Palm and Sprint might have a pickle on their hands. Now that the Palm Pre is the hottest upcoming phone of 2009, how are they going to sell the Treo PRO when the Pre is rumored to launch next month? Sprint thankfully has priced the PRO well with to a $200 price cut and a $100 MIR which brings the MSRP down to a respectable $249. Still, Windows Mobile on the PRO or the sexy, new webOS powering the Pre? Eh? At least the Treo PRO’s aggressive pricing shows that Sprint is willing to cut Palm’s outrageous pricing down to a reasonable level cause the iPhone is $199 and the Pre/PRO are hardly iPhone’s; okay, the Pre is hot, but you get the point. → Read More
Update: Sprint did not intend for this page to go up yet – it has since been pulled. Palm and Sprint might have a pickle on their hands. Now that the Palm Pre is the hottest upcoming phone of 2009, how are they going to sell the Treo PRO when the Pre is rumored to launch next month? Sprint thankfully has priced the PRO well with to a $200 price cut and a $100 MIR which brings the MSRP down to a respectable $249. Still, Windows Mobile on the PRO or the sexy, new webOS powering the Pre? Eh? At least the Treo PRO’s aggressive pricing shows that Sprint is willing to cut Palm’s outrageous pricing down to a reasonable level cause the iPhone is $199 and the Pre/PRO are hardly iPhone’s; okay, the Pre is hot, but you get the point. → Read More
The iPhone is twice as reliable as the Blackberry after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo. The study projects that the failure rate for the iPhone after two years will be between 9.2 and 11.3 percent, compared to actual two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent for BlackBerries and 21.0 percent for Treos. → Read More
Palm fanboys can now order the Palm Treo Pro handheld directly from Palm. After months of leaks, previews, and finally an announcement, Palms latest is finally shipping. Thank goodness. The price is still ridiculously high at $549, but some of us think it might be the best Windows Mobile phone currently on the market. Oh, and Palm is even throwing in free shipping. How nice of ‘em. → Read More
So we return to the Palm Treo Pro, a $549 unlocked Windows Mobile Treo aimed squarely at the business set. It’s been about a week and I’ve used this guy off and on. It kept a nice charge – two days, for the most part, without much data use – and fit nicely in the pocket. But is it the Treo of which we all incessantly dream? Is it the Treo that will bring us closer to world peace and better burritos on the East Coast? Is this the Treo for you? Yes, it is the Treo for you if you are a business professional forced to use Windows Mobile and you travel quite a bit and hardware price is no object. This is also the Treo for you if you’re buying a few cellphones for the CEO and the CFO and you want them to be productive without having to change your Windows-based IT and communications infrastructure. If you are neither of those people, think of the Treo Pro as a vision of Palm’s future. The Treo Pro is one of Palm’s most attractive Treos to date. Gone is the lumpen plastic of the Centro and the low-gloss ho-hummery of the 800w. Whereas the Centro and the 800w took design cues from the lower end of the market, Treo tapped HTC to design this new looker and for good reason. The RIM, in a general, sense, was eating their enterprise lunch and the Centro was doing just fine. So we have the Treo Pro. As its name implies, this isn’t for amateurs. Because it’s unlocked and unsubsidized you’d better have a damn good reason for going Windows Mobile. This could mean IT departments buying in bulk for their executives or a mobile professional who wants a messaging phone but still likes ActiveSync. Europe loves them some Windows Mobile, so their unlocked model is a good move. The US market, sadly, looks at expensive phones and then looks elsewhere. The Blackberry Curve didn’t get where it is on its good looks. Read more… → Read More
So we return to the Palm Treo Pro, a $549 unlocked Windows Mobile Treo aimed squarely at the business set. It’s been about a week and I’ve used this guy off and on. It kept a nice charge – two days, for the most part, without much data use – and fit nicely in the pocket. But is it the Treo of which we all incessantly dream? Is it the Treo that will bring us closer to world peace and better burritos on the East Coast? Is this the Treo for you? → Read More
We present to you CrunchGear’s 10 Days of CrunchGear final challenge. Instead of randomly choosing a commentor we are now going to make you work for your prizes. Why? Because the prizes KICK ass. Update – I’ve added a chatroom so you can ask questions. First, the line-up: → Read More
Here we are, friends: the $549 WinMo smartphone from Palm. Initial opinions: it’s a nice size, very slim. Smaller than the Centro and the OS is fairly peppy. A dedicated WiFi button on the side makes picking up networks much easier and they’ve stripped out a lot of the MSN garbage from the WinMo start-up screen. We’ll be working with it over the next week and report back on Wednesday, presumably embargoed so Walt Mossberg can review it. → Read More
