a cohesive unifying factors and formats.

-I'd personally rather have seen a 320x320 tiny Treo that jettisoned the QWERTY board in favor of a standard phone keyboard + onscreen Graffii. Of course that'd have required additional hacking at Garnet and likely broken compatibility between even more apps.

-I am stunned that IR is still around.

-Pat's right that they wasted too much LCD space around the border of the screen. I also think this one's a bit too "long" and the new hard button arrangement gobbles up more space than it should. I'd have preferred to see it a few mm wider instead of taller, thus giving it a slightly larger keyboard and screen.

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

**The thinness is very nice indeed but the battery life worries me greatly. Really, I had no issues with the 700p/w thickness. I wish Palm had stuck with that formfactor and just gotten rid of the antenna.**
I don't know. Less horsepower and what amounts to probably 1/3 less LCD real estate will probably make the life quite a bit longer than the weak Treo 680. That was acceptable to Palm, so I'm sure this will have significantly better life. Especially GSM. It only loses 50mah from the OEM 680 cell.

**Does Palm have ANY kind of clear-cut direction going forward?**
Only to be compared with "which stock will be best to buy in 2008?" or "Where's Osama". Who on earth could know? One thing seems sure. This is a company changing directions and not too concerned with it's customer base. I hate bringing this dead horse back again, but Apple did little more with iPhone than Palm could have by reading these boards in 2003.

Interesting idea about the T9 keyboard + grafitti. But, what baffles me about Palm is that they often do not build on the technology that they do release.

Why not roll out a T3/T|X+GSM/EDGE+WiFi connected PDA with an updated software suite, expansion,brushed up styling, and more robust browsing. Don't tell me that would not sell. Emphasize BT voice, but have rudimentary non-headset voice. All the tech, they already have. Just put in the bowl and stir! Little dev costs and an easy $400 in 2004.

Why not a Z33 as is with bundled MP3, 1,2,or4gb SD, & earbuds. Slap a little extra change on the MSRP and market to the school/college crowd. All the parts & tech has already been on Palm.com for years. Or, go upmarket with a similar device marketed with AD2P wireless MP3. Nobody is mass marketing that, and it could really steal a little iPod thunder. Palm could even make it look like wireless music is their invention. Apple has succeeded at that for years now.

Treo unlocked unbranded with Wifi + HVGA + Grafitti on Palm.com. The testing has been done on all the parts. Just put it together, box it, let the early adopters beta test as usual, and sell em' like crazy.

Or ...

the Gandolf fat candy bar with the SD card screen and no real SD. Whatever works.

Pat Horne

Hand help computer! Palm Treo has done great for my business!

I just received My Palm Treo about two months ago and it has been droppoed by accident less as time goes on knowing it costs a small fortune. In construction or in doing Architecture negotiations ,plans etc,
on a busy day in business.
It amazes me and our crew anywhere anytime.

And GPS for only $10 a month more is well worth it too.

$25 for Internet everything 24 / 7 unlimited is a deal too.

No a complaint since I can not have enough time to ever finsih finding nes things to do with this smart phone or hand held Computer !

Well worth the small fortune as it was suppose to be only $299 originally, but will cost the real normal price;$599 with out starting a new plan, ($700 or $800) by the time the credit card finishes payments, and the help to our business is working out really great so we don't mind it paying off on the card.
It won't help you catch more fish on the weekend get away but it will sure keep you occupied with friends emails or many web searches or auctions or keeping out of trouble learning cool new tech stuff or tech games stuff, or just finding new ways to use this small wonder in as hand held device.

Has to PAY for GPS?

Anywho...Palm struck a chord with another satisfied customer!

Well, my Treo 700p hasn't broken yet & I don't like AT&T, so I'm not in line for the Iphone yet. Otherwise, I agree in every way.

Plus, it is still thick compared to the Blackjack or Q, the screen looks TINY, the physical design looks cheap, the memory format would require me to buy new sticks. (which most likely wouldn't feature direct USB support - I use the SanDisk Ultra II Plus cards)

Handspring Visor, Palm V, Treo 180, Treo 90, Treo 600, Treo 650, Treo 700p
MTT

Seems like Palm is "competing" with paper cup and string. If they're figuring they'll sell millions of Fooleos to people who travel enough to justify purchasing a crippled laptop formfactor, but who somehow don't want to spend a few hundred more for a real full-fledged portable laptop... maybe they've identified some hip young kids that were holding off on the Treo because the screen was too readable... Their market research apparently told them that Treo 600 users would "upgrade" to the Treo 650 even though it originally had only 75% of the effective RAM of the former. Who's to say an uglier, smaller screened, less compatible Treo isn't gonna have the Palmtantic hitting the iceberg...

