Next-gen Treo rumors: more details

[Alexander Turcic]

Palm lovers, put away your hankies. Your time is not over yet. Few days ago we reported rumors of Palm's product pipeline for 2006. And as we just heard from Sagio why we should all invest in Palm stock, the same report outlines some more (unconfirmed) details on the upcoming Treos which we are likely to see next year:

• January 2006: Treo 700w (WM 5.0, ED-VO) exclusively from Verizon
• January 2006: Treo 700p (Palm OS) exclusively from Sprint
• March-May 2006: "Hollywood" - fancier 3G/GSM smartphone without external antenna to appeal to European customers; in US likely to be launched by Cingular
• March-May 2006: "Lowrider" - a sub-$300 device and entry-level PDA, compatible to previous-generation network radios

[Jimmie Geddes]

Great find!!! Just linked to you from gadgetsonthe go, and PalmAddict.

[Alexander Turcic]

Thanks Jimmie!

[cervezas]

You could say Sagio has reason to put forward a positive projection regarding Palm since they just filed with the SEC to announce the acquisition of a large block of Palm's stock. On the other hand, what better validation of their optimism than becoming Palm's third largest shareholder?

If they're right that the Treo 700p will hit the market at about the same time as the Windows version I think Mr. Gates may have a little rain on his Treo 700w parade. First, he'd lose the exclusivity of having the only 3G Treo for a period of time. Secondly, from the sound of the specs (32Mb RAM and 240x240 screen) I don't know that the memory-hungry Windows version will compare very favorably with the more efficient, nicely screened Palm version.

Wishful thinking from a Palm OS fan? Perhaps. But even Forbes seemed to be warning recently that Palm's rather packed release schedule would limit "upside projections." I guess that's financialese for the Osbourne Effect.

[Scott R]

Well David, it looks like the two of us are posting about this at a couple of different places. I agree that the Palm OS-based 700p (and even the current 650) should compare favorably to the WM5 700w. The big problem, though, is that the market and userbase is understandably confused about the Palm brand right now. Based on my observations on several online forums, even experienced Palm OS users seem to think that Palm has "abandoned its own OS" with their recent announcement of an upcoming WM5 Treo. How much damage has been done by the sale of the Palm name and the purchase of PalmSource by a foreign entity? Hard to say for sure...I guess we'll have to wait and see.

On the plus side, Treo 650's can be had for as little as $100 after contract rebates. Granted, that's online via treocentral's EarthLink partnership and with a 2-year contract, but if post-Thanksgiving prices at brick and mortar stores are similar, I don't think the average phone buyer looking to spend up to $100 is going to be concerned (or even aware) about the Palm OS supposedly being "dead."

Lastly, I'll add this...the January release date of the WM5 700w is rather unlike Palm. I never quite understood it myself, but Handspring (and then Palm) used to release new phones in time for post-Thanksgiving buying. Have they determined that the Xmas-buying public doesn't really buy lots of new phones at this time (which is what I've sort of thought myself for some time), or might this be an indication that they're a bit behind on getting the 700w out the door? And if that's the case, who's to blame? If my two-week trial of the PPC-6700 is any indication (coupled with recent comments by Dell Axim WM5 "upgraders"), WM5 isn't ready for primetime. I wouldn't be surprised if Palm and MS are scrambling to get WM5 working better in time for the big 700w release. But maybe I'm overthinking it.

[cervezas]

Originally Posted by Scott R

The big problem, though, is that the market and userbase is understandably confused about the Palm brand right now. Based on my observations on several online forums, even experienced Palm OS users seem to think that Palm has "abandoned its own OS" with their recent announcement of an upcoming WM5 Treo.

I agree. Mild protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't think Palm has done a very good job of dispelling these notions. I know the wireless operators tie Palm's hands somewhat with regard to advance announcements, but if they want to convince people that they are committed to Palm OS they really need to stop acting like they are annoyed that no one listened to an almost off-hand comment to that effect during the Windows Treo annoucement and start chanting "we love Palm OS" everywhere they go.

Originally Posted by Scott R

If my two-week trial of the PPC-6700 is any indication (coupled with recent comments by Dell Axim WM5 "upgraders"), WM5 isn't ready for primetime.

Interesting. What are your experiences so far?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by cervezas

You could say Sagio has reason to put forward a positive projection regarding Palm since they just filed with the SEC to announce the acquisition of a large block of Palm's stock. On the other hand, what better validation of their optimism than becoming Palm's third largest shareholder?

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/da...3878-index.htm

[Scott R]

Originally Posted by cervezas

Interesting. What are your experiences so far?

Well, I returned it when the two weeks were up. I posted lots of observations at treocentral.com and pdaphonehome.com. But here are a few things...

- The phone app didn't allow for looking up contacts via first letter of first name and first few letters of last name which is something I do all the time on my Treo 650. The voice dialing app worked well but cost extra and isn't something I'd much prefer to do the quick name lookup I just described by hand versus talking to my phone. And voice dialing isn't any special advantage that it has, since you can buy 3rd party apps for that for the Treo as well.

- Switching from portrait to landscape (and back again) felt too slow. You could watch it redraw. Because the phone would automagically do this switch every time you opened and closed the slider, it was a regular annoyance that felt like it was slowing me down in trying to do whatever I needed to do. I'm hearing that this may be improved by a patch to be released soon.

- Screen wasn't as bright as the 650 (few things are). This was a definite problem for in-car usage when you've got a good deal of sunlight. This was compounded by the poor contrast in MS' choice of font/background colors in the phone app (white on royal blue, if memory serves).

- Integration of the joystick into the OS/apps wasn't as good as it could/should be. Some of this was bugs that should get fixed. Other things were poor design decisions that you'd just have to live with.

- The UI felt like it was the typical 240x320 PPC UI on a physically smaller screen. Things you wanted to quickly check at a glance were harder to spot at arms length as compared to the Treo. This was due to the last couple of things I mentioned as well as the use of fonts that were too small in certain scenarios, important status icons that were small and monochrome (e.g., battery meter), pop-up dialogs that weren't finger-friendly for tapping on, and on-screen buttons where determining which button had the focus required squinting your eyes (rather than the bold blue focus ring of the Treo, you had one extra black pixel of border thickness on the button). In short, it still felt too much like a PDA and not enough like a smartphone.

- Horrible method of turning the ringer off/on. I guess I'm spoiled by the Treo's simple switch and I use it often. The PPC-6700 had an awful slider switch which adjusted the volume incrementally on-screen until you eventually got to the silent position.

- No on-screen indication of caps lock or alt mode. I believe this bug is to be fixed soon, but how did that make its way past testing?

- Backwards compatibility with other apps was bad. Lots of apps seemed to have problems with WM5. I wasn't happy with the built-in browser and none of the 3rd party apps worked well with WM5. I'd expect this to be resolved fairly soon, though.

- The mini (micro?) SD format is a definite disadvantage. I already owned a few SD cards, including one 2GB SD card, so I didn't relish the thought of having to scrap those. Plus, the biggest size miniSD card you could get was 1GB (I think a 2GB is now out or coming out, but there's also now 4GB SD cards widely available).

I'm sure I've left out several things. To be sure, it has tons of features and lots of potential, but for day-in day-out usability, it would have been a step backwards for me compared to my Treo.

[Colin Dunstan]

Wow Scott, this is an excellent hands-on review. Thank you for sharing it us!