Treo 680 Image Turns Up

I think if Cingular can do Treo 650s for $50, then there's a good chance this one's going to have similar pricing and specs to the 650. I doubt they're going to put a lower-quality screen than the 650 in this 680, based on Colligan's recent interview response:

What technologies do you see as important to incorporate into future devices?
Probably the biggest thing hardware-wise is better and better displays. That's the "face" of the device and is what appeals to people a lot.

Which is fine with me.

It's lookin' good. Everything I love about my 650, but less ugly. It'd be nice if they'd use the black keys and dark colouring of the 750v, though.

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

To many people, a phone is a fashion. Why can't Palm provide phones of different styles? While Palm do offer different smartphones with different OS and wireless networks, customers also want choices on their phones' outlook!

Look at how Apple is so successful with their ipods and how Nokia is so successful on their phones.

--
With great power comes great responsiblity.

At conferences, etc, it's quicker to pull a card out of a pocket than to have two people digging out their handhelds. Then again, I'm in the "social sciences" and, as a group, we tend to lag behind the rest of the professional world on technology implementation.

--
PalmPilot Pro (1997) -> III (1998) -> Vx (1999) -> m500 (2001) -> m515 (2002) -> ???

I just can't understand why Palm doesn't build a top end smartphone. Why do they make these small treos with a tiny screen and a keyboard at the buttom. What I would like is:

- 320 * 480 brilliant screen.
- No keyboard (if I want that silly thing i can get it up on the screen)
- IR, BT and most absolutely WI-FI
- I want GSM and most absolutely 3G
- There should be a VOIP sullution as default
- loads of harddisk space but still it should be fast.
(Iv'e had the Lifedrive but it was terrible slow and unstable)
- Processor that kick soma a**.
- Build in microphone
- Build in GPS with tomtom
- Camera well maybe... if they put in there it should be at least 3 mp?
- Long lasting battery

I guess that's about it. But everytime I surf the web in search of propper smartphones I end up looking at Ipaq, Eten, HTC, mio, Qtek or some other brand.
But that doesn't help me when I want a Palm OS soullution does it?

What do you guys want? Do you really like that tiny-screen of treo? :-)

Sincerely
Rune

palm m105, IIIc, zire71, T1, T3, lifedrive, T5, TX

That said, Palm really do need to diversify the Treo line. Ideally, it would come in three flavours:

1) Classic Treo candy-bar style with QWERTY
2) Classic Palm tablet-style PDA with a 320x480 screen but keeping the same overall size as the classic Treo, 'cause a PDA is a bit too big to use as a phone without looking like a complete dork - the Treo's pushing it as it is. ;)
3) Most importantly, a small Treo flip-phone with the standard cellphone keypad. Bung an mp3 player in it, keep the messaging app, make it look pretty. Sell millions.

I don't believe Palm are stupid - naive, maybe - so I think they know all this already. I imagine next year's Treos are going to be a very different-looking bunch; almost certainly they won't be running the "classic" PalmOS.

Or maybe everyone here is right, Palm is doomed, and we won't see anymore new Treos at ALL. How's that for depressing...

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

As the Treo is on the "cutting edge" of technology, I'm sure Palm would not hesitate to include it in a $650.00 "smart phone" if there were any possible uses for it. Just like they overloaded the Treo 650 with RAM - thinking ahead that their customers might want to load a few databases and programs beyond the basic PIMs.

It's this "looking ahead" philosophy that has made Palm the hands-down champion of the PDA and cell phone market today, and they are unstoppable!

Never forget: just because it's your money paying for that Treo doesn't make you Palm's customer. The carriers are the customer. You will get the features the carriers let you have. They've dipped their toe in the Wi-Fi pool, didn't like the temperature, and now it's no Wi-Fi for you, buddy.

This sad state of affairs may change some day, but for now we need to suck it up or carry two devices.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Not necessarily, Beersie.

http://tinyurl.com/f75fd

Excuse me, but ultimately *I* am the customer, and it's *my* decision whether to embrace (read 'accept') what they are offering; nobody can force me to "have the features the carriers will let me have". Thus, I *chose not* to buy any Palm device that doesn't have Wifi, and consequently they just lost one customer; the carriers can offer anything they wish, but it'll only do them good if *I* (and everyone else) buy it. What matters at the end of the day is number of units sold, and unsold phones collecting dust on the shelves are of zero use to the carriers, and to Palm.

So one thing is what the carriers wants me to have, another thing is what I decide to have.

Palm Vx (a classic) -> Palm 505 (*yawn*) -> Dell Axim (slooow...) -> Palm TE (great) -> Qtek 9090 (great idea, lousy platform) -> Nokia 6630 (a toy) -> iMate SP3i (not bad) -> Nokia 9300 (can't sync notes!!) -> Treo 650 (awesome) -> hw6915 (almost perfect)

If you plan to be a frequent Wi-Fi user instead of using the carrier network then they are quite happy to see you go. They make their money off their pricey data plans, not off selling you the handset. In fact they take a loss on the phones in hopes of getting you into one of those plans.

freakout, Cingular (largest US carrier) still sells one Wi-Fi enabled phone, a Cingular branded HTC Wizard, but since releasing that they have brought out no others to market that I'm aware of. I think we have seen the same pattern with the others. Now that Cingular is releasing the Nokia E61 with the Wi-Fi cut out and calling it the E62 I believe the story has been told: they consider Wi-Fi to be more of a loss than a leader.

