A Pair of Stylish Smartphones

With release of the Treo 800w and Treo 850, Palm’s product line will take a huge step forward in desired features and style.

One of Palm’s long standing criticisms has been their failure to bring new features to their Treo product line.  The last several Palm OS and Windows Mobile Treo smartphones have been minor revisions to earlier iterations.  Palm has recognized this criticism and has even started admitting that their Windows Mobile product line has become stale during recent quarterly earnings calls and analyst conferences.

A Touch of Style

All of this is about to change with the release of both the Treo 800w and Treo 850 later this summer.  Rumors of these devices have been swirling around in Internet discussion forms for months.  Recently these rumors become much more credible now that details and pictures have begun to leak out in advance of the official product launches.

In just the last few weeks, we have seen pictures and specifications surface for both devices.  As we can see, Palm has finally figured out that their customers not only want phones that are packed with popular features; they also want devices that are just as much fashion statements.  The consumer-oriented Centro smartphone got the party started with a redesigned form factor.  Centro is much smaller than previous Treo smartphones and is only slightly larger than common 12-key feature flip phones.  The next step in the transformation is to transform the Treo form factor from “frumpy” to “sexy”.  The Treo 800w and 850 represent the first step in the Treo form factor evolution.

The Treo 800w looks like a Treo 750 with the Centro’s stylistic designs applied to it.  The keyboard, thankfully, appears to be the full sized Treo keyboard.  The button bar has been redesigned, but is still clearly a Palm device.  The curved sides have given way to a more industrial looking flat edge.   The expansion card bay door also looks to have been redesigned also.  The Treo 800w, based on the photos that we have today, isn’t a radical departure from the current Treo 750 design.  There is enough change to make it new, but not enough to scare away senior executives who may want the latest gadgets without having to actually learn how to use them.

The photos that have surfaced of the Treo 850 appear to be a blending, again, of the Palm Centro and the BlackBerry Curve.  The first thing that caught my eye was the Centro-style keyboard rather than the more familiar Treo keyboard.  The Centro’s clear key cap keyboard looks great in the photo.  My only hope is that the keys are the larger Treo style keys as I really find the Centro keys a bit too small for composing anything more than a short email message or text message.  Other than my concern over the keyboard, the Treo 850 looks like a handsome device.

Give and Take

Smartphones are a zero sum game.  In other words; for everything that you add, you need to take some thing out.  According to the product specifications that have leaked out on the Internet, Palm will in deed be adding some nice features to these up coming Treo smartphones.  (Editor’s Note:  The following specs are still the things of rumor.  Everything is subject to change.)  In addition to the body changes, Palm is upgrading the display in their upcoming pair of Windows Mobile devices.  For the first time, Palm’s Windows Mobile devices will have the same 320x320 displays that their Palm OS cousins have.  This will be a welcomed upgrade as I have always thought that Windows Mobile 240x240 screens always felt a bit too cramped.

The screen upgrade is nice, but I expect Palm’s power users will go into a tail spin for the other improvements.  For the first time in the Treo line, Palm will be adding an 802.11 b/g wireless radio which will be joined by an assisted-GPS receiver.  The assisted-GPS radio has some really interesting applications behind it should an enterprising company with tons of software engineers have some time to throw something together.  Other nice upgrades that Palm is reportedly working on are the addition of Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support and a very roomy 175MB+ of RAM for data storage and applications.  The icing on the digital cake will be the latest edition of Windows Mobile Professional 6.1.  (No, there has been no word on whether or not Palm will release a 6.1 upgrade for the Treo 750, however, I hope they do.)

All of these additions come with a price.  The new form factor will mean that accessories from older Treo smartphones probably won’t work with these new phones.  The new phones will likely use microSD cards.  Yes, the really-small-so-don’t-drop-them-on-the-floor cards.  And they will be loaded into the device under the battery just like SIM cards in GSM/EDGE devices.  The sync connector is also changing from the Athena MultiConnector to a micro-USB cable for both data synchronization and battery charging.  Suddenly it makes perfect sense why Palm has been having all those wonderful Treo accessory sales lately.

The only thing that is really a toss up is the battery.  The Treo 850 is rumored to have a 1500 mAh battery.  That is an upgrade if you are coming from the Treo 750 (1200 mAh) and a slight downgrade from the Treo 755p (1600mAh).  Since the units haven’t even officially been announced by Palm yet, there is really no telling how well the battery will perform under real-life work loads.

That’s Nice, But…

While the rumored Treo 800w and 850 are going to be popular devices for sure, Palm customers who prefer the easy of use of Palm’s homegrown operating system, Palm OS, will have to keep waiting for their upgrades.  The Centro, running the years old Palm OS 5.4.9, has been a huge success for Palm.  The downside to the Centro is that it is an inexpensive device, with lower profit margins for Palm.  There are also no rumors of an impending Treo 800-series device running Palm’s next generation Linux-based operating system, Palm OS II/Nova.  According to the best information on the development of Palm OS II/Nova, that Palm is willing to put out there publically anyway, we are still up to 12 months away from the first devices running the new Palm OS system software.  (Many in the Palm user community feel that Palm will have lost all credibility to execute a project plan if they can’t deliver new devices running Palm OS II/Nova by mid-year 2009.)

In Conclusion

It has taken Palm a long time to come around to the idea that people want phones that have great features and make a positive statement about the person using them.  The Treo 800w and 850, expected to be released later this summer, finally bring Palm up to par with the devices from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.  The addition of Wi-Fi, GPS, and a roomy 175MB of RAM are going to be welcomed upgrades by power users who have been frustrated by Palm’s conservative upgrades in past devices.  If history serves, expect the 800w to launch first on a US CDAM/EvDO carrier, followed by a launch of the 850 in Europe a few months later with yet another launch of the 850 in the US on a GSM/EDGE carrier by year’s end.

As long time readers of this column and listeners of the 1SRC podcast know, I’m already trying to figure out whether or not I should go for my third new Treo this year when the 800w becomes available here in the US or to roll the dice and wait to see if Palm will surprise us and release a new Palm OS device in December or not.  My wife will probably divorce me if I get another Treo this year anyway, so I might as well plan on getting two more Treos this year and cover all my bases.

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