The palmOne Treo 650:
Expected to be released in
the United States before
the end of 2004, and
in other countries, early
in the new year.
[ Photo courtesy of palmOne. ]
In one of the more anti-climactic announcements in recent gadget history, palmOne announced the Treo 650, an update on the critically-acclaimed Treo 600 integrated communicator. The 650 adds a number of sought after features, including:
- significantly improved display,
- expanded Multimedia Capabilities,
- Bluetooth,
- non volatile memory like that of the Tungsten T5, and
- removable battery.
The announcement was made to correspond with the opening of the CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment Expo 2004 in San Francisco. This is a relatively small but critically important conference where a lot of device manufacturers announce products that they hope will be supported by all of the U.S. mobile phone carriers and widely adopted.
Some people following the Treo 650 rumors had hoped for more aggresive additions to the feature set. Things like a signifcantly larger base memory and WiFi support would have been welcomed by the extreme geek community.
Ed Anuff told me that Bluetooth support would determine whether he would be interested in the Treo 650, so he got his wish.
The strangest part of this announcement is the lack of coordination that palmOne demonstrated with U.S. mobile carriers. They basically said, we have GSM and CDMA versions just about ready, carriers will announce their price, availability, and service plans themselves. This could mean that they are going to encourage vendor competition in releasing the new model– a welcomed change from the Treo 600 rollout where some carriers didn’t make that handset available for quite a while after its initial release.
I know I said that I wondered whether the Treo 650 would be worth the price carriers would charge for it. After spending a weekend in San Francisco with a properly configured Blackberry 7230, I’m thinking that full email integration on a handheld may be a feature whose time has come.
I’ve been partial to PalmOS devices since the days when I owned a Palm V. I didn’t want to give up on my Treo 180; It gave up on me. I’m going to have to watch, wait, and see what the standard configurations, upgrade prices, and service offered for the Treo 650 will be. It may come down to deciding to get one only if carriers don’t impair some of the most advanced features of the new Treo.