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Examining the Treo 650 Smartphone
aws910 writes "Many sites are reporting on the upcoming PalmOne Treo 650. According to MobileMag, 'The 650 will have a 1.3MP digital camera, bluetooth, higher resolution screen, backlight keyboard and voice recording. The processor will be a speedy 312MHz with 32MB of RAM, and of course an SD memory slot for expandable storage. No timeframe or price is known.' Some of the forums at other sites are reporting around 2 months as the timeframe for release. A good summary of the new device can be found here. More gossip can be found on the forum here." Gizmodo and Endgadget have pictures as well.
All these goodies (supposedly) on it, but no price or timeframe is known.... ...so now /. is a speculation site?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I feel like I'm getting really old, and I'm only in my 20s. This little palm thing, or pda (or whatever the kids are calling them these days) has way more power than my first computer.
I remember playing games on my Apple IIgs. Man was that baby sweet! And I remember when I got a 300MHz computer and everyone thought that was the greatest thing ever! Wow, do you think they'll ever make a 400MHz cpu? Can you even imagine how fast that would be?
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
..will it survive a 40 degree cotton program with fast spin?
Sadly no phone I've owned has passed the test.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
I've been looking into getting a handheld to replace the old fashioned pen+pad when taking down notes. Is there a decent palm/pocketpc application which allows you to handwrite notes with the same ease (without having to name files), and have an easy way to export the notebook to a pc and view it? I kind of envision an application where you can just flip pages like on a paper notebook.
rather amusing that, as the camera will very likely make it a very usefull tool for a lot of other business users. But with bluetooth, surely there shouldn't be any need for a built in camera... just get hold of a bluetooth enabled one or else make use of the SD card slot to transfer pictures with.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
-has a digital camera (atleast 3 megapixels)
I dont care if it has a 100 megapixel camera in it. if it does not have good glass lenses and OPTICAL ZOOM it will still suck.
i have yet to find any camera phone that can take a photo anywhere as good as my 4 year old Canon A20 2 megapixel digital camera. Most 3 megapixel cameras cant touch it.
also a 20 gig hard drive is pretty dumb idea. make it a solid state drive to survive daily torture a phone get's. ipod's are very delicately handled compared to how phones are handled.
If they make the device correctly with bluetooth then your bluetooth storage drive in your pocket full of music, photos and the last episode of friends that you simply love to watch over and over again on your train ride into work every morning?? THAT is a great device.
but having a phone that will access a General pourpose storage device and play open media formats?? are you nuts??
Cellphone companies love their "special" formats and the fact you have to use phone minutes to send your photos. (very few phones will store to a sd card)
let's get a phone that is designed WITHOUT any of the cellular companies having their fingers in it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree. Perhaps they should instead consider buying a camera.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Sort of. Yes, you could remap the console-- but then you'd have to do away with one of the other keys that's also handy to have. Doing Unixy things on thumboards is always likely to be a problem-- the reduced size means a) you can only fit so many keys on the unit, and b) you can only get so many labels on a given key. (and you can't expect people to chord stuff when they can't see what they're doing...)
:-/ You can do some fun stuff on the remote end to effectively get back ~, but you'd have to give up, say, # to get it.
My Blueberry has room for only 34 keys-- note that's not even one for every letter and number.
-JDF
-JDF
Okay, fans, how does this compare to the T-Mobile Sidekick or RIM Blackberry?
...
My company just switched over all us to the the
Blackberry 7750 on the Verizon network.
The BB is an awesome device for email / calendar / contacts, but it totally totally sucks as a phone. Its lacking features that are present in even the most basic phones today. Some examples
(a) I cannot have a custom ring-tone for a specific number. So now everytime my phone rings, I need to actually look at the phone in order to figure out if this is call from my boss/wife
(b) No voice-activated dialing.
(c) No auto-detect of hands-free mode. Most phones
can be configured to "auto answer" (or "auto answer if incoming number is in address book") in the hands-free mode, and the phone will automatically switch to hands free mode when you plug in the headset. Not the Blackberry
The list goes on and on
As PDA, my main complaint is the lack of good (and free) 3rd party software. No RPN, Pocket
Quicken, etc. etc.
Denial is not a river in Egypt
But I bet you have access to AIM or some other instant messaging technology, or SSH, or POP3 or an open USB/Firewire port on your machine for a thumb drive. Most of these places with no camera rules for phones have other more convenient holes that allow you to push the corporate data right to your friends.
Yes, but such was also the plan for the 600, I had heard somewhere. It will be interesting to see if they learned from their blunder. As you see from the article, the specs on the camera are all conjecture at this point so who knows what will happen.