Seems like everyone who spent the money to go to CES came up with the same story today: Cingular will make the Treo 650 available on their GSM 850 network in the next few weeks. Here’s how some of the blogs presented the news:
- Gizmodo, Cingular Treo 650 Soon “Cingular’s rebate form for the Treo 600 has a check box for the Treo 650 even though it expires January 31st. If that doesn’t mean it’s going to be out that month, they mean it’s going to be out real soon now.”
- Treonauts, Treo 650 GSM “There are specific rumors that Cingular/AT&T plans to begin shipments of their Treo 650 this January after the company had found problems with it and asked palmOne to fix them before they would release it. Apparently the now widely known memory and call quality issues were some of the things that needed fixing and while there’s still nothing on the memory front it would appear that the ‘tin can call quality’ has been rectified with a ROM/firmware update.”
- TreoCentral, Treo 650 by Month’s End? “Gizmodo had the scoop today on when we will finally see a GSM version of the Treo 650. Cingular has a rebate form [pdf] good for $50 off the price of a Treo 600/650…. The company is also demoing the Treo 650 at this year’s CES, which is going on right now…. Correction: Cingular is NOT demoing the 650 at CES, but has showed it privately.”
It doesn’t make sense to me that Cingular and T-Mobile are being so tight-lipped about Treo 650 availability. They could do the market a big favor by just saying when they expect to begin selling it, but since the carriers control which handsets Americans can buy, they have little incentive to make any announcements… unless customers start switching to Sprint PCS because they want a new Treo ASAP.