The Official Launch of the Treo 650

A whole slew of people sent us in links regarding the Treo 650. There's the official release from palmOne, with a new entry on their website. TreoCentral also has launch coverage, including a sample video and first impressions. Engadget also has coverage of the launch as well. Details are that the Treo 650 is an evolutionary upgrade to the Treo 600. palmOne made few external changes, but redid much of the internals. As with the 600 there will be a dualband CDMA 1xRTT and a quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE version. The most notable new features are an improved 312 Mhz Intel PXA270 processor, a new 320x320 High resolution TFT screen, built in Bluetooth, non-volatile flash memory, a removable battery, and a new connector. Carriers, pricing, and availability are to be announced soon. Another reader notes that this ups the bar for mobile internet - and the last wonders if RIM has any good responses

Higher resolution please..

[jaf]

If we're to surf the web properly with these things, won't we need more than 320x240?

I'm looking at one of these:

HP iPAQ 4700 [bargainpda.com]

Look at the nice third photo. It lacks the phone of course, os it's not good enough.

Anyone know if running SkypeOut with one of these is a good idea?

What is still wrong.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

I have to say I think for $550+ the Treo 650 is way overpriced. As a Palm fanboy, I feel sick with mistreatment. For that price, it is currently missing:

- 128 mb ram (at least!)
- voice recorder
- 802.11b

IMO... disgusting at that price. I have and love and setup TONS of Treo 600's, but seriosuly the price is nuts without the above. And to nitpick, IMO the Treo 650 should also have:

- not just bluetooth, but Class 1 (or is it class A) bluetooth with 100m range
- all 128 mb as non-volotile
- voice recorder to record the phone calls too
- easy setup to use device as a laptop modem for windows/mac with open spec to let Linux dudes knock up their own sw
- Camera Flash (even the lame ultra-bright led's actually can save the day with a photo in a very dark room, much better than nothing)
- Software to have web access auto-switch from carrier service to 802.11 when 802.11 becomes availbe, and back again when wifi disappears. Latest Pocket PC devices to this automatically.

Oh, and to REALLY bitch, but to make this thing perfect, add:

- Blackberry e-mail client

Memory

[dncsky1530]

memory: 23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory (22MB multi-lingual)

the new Tungsten [palmone.com] has over 150 megs of memory while the new treo only has 23? for all the web surifng, emailing, and pictures that people will take, 23 megs doesn't sounds like nearly enough for internal memory that is. Still a really cool product.

tomtom

[xabi]

I'll buy it if tomtom [tomtom.com] runs on it! Any news about this?

Macintosh system requirement: Windows

[Chriscypher]

"System Requirements
Macintosh
Windows 2000 or XP (later versions may also be supported) with USB port (USB HotSync® cable included)"

From the spec page:
http://www.palmone.com/us/products/smartpho nes/tre o650/details.epl

Sure it's a typo, but it's not comforting to see how little attention to detail they pay to cross-platform compatibility.

.

Re:Sprint Treo has crippled bluetooth

[Milican]

Thanks for the info. I am a long time Sprint customer, but this "no bluetooth" policy is ridiculous. Like a good customer though I sent an e-mail to customer service using an online form. Its pretty easy to do. If you are a customer just login, click on "contact us" link, and then click "email us". If enough people send an e-mail maybe they will reverse their decision. Text of e-mail is below.

JOhn

---D-A-M-N--L-A-M-E--F-I-L-T-E-R---------------

I was very excited to see PalmOne release their new Treo 650. However, when I found out you guys are crippling the bluetooth option on the phone I was very disappointed. I have a laptop with bluetooth and it would be very nice to be able to sync my treo without using the bulky cradle (especially when travelling). In addition, I have been waiting patiently for a bluetooth phone so I can buy a bluetooth headset.

I'm really hoping you guys will reverse your "no bluetooth" option before my contract ends. If not I may end up going to a bluetooth friendly carrier. Good day.

JOhn

Ignoring Europe?

[MemRaven]

I used to live in the US, and got very used to my Palms (I've been using them for years, starting with a Handspring Visor through a Sony Clie), and I was just looking to upgrade my phone, and I ended up getting something that Wasn't The Treo. Why? Because even though I waited until the "official" announcement, and thus knew everything about it, I still don't have any idea when it'll be available here in the UK.

This is pretty lame. Here in Europe (at least in the UK) Palm Pilots and other PDAs don't have nearly as high penetration as in the US, because everybody's got their mobile with them at all times and doesn't want to carry around two devices. However, given past performance, the GSM Treo (which is a worldphone, so you can just buy it in the US and bring it on a plane here and it'll work perfectly with your local coverage) won't be available for several months at best, unlike in the US. Even now, although the Treo 650 is all over the US PalmOne site, it's nowhere to be found on the UK site.

