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Treo, Combination Cellphone and PDA

Posted by michael on from the itty-bitty-fingers dept.

-homb- writes: "Finally, Handspring has done it before everyone else: The Treo, a combination cellphone, wireless POP3 email, and PalmOS PDA. Plus, the first version comes with or without a keyboard. I love my Blackberry, and it looks like the keyboard is the way to go for email. And the next version coming later on next year will have color." We mentioned these earlier.

3 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. It's missing 1800Mhz band by popeydotcom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So where the spec says it's a 'world' phone, it aint.

    IMO 900MHz + 1800MHz + 1900MHz = world phone.

  2. Right... by Breace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Finally, Handspring has done it before everyone else

    From the website: Coming early 2002

    Sounds to me they haven't done anything yet.

    Talk about being first: I bought my Nokia Communicator many _many_ years back. (mainly for the l33t telnet client hehe)

  3. 3 things by haunebu · · Score: 4, Insightful
    In order to create a successful wireless platform, you're going to need 3 vital things:

    1: Good hardware. Handspring doesn't have it. They've got a 33Mhz 16-bit Motorola Dragonball processor. It can (slowly) serve the most basic mobile data needs (email, instant messaging), play a couple of neat little games, and be a pretty effective organizer, but that's about it. Palm OS devices are stuck at 8 or 16MB's of total capacity, which sure as hell means you won't be storing any large files (movies, MP3s, etc) on it. They need modern hardware, like an ARM-derived platform, to overcome these inherent limitations. (I know, I know, Palm says it's working on it, but that was supposed to materialize how long ago now??)
    2: Good software. The Palm OS is an old, creaky 16-bit rag that maxxed-out its potential back in '98. Memory isn't protected, there is no support for multi-tasking, and just getting color on that thing was a chore and a half (you still find it only on the most expensive devices). You need a modern 32-bit OS like Symbian's EPOC (or even Pocket PC 2002) to do these things natively. Along with a modern OS comes support for faster, better hardware (both Symbian EPOC and Pocket PC run on ARM-derived RISC processors), and more storage space (like IBM microdrives).
    3: Decent network support.The Treo has network connectivity tacked-on as an afterthought. Again, this is the Palm OS's fault, not Handspring's. Back in the day, the Palm OS just wasn't designed to be doing the job it's doing now. But other mobile operating systems were built around this stuff, and can handle wireless network protocols natively. Microsoft's Smartphone platform (code-named Stinger) is set to be deployed in GSM and CDMA networks all over the world next year, and Nokia's 9210 (running on EPOC) will be in both the European/African/Asian and American GSM markets. It'll be pretty simple to add GPRS/EDGE (and then UMTS) support to the device because that's what it was designed to do.

    I applaude Handspring for forging ahead, but they've inhereted a real huge (possibly fatal) liability from Palm with that ancient operating system.

    --

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