Opera has added a new "server park" for users in the US, which should significantly boost speeds for users in the United States and Asia-Pacific regions. v4.2b also brings back a selection of user selectable skins, improved support for YouTube and other mobile video services on a wider selection of mobile phones. Improvements in the company's Opera Link allow users to sync notes between their mobile phones and PCs, in addition to their bookmarks and recently-visited URLs.

The store has also recently added a OEM sized extended battery for the Treo 800w. The Seidio 1350 mAh battery provides approximately 15% more capacity in the same sized package as Palm's original 1150 mAh unit. It sells for $39.95.

The study, based on data from over 15,000 phones, finds that only 5.6% of iPhone users reported a device malfunction in the first year of ownership, compared with 11.9% of BlackBerry owners and a staggering 16.2% of Treo owners. The trend is projected to continue through the second year of ownership, with iPhone maintaining its status as the most reliable of the three.

Each site is designed to pull in the latest news from a variety of leading publications and blogs into one place. Readers can stay on top of the latest headlines from hundreds of sources just by visiting one simple location.

For more details, look at the iPUG website. For those who are not in Tucson, the website is updated with the minutes of past meetings and other links.

So word of a $100 discount off the MSRP of an unlocked Treo Pro comes as pleasantly surprising news. Dell's Home e-store is running a coupon code promotion 27RR9ZSWHW?6BZ valid through November 19th, 2008 that takes $100 off the price of the Treo Pro. The customer's final price after the coupon discount is $449.99 alongside free shipping. Dell does charge sales tax in most states, however.

The introduction of the iPhone 3G in July and Apple's expansion into many more countries helped propel the vendor to second place globally, taking it above RIM in the quarter and resulting in higher shipments than for all the Microsoft-based smart phones combined. In total worldwide smartphone shipments hit a new peak of 39.9 million in Q3 2008.

iQcontacts v2.00 is available now for Palm OS 5 and higher. It includes a free trial period and retails for $19.95. It is currently on sale for $11.95 for a limited time.

The Treo Pro is Palm's new Quad-Band GSM phone (850/900/1800/1900MHz) with Tri-Band 3G HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100MHz) support. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition on a 400 MHz Qualcomm MSM7201 processor with a 320x320 pixel flush touchscreen, 256MB memory (100MB user available), microSD expansion (up to 32GB supported), built in Wi-Fi (802.11b/g with WPA, WPA2, and 801.1x authentication), Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and a 2.0 megapixel camera.

In addition to a doubled 128mb of user-accessible memory, the new Centros are distinguished by several additional small upgrades: soft-touch exterior paint, and a slightly revised "gel" keyboard. In addition, the new Centros ship with the My Location feature standard in Google Maps as well as Palm's FaceBook app and the newest available ROM version 1.08. The new green and rose Centros are available now for $79.99 after the same $100 mail-in rebate and 2 year commitment.

Specific enhancements:

The first is to add an error message when there is "no service" and a call is dropped if applicable.
Here is the technical explanation (Palm has added software support where if service is lost immediately after origination, modem disconnects the call with "no service" error which is not handled as an error. So no UI is displayed. This was fixed by adding in a handling code of "no service" call disconnect as an error.)