This makes very little sense, given that the biggest competition for the Treo (namely the blackberry and the Sony Ericsson P910i) are available here as soon as the US, if not sooner. Moreover, the SIM-free (i.e. not tied to a particular provider) version of the Treo 600 is GBP525 ($966 at today's exchange rate) from PalmOne UK, while it's $349 from PalmOne US. This whole state of affairs leads me to believe that PalmOne just doesn't get it when it comes to Europe and the attractiveness of something like the Treo. Give it to us now!

Re:What is still wrong.

[RedX]

I have to agree with you on most of your points. I carried a Treo 600 since it was released, until last week when I purchased the newest Pocket PC phone, the iMate PDA2k [clubimate.com] (aka XDA III) with the slide-out keyboard. The addition of higher-res screen, WiFi, and 128MB RAM gives it a big advantage over the Treo line in my book. Adjusting to the Windows Mobile platform from Palm is an adjustment as apps aren't quite as snappy. GPRS is also a bit slower than CDMA data, but having the ability to connect via WiFi automatically when it is available makes this moot for most of my day. This doesn't address your concern of expense however as this thing was even more expensive than the Treo. One of my biggest concerns was form factor, and it took about a day of carrying the slightly-larger (than Treo) PDA2k before it felt comfortable in my pocket.

I like my 600

[xrayspx]

A lot of people have been saying how expensive these are, but they're good for corporate IT. With an SSL + password protected site, I can see which of my servers are alive, pull webservers out, initiate restarts of the webserver, etc. They work pretty well actually. At least when you're not spending your own money :-)

I'd love to see Wifi portability, which some people have been rumoring.

Anyone know if you can use TuSSH to set up a tunnel? I'd like to SSH tunnel and then run the Terminal Services client over it. Yes I'm that masochistic. I've only had the 600 a couple weeks and haven't gotten around to bothering yet, but that would be another big plus.

What kind of "memory"?

[Anonymous Coward]

23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory
What kind of memory? Battery-backed RAM? Flash? There are many types of NV memory.

It sounds like plenty to me, provided there's a slot for a flash memory card. 9 years ago I was doing image analysis and surfing the web on a Sun SPARCstation 10 with 16 MB of RAM. I have a hunch that the Treo's kernel is lighter weight than SunOS.

Treo vs. BlackBerry

[Eric Giguere]

Although it's always dangerous to generalize, I like to explain the differences between the Treo and the BlackBerry this way:

BlackBerry: email with applications
Treo: applications with email

You can build applications for both platforms, but the BlackBerry is still seen (and being used) primarily as a mobile email device. You can send and read email with the Treo, but you can run many more useful apps on it than on the BB. Which one is better? As usual, it depends on what you need...

Eric
BlackBerry development info [ericgiguere.com]

Re:Ignoring Europe?

[MemRaven]

It was was of the first to get the 600. However, that was still IIRC substantially after the first two carriers in the US (one CDMA, Sprint, the other one of the GSM providers) had theirs. Given the fact that even today you can basically only get the Treo 600 through Orange anyway, I would expect that you'd be able to get it through orange pretty quickly, but I still expect a couple of month lag between first customer ship in the US and first customer ship in the UK. Even today, it doesn't show up on the Orange web site (again, much like it doesn't show up on the PalmOne web site for the UK either).

My point is that the phone is basically almost ready, but given how much stuff happens over the next couple of months here, we'll get the phone so late as to miss the entire holiday season, which matters quite a bit. In other words, I have no doubt that we'll get it pretty early, but even a couple of month delay basically shows where the priorities lie.

Besides, Orange [orange.co.uk] blows. I actually specifically moved away from them when I made my recent purchase and really don't want to go back to them.

Re:What is still wrong.

[DikSeaCup]

I was going to get this, but it's missing the one feature I was really waiting for:

Playing an MP3 as a ringtone.

From the details on the website, this appears to play mp3s, but still has the lame ringtone thing. Perhaps this is an issue with the memory not being on board. But it sucks - I'd like to create an MP3 of a buddy of mine saying "PICK UP THE PHONE!" and set it as the ringtone for his number.

imap/s?

[asv108]

Can anyone tell me if this will come with an imap/s client? I would have purchased the 600 when it came out but I refuse to pay $60 for an e-mail client on my palm. When I buy a $500+ phone I expect to be able to check my e-mail securely.

Dueling Verizon Clues

[bill_mcgonigle]

Since it took almost two years to get the Treo 600 on Verizon, and I've already spoken with my account rep who says Verizon has no plans for this phone, I've created a petition to have Verizon get this phone in a timely fashion. Please sign below:


The guy at the Verizon store here says they'll have 'em for Christmas buying.

You'd think the 1xRTT model is for Verizon, but, well, let me know if you ever get a straight and reasoned answer out of Verzion.