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Examining the Treo 650 Smartphone

Posted by michael on from the sort-of-fits-in-your-pocket dept.

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.

12 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Sexy! by ghettoboy22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of course all it needs now is the obligatory built-in Wifi and you'll be set. EvDO provider support would be a major boon as well. I think Palm should also look at a design with the camera in the front (hello mobile video conferencing!!!!!).

    Anyone remember the Smartphones from Earth Final Conflict?!

    1. Re:Sexy! by DarthBart · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you do built in Wi-Fi, I want it to be able to switch between placing calls out my voip circuit when I'm at home and out PCS when I'm not.

    2. Re:Sexy! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I second that-
      I was just looking at Treo's the other day, and the one feature that really turned my off was the inability to access an 802.11 network for web surfing (I don't want to burn cell time, esp. with how accessable wireless is these days)

      VoIP would be Icing on the cake, but I don't expect it to happen, as it's something that the Cell companies wouldn't want- "What? Place free calls off our network? without using minutes?"

    3. Re:Sexy! by Buran · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've been wondering if it'll work with those new SD WiFi cards.

      --
      i am a soviet space shuttle
  2. at what cost... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Have they managed to bring the price down yet? I'm tired of high pda costs that are not subsidized if you are a current user. Being penalized for loyalty sucks.

  3. Good, but... by StevenHenderson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Finally, a high-res color screen. This will make wireless web surfing bearable. On a low-res screen it was basically worthless.

    However, the inclusion of a camera continues to be a deterrant to some corporate customers. No matter how much I like this, I cannot have a camera or photo equipment in my office, so I could never get one. I'd imagine in this age of security, I am not the only one. I guess we'll have to wait for the non-cam model just like they did with the 600. Why don't they have a Treo 650-NC for ~$50 cheaper right off the bat?

    1. Re:Good, but... by ghettoboy22 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can't have the camera in your office at ALL? My corporation has a no-camera ban as well however it also comes with a caviat that if the camera is included in another device (Cell phone, PDA) you're fine as long as you don't use the camera. Are you working in a high-security installiation?

    2. Re:Good, but... by gamgee5273 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      I will say one thing about camera phones:

      When you and your wife are rear-ended in a four-car collision on the interstate because the driver of a Jaguar wasn't paying attention the camera becomes VERY useful at that point.

      Before that happened, I agreed with you. Now that it happened, I think every phone should have a camera.

  4. But will it work with Linux? by HRbnjR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just bought a Kyocera 7135 because it has recently been made to work with Linux. Though there are still some rough edges with gnome-pilot syncing (with Evolution), I easily got it working with J-Pilot. I like the 7135 because it's a more 'phone like' phone - rather than a PDA with a microphone and antennae :P

    The good thing with the Treo is that it's CPU should allow for Vorbis decoding, whereas the 7135 relies on it's built in DSP for the cycles, which only supports MP3.

  5. Beware by hey! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Palm (now PalmOne) has had one of the best advance replacement systems for broken hardware I've ever dealth with.

    Unfortunately, it is not available for their phones, because the carriers (like Sprint) like to sell service plans -- very expensive hardware service plans. PalmOne will not service any broken phones, but instead will refer you to the carrier. Our experience is the carrier will refuse to fix a broken phone (e.g. with a cracked screen) unless you have the hardware service plan.

    Since accidents are pretty common with these things (they're your phone AND your PDA), this makes getting the hardware service plan almost mandatory. You need to add that to the price of the phone/pda when you buy it.

    Don't get me wrong, I love my Treo600, but I've been lucky so far; other guys in my company haven't. Now that I know this problem, I'd probably opt for a separate phone and PDA linked by bluetooth.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. my Treo experience by gg3po · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I currently have a Treo 600. It's really been a great phone/pda. The camera's pictures aren't the best, but they're about what you'd expect from a phone-camera. I use it (together with my 512 mb SD card) as my mobile mp3 player using Pocket Tunes, and even use it to watch movies using MMPlayer and avi's specially encoded with mencoder thusly:

    mencoder {infile} -vf scale=-3:120:0:0,scale=180:-1:0:100,crop=160:120 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vbitrate=64:keyint=300 -ofps 20 -o {outfile}

    The only drawback has been the low-res screen (160px^2). I'd love to get a version with a 320x240 or something like that.

    --
    ---
  7. Re:Old and Grumpy by Rob+Simpson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    While these machines (and other PDAs) have processors have high MHz numbers considering how small they are, there's still the whole "megahertz myth" thing...

    There are probably better examples and ways to test, but here are a couple of SiSoft Sandra's reference CPU ratings:

    Intel Pentium Pro 200mhz
    Dhrystone ALU 540 MIPS
    Whetstone FPU 268 MFLOPS

    Intel StrongARM PXA255 400mhz (the fastest PDA cpu listed)
    Dhrystone ALU 411 MIPS
    Whetstone FPU 7 MFLOPS

    A pretty good processor and incredibly fast for most things that I use it for, but...