I think the US carriers may be spooked about the free/cheap municipal Wi-Fi buildouts starting to occur in some major US cities (as well as some small ones: http://www.pikesoft.com/blog/index.php?itemid=111). The Verizon CEO has delivered some surprisingly shrill and frightened-sounding statements against municipal Wi-Fi that let on what a concern this trend is for his company.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
www.pikesoft.com/blog

Don't forget the mostly ignored Samsung i730 on Verizon. Good CDMA performance and a decent 240*320 screen. Integrated wi-fi and BT, even though Verizon has done their usual bit of crippling the BT profiles. A shame the slider has mnay of the same issues that plagued the Palm T|T series. I prefer the Treo keyboard over the Samsung's.

But yes, to answer your question, you have at least one other smartphone offered by the US telcos with integrated wi-fi.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

At T-Mobile's, the data plan for my Treo 600(250MB) costs 18€. Afaik, 1.5GB cost 75...and theres no unlimited plan available.

Compare that to the chesap 30$ plan a friend reported me from the states and you see why people want wifi here...

Best regards
Tam Hanna

P.s. Data prices are falling here, too nowadays..finally!

Find out more about the Palm OS in my blog:
http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com

http://www.sprint.com/business/products/phones/ppc6700_allPcsPhones.jsp

With available cheap EVDO plans (500 anytime minutes + unlimited EVDO for as low as $30/month!) + the ability to run Skype + impending government-sponsored Wi-Fi networks, it's obvious that having a lot of phones like this would quickly bankrupt Sprint. Either way, I can't see the carriers surviving the VoIP "paradigm shift". Expect to see several carriers merge in the next year or two (it's already started), but their heyday is over. People are sick of being fleeced.

The timing is just about perfect for Google to introduce its free portable VoIP service...

The carriers are fcuked and I don't think anyone will shed a tear for them. Bwahahahaha!

TVoR

I did a quick Google on i730. The Verizon page that pops up at the top of the list makes no mention at all of the wi-fi capabilities. Amusingly. Seems even when they do offer wi-fi they don't go out of their way to advertise it...

They are TERRIFIED of anyone figuring out that Verizon OR Sprint have any wi-fi integrated smartphones currently in their lineups.

I would also assume that's why everyone is so silent to the fact that the 700w/wx have drivers for Palm's wi-fi SDIO card built in. On the 700wx, with its extra RAM, giving up SD storage is ALMOST possible in order to keep an SDIO wi-fi card installed. ALMOST. I'd much rather have one of the newer low-profile, minimally protruding wi-fi SDIO cards in my smartphone that the enormous brick of a card Palm currently offers under their branding.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Now that's stretching the truth a little: no company is happy, not even indifferent, at a customer leaving; as soon I change carriers Vodafone will call me up and try to convince me to stay with them. They've done this in the past and they'll do it again. That's hardly the behavior of an indifferent company. And when they do call I'll certainly let them know the reason for me leaving. Do I expect things to change because of that? Of course not. But contrary to what you say I don't need to, nor will I, "suck it up". That's why I got the hw6915.

Having said that, it is true that they do make the money off data plans. But that also includes phone calls and not only 3G, hence their concern when a customer leaves, regardless of them selling me the handset or not.

Palm Vx (a classic) -> Palm 505 (*yawn*) -> Dell Axim (slooow...) -> Palm TE (great) -> Qtek 9090 (great idea, lousy platform) -> Nokia 6630 (a toy) -> iMate SP3i (not bad) -> Nokia 9300 (can't sync notes!!) -> Treo 650 (awesome) -> hw6915 (almost perfect)

Although. A question I don't think I've seen asked*: if wifi does become ubiquitous and everyone has a device that uses it, won't we start to see free wifi networks become overloaded and next to useless? After all, if everyone is using them then the costs for the operators of these free networks will start to add up. They might be able to beat that with ad-supported access or something, or charging fees for service with no ads, but then you're pretty much back where you started: if you want unfettered on-the-go access, you have to pay.

*possibly because it's a stupid one

Tim
I apologise for any and all emoticons that appear in my posts. You may shoot them on sight.
Treo 270 ---> Treo 650

Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
Hey!! I made associate writer at PDA247. Come see my nattering over there!!
www.clieuk.co.uk/wm.shtml

But we still have GSPDA. Good, classic 2G machines without video calling crap...

Best regards
Tam Hanna

Find out more about the Palm OS in my blog:
http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com

You're missing out on the integration between PIM and Phone which 2 devices can't replicate. You're also missing out on fast, seamless, integrated Internet features.

Sprint is pretty good in NYC. But their big attraction is the cheap unlimited data plans.

http://www.sprint.com/