Oh well- the 3D view looks a LITTLE more promising. At least they didn't stick the camera down in the middle of the device like they did on the 755 and others (lots of pictures of my fingers - thanks Palm!). Maybe after this phone gets pooped out, and the Fooleo sells to all the people who were pleased with the LifeDrive... Palm can finally get back to reality and figure out how to actually *improve* the Treo and maybe even work on PDAs some more. I'm guessing that the extra cash floating around isn't triggering the creative juices - they need more starving artists around their pretty Sunnyvale campus doing some real work.

Really Palm - people weren't clamoring in the streets for *less* battery life, *less* compatible flash formats, *less* screen size, *less* quality cameras, *less* internal memory.... The noble attempts at making stability improvements are finally paying off (years later), but you continue to turn around and muck with stuff that really doesn't need to be messed with. Here's one idea you can use to "compete" with those big boys: how about an LED "flash" with the camera so we can actually use it somewhere other than on the surface of the sun? It would seem to me that adding a "flash" would have been a much better use of your engineers' time rather than figuring out how to kill off battery life and make all your SD accessories unusable...

one way this could establish itself is on price. Treo 800 for $199 - any more and it will get compared to every other capable smartphone out there...

I'm still holding out a sliver of hope that this thing'll have A2DP and/or a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. THAT single feature would at let Palm push it as an mp3 & video playin' gadget for the younger crowd. If Palm sticks with the lame, fragile 2.5mm jack then you can stick a fork in this thing (unless the price is very, very low).

Heck, if the price for one of those unlocked is REALLY reasonable, I could even see some Palm PDA faithful buying these to use as a thumboard-enabled PDA w/o even sticking a SIM card in it.

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

For me it's not irrelevant as I'm looking for a simple phone with simple calendar and todo list.
Don't get me wrong, if I was looking for a feature packed phone and/or thought of Palm any longer as a company that made such phones, this would be very disappointing.

If that's the case, then they were planning all along to make a substantial gamble on the Foleo.
If they weren't we would be seeing a much more advanced smart phone at this time.

If it means Linux, that would certainly be a huce plus. I have had my N800 for some weeks now. When i first got it i installed the newest firmware. After that i have installed, uninstalled dozens of programs including dubious 0.1 alpha releeses that crashes, browsed several web pages that crashes, multiple hot swapping of different wifi spots and phones with bt connection. But not once have i had the need to actually reboot the device due to some malfunctioning software, it is *rock* solid and just shuts down the malfunctioning app (although i have reebooted it just to make me feel better). Multiple web pages together with skype, email, wifi upnp music and pictures, absolutely no broblems.

Linux really makes a huge difference, and i dont think it is understood unless it is experienced. Nokia use *alot* of recourses on developing this maemo os (linux) and the N800 (for some reason, maybe they eventually will swap from symbian? I don't know, but it is a bit strange because the N800 cannot possibly be a commercial success compared to their phones).

Hehe. I'll just wait on the comments about the reasons. :-D

Pat Horne

> Looks like Palm made PIC/Youtube take the video down.

Well, at least it's a confirmed PALM device!

I wonder what reason they used with YouTube for taking it down? We've read that the WM 6 "leak" was removed from the archive site due to "patent violation" (!) but how can one justify taking down a video of a device - I'd think that would fall WELL under "standard journalism"? Maybe they're calling it "trade secret revelation" or some such?

W.r.t. those "blurry" photos et al, however, there used to be crisp "leaked" photos of TREOs around the 'Net that had tiny little black marks spaced around the edge of the screen....some type of encoding of a unique ID?...makes sense to blur thigns up in such a case.

Speaking of photos, I see PiC has removed the photos of the device as well so PiC knows The Reason PALM uses...

The screen resolution on the N800 is not too high, but it certainly constantly reminds me that i am getting older and is long overdue for some real reading glasses ;)

An interesting detail is that the N800 is made in good old Finland and not in Hungary or China or Taiwan etc. It's almost like i get the feeling that Nokia is doing this (making open source maemo and internet tablets) simply because they *can* and *want* and think it is great *fun* and a good way of spending money for the *undisputed king of mobile phones*. On the other hand, it's been years since i have had so much fun with a device, simply because it is a fun device to play with and is on in less than a second. My laptop is off at the moment, and this is happening more often for each day. This makes me think of the Foleo and the fact that it will inherit the same basic properties as the N800, only better to write on.