Palm is in a tough place right now, with a staid reputation, a decade-old OS and a line of phones that are all, well, sort of boring. The New York Times ran a piece today charting Palm’s revitalisation plans, which are being carried out under the guidance of CEO Ed Colligan and Apple vet Jon Rubinstein, and they aren’t altogether inspiring. Sure, there’s always Palm OS 2, but this piece seems to imply (not surprisingly) that we might not see that until the middle of next year. And from the looks of it, Palm’s troubles may run deeper than that.
This week’s best kept secret just got official: The Palm Treo Pro is a Centro-sized Windows Mobile 6.1 phone (whither Palm OS?) with tri-band 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS with a 320×320 touchscreen, exactly like the recent Treo 800w. Powering the show is a 400MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. And yep, the proprietary Palm connector is ditched for micro-USB. Hurray for standards. They’re selling it unlocked through the online store for US$549 in the fall. [Palm]
Slashgear’s just found a video of the upcoming Treo Pro, a device that physically looks like the Centro, but runs the touchscreen version of Windows Mobile. The video shows you pretty much what you need to know about how big the phone is in your hand (not too big) but if you want to see it compared to some other things, there were the photos before and also some new photos over at a Chinese site. With all these leaks, the Treo Pro pretty much DEMANDS to be released soon. [Treo Pro via Slashgear]
Treo 800w users can finally do voice dialling over their Bluetooth headsets with this software update pack. One caveat is that you’ll need to have the TREO800w-1.03-SPNT as your current “Software Version” under your About screen, so if you don’t, you’ll have to update to that first. What’s the point of using your Bluetooth headset in the car for safety reasons when you have to look down at your phone to dial anyway? [Palm]
The Gadget: Palm’s Treo 800w is the updated, Windows Mobile successor to the Palm 750w. In addition to adding WinMo 6.1, the 800w brings a higher resolution screen, EVDO rev.A, GPS and Wi-Fi. galleryPost('treo800w', 3, '');
At least a few Sprint stores loosed Palm’s Windows Mobile-powered Treo 800w early, for US$350 with a two-year contract and rebate. It’s still US$600 without. Specs confirmed by field reports: Wi-Fi, EV-DO Rev. A, GPS, 320×320 screen and a 2MP camera. The keyboard is apparently improved, with a lower profile, which goes with the 800w’s thinner design. Maybe if you’re nice, your local Sprint store will let one go now too. [WM Experts via Electronista]
Here’s an alleged upcoming Sprint roadmap for Q3 2008 that shows several interesting phones and several lowbies. What you’re probably looking forward to is the Palm Treo 800W and the BlackBerry Curve in red on July 13, but there’s also the blue LG Rumour, MotoRAZR VE20, Sanyo Katana Eclipse, Samsung M320, Samsung M220, Moto Renegade V950, HTC MP6950 and Moto i365. The HTC MP6950 sticks out to us since the current HTC Touch is the MP6900, so this probably makes it the Touch Pro with slide-out keyboard. We’d definitely want one of those. [Sprint Users]
We know, huuugggeee surprise that the upcoming Palm Treo 800w will be running Windows Mobile. But now we’ve got the photographic confirmation. If only the blogosphere was so committed to capturing Big Foot in poorly whitebalanced lowlight photography, we’d really have something. Here’s a shot of the rear:
Talking to APC, Palm CEO Ed Colligan revealed some of the broader strokes of its next-gen OS, upon which the company’s hopes for relevance are inexorably pinned. Due in ’09, it’ll be “a new prosumer brand” that fits “in between the Centro and Treo lines.” He refers to the OS as “Palm 2.0″ at one point—as in Web 2.0—noting that it’s “driven around the Internet and Web-based applications,” which APC says it like “a very modern take on the original OS.”
Fresh off those leaked spy shots of Palm’s Treo 850 is some more espionage in the form of meaty specs. This source is unproven (and the info comes from a “friend who works at Palm”) so don’t take these as hard rumours, yet. The big whoop is Wi-Fi for the first time, while the other stuff is more run o’ the mill: HSDPA, 320×320 touchscreen, 2MP cam, microSD, 256MB onboard memory plus 32MB SDRAM, miniUSB and WinMo 6.1. The RAM spec conflicts with what BGR said, 100MB. Again, this source is not battle-tested, but here’s hoping they’re right about the Wi-Fi at least. [TamsPPC]