via MobilityToday Sure, news of this thing leaked like a Greek fishing boat the moment Palm thought it up but now it’s offical. Behold: the Palm Treo Pro, a WinMo 6.1 cellphone with some nice features including enhanced WiFi discover, G.P.S., and a sexy touchscreen. Is it earth-shattering? No, but as we just learned Palm is going to create a series of great phones instead of one massive iPhone killer. Read on for the full release and look for some hot news this afternoon when we get our hands-on. Treo Pro will be available in September in Europe(2) through Vodafone (from free to EUR 399 with contract) and O2 (pricing is available from O2 direct sales and online business stores), and in Australia through Telstra (from free with contract). It will be available in the United States in the fall through the Palm online store as well as select Internet, retail and enterprise resellers for a suggested retail price of $549. The U.S. version is unlocked and unsubsidized, giving end users the flexibility to simply insert their existing active SIM card and immediately start using their Treo Pro without a new contract. → Read More
I am not a huge fan of Windows Mobile. I am, however, a huge fan of Palm and, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m befuddled by their recent decisions. As a blogger I’m full of half-baked opinions and prejudices and no where is this more prevalent than in my understanding of Palm and its various incarnations over the years. That said, I’m going to try to be calm and objective and state, for the record, that the Treo 800w is one of the better Windows Mobile phones I’ve seen in recent years, even surpassing phones like the HTC Touch Diamond. and the T-Mobile Dash in terms of performance, price, and durability. → Read More
With the Treo 800w lacking a standard wired headset/headphone jack, users were a bit surprised (read: mad) to find that the voice commands they’d grown accustomed to on other (cheaper) Palm handsets weren’t functional over Bluetooth. Fortunately, it seems that voice-enabled features were just a bit delayed, rather than completely omitted. From this page over at Palm.com: “Palm® Treo 800w Voice Dialing Over Bluetooth will be available soon as a download from this web page. Please return to this page in the coming days for the download and details” No word yet when the update should roll out – hopefully “in the coming days” actually means what it implies. Edit: Apparently, it meant “We rolled it out yesterday, but haven’t updated this page yet.” 800w users can get the update here. [Via SlashPhone] → Read More
Dave from MobilityToday reviews the Treo 800w, Palm’s $249 Windows Mobile Treo sold by Sprint. While I’d rather watch Dave test the blend-ability of this toad, if you need/want WinMo, need/want a Treo, and need/want to watch something that isn’t about the iPhone then maybe this is a good choice. I need to go get some coffee or something. I’m surly as all get out. → Read More
The Treo 800w’s launch date of June 22 is getting closer, and the phone has once again been spotted in the wild. The Windows Mobile smartphone featuring the new Treo form factor is making Palm’s business users excited. Treo users are known as being loyal, but the fact that Palm hasn’t update the device’s look — short of killing the antenna — in quite awhile has left them hungry, especially since the Centro line of tiny smartphones has been so successful. The perfectly blurry spy shot shows the Sprint logo, which is in line with what we’ve heard about Sprint being the first to carry the handset. we havent’ gotten official word from our Palm rep yet of the date and badge, but it all seems likely. → Read More
Don’t look for Palm OS 2.0 to come to your Centro any time soon. Sure, Palm’s sold millions of the small smartphones, but it also has a perpetual license for the current Palm OS and will likely continue to use it for the consumer handsets. Palm OS 2, as it’s unofficially called, will be geared towards a “prosumer” model of smartphone, something with more features than the Centro but not business specific, as the Windows Mobile Treos are. No word on the name for the new device, but we’re guessing a form factor somewhere around a Blackberry Curve with a touch screen, and we’ll likely see one before the end of the year. → Read More
We’re hearing more and more about the Sprint Treo 800w, the first new Treo from Palm sporting the new Centro-like re-design. It’s a good looking phone, WinMo aside, and has many fanbois up in a tizzy. WMExperts has it that the 800w will hit the streets for Sprint on July 22nd. What’s notable about this device is that it’s the first Palm smartphone with integrated WiFi, something many have been clamoring for. Palm’s always given WiFi a backseat to other forms of data connectivity, so we’re hoping this is a sign that it’s accepted that WiFi is here to stay and is a feature users want. No word on pricing yet, but we’re guessing in the $399 with contract range, if not less. → Read More
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