Unlocked Treo 500 Due Soon

The Register is reporting today that Palm will soon offer a unlocked version of the Treo 500v in Europe. Vodafone's exclusivity period will expire at the end of the year and reportedly Palm will offer the Treo 500 unlocked on its website. The 500v is currently available for free with new contracts through Vodafone in certain counties and normally retails for £299 in the UK.

Palm recently disclosed that the Treo 500 would not be sold in the US during its last conference call. Since the Treo 500 is a tri-band GSM phone, it would not work as well with US. American GSM carriers, such as AT&T and T-Mobile, typically offer quad-band phones on their networks.

Treo 500 Specs

The Treo 500 comes with a full qwerty keyboard and a 240x320 Transflective display with support for 65k colours. It has a tri-band GSM radio supporting the 900/1800/1900 bands and UTMS 2100. It includes 256MB memory with 150MB available for user storage and a microSD expansion slot. It also features a 2 megapixel digital camera and a Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and stereo headset support. A mini USB port is provides for charging and connectivity as well as a 2.5mm headset jack. A removable 1200mAh battery is present for a claimed 10 day stand-by rating with 4.5 hours of talk time. It has dimensions of 16.5mm (D) x 61.5mm (W) x 110mm (H) (.65" x 2.4" x 4.3" inches) and weighs 120 grams (4.23 ounces).