Palm One Says They'll Develop Cell-Phone Line

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Palm One Says They'll Develop Cell-Phone Line

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 9, 2004 @12:37PM from the who-better dept.

Sammy McLoughlin writes "Palm Addict interviewed Ed Colligan, Palm One's president, who finally put an end to the speculation of the Treo 650. According to the interview, the Treo range of Palm cellphones / organizers will be expanded. The Treo 600 will also be retained." The story's permalink doesn't seem to work for me, but search for "Colligan" within the Palm Addict page for this short but interesting exchange.

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Treo 300 by karmatic · 2004-10-09 12:40 · Score: 5, Informative

I like my Treo 300, and it does everything it needs to do. $80 on ebay, and when I use PDANet, I pull 90-160 KiloBytes per second with a good connection. (2.7ms ping, though, so pages still take a while to load). Best of all, it doesn't use any minutes.

Hopefully, when the 650 comes out, the 600s will drop to an affordable price.
The link to the story.... by hawkstone · 2004-10-09 12:57 · Score: 4, Informative

The page was unintuitive and confusing, but here is a permalink to the story that actually works.
Do people still use PDAs? by Anton+Anatopopov · 2004-10-09 13:00 · Score: 2, Informative

In europe, the PDA has been taken over by the cellphone. Why would you need a separate device when your phone can already do it all? Its just gadgetry for the sake of it.
Much better colours by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-09 13:12 · Score: 0, Informative

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/10/0 036254
Too little too late by Akimotos · 2004-10-09 13:13 · Score: 5, Informative

I've always loved Palm, but I see dark clouds ahead. The company always produced lovely and functional PDA's but totally missed out on the smartphone thing. Handspring got it right with the (still) brilliant 270/300 ... and they really had gold in their hands. They were at least one year ahead of the pack. Unfortunately they lacked money to bring it in great numbers to the GSM markets ...

When Palm bought Handspring, the TREO 600 was just released. And you could tell that Handspring had rushed the smartphone to the market in order to survive. The 600 was simply not completely finished. It lacked BlueTooth and suffers from all kinds of small annoying things. Then there is the battery life .... when you use you TREO for calling you might make it through one day, but use GPRS to browse or for email. I mean: it simply doesn't last a day at all.

But then Palm bought Handspring and I really hoped they would iron out the not-so-great stuff and release a 610 or so as a quick makeover. But they choose to upgrade their PDA-series 5 times or so, even releasing $89 Zire PDA's and let the TREO 600 battle it out against the smartphones of real phonemakers. Not a very wise thing to do. Especially not when you take into effect that they also missed the RoutePlanner market in Europe. I mean, the lousy PocketPC (my opinion) took a huge bite out of the market, because they offered those carkit solutions with route planners. Palm lagged by 18 months or so... it has cost them dearly.

SonyEricsson definately did a better job. They at first released the also not-so-great P800 and followed that one by the much better P900 and now, when Palm just announced that the releasedate of the TREO 650 is being pushed back from October to January, SonyERcisson is releasing the P910 ...

For me for the time being the Palm era is over. My TREO 270 died a month ago (but I still love it) and I only use my Tungsten T (also a very good device) as a route planner ... for daily operations I rely on the Symbian powered P900. The OS is still not as userfriendly as that of the Palm, but the P900 at least gives me 4 days on a battery while really using my phone with camera and GPRS (email, chat, browsing), or my phone as wireless modem for my powerbook.
1. Re:Too little too late by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-09 13:33 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  Then there is the battery life .... when you use you TREO for calling you might make it through one day, but use GPRS to browse or for email. I mean: it simply doesn't last a day at all.
  
  Have you ever used a Treo 600? By the sounds of it you're just guessing that it loses charge quickly, because I've owned one for a good 6 months now and have to say it's got a fantastic battery life.
  
  I took it away to a festival in August, a whole weekend away from everything. I hadn't bothered charging it for a couple of days before I left, and then I used it heavily for keeping in touch with people by phone, SMS and I used GPRS to get festival information and live news, and I used it often at night because the screen is so damn bright that it makes a wonderful flashlight... I was nowhere near depleting the battery after a weekend of medium-heavy use.
  
  I use it for phoning and GPRS quite a lot during the week and generally keep it on charge if I'm at my desk at work. At the weekend it spends around 60 hours without a charge, with a few phonecalls, SMS messages and some GPRS usage and constantly on standby. Usually when I get into the office on Monday the battery is >50% full.
  
  *ahem* So my point again. Treo 600 = great battery life.
2. Re:Too little too late by mobilebuddha · 2004-10-09 15:28 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  The problems with Treo600 are being addressed -> Treo650 has BT, removable battery, better camera.
  
  However, overall, in terms of the US market, SE P800/900 phones have not been nearly successful as the Treo600. How would I know? Just look at the phones offered by all of the major wireless carriers. You will see a Treo600 at/near the top of the Smartphone category from all of the major carriers (except Nextel). I'd say this is the testament of Treo600's popularity.
  
  I own a Treo600 myself and can't live without it. It has probably the most advanced phone functionalities that I know of:
  1) exportable extende call log (want to see who you called on 6/1/2004? you can, mine goes all the way back to 5/20/2004, and each with length of call, etc);
  2) Multiple #s per name, phonebook size limited only to memory
  3)SMS (with conversation grouping ability so you have better idea of who you are talking with)
  4) it fits in my jeans pocket
  5) I get around 90-110kilobit/sec transfer rate, probably the fastest you can get next to the newest GSM EDGE phones.
  6) HTML compliant web browser that displays graphics, javascript
  7) Palm software base.. no discussion there
  8) mp3 player with SD for storage
  9) a working camera, shitty.. but it works fairly well under well lit conditions
  
  I am sure there are other things that I am missing here, but I've not seen another phone that can match the Treo600 for its balance of the PDA and cellphone as well as its featureset. So in conclusion, I wouldn't call it too little too late, I'd say they finally got it right!
Treo 650 pics by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-09 14:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Engadget has pics of the Sprint version of the Treo 650 here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/2487384516216828/
Re:I'm not a huge fan of my treo 300. by Planesdragon · 2004-10-09 17:30 · Score: 2, Informative

When your Treo locks up, unscrew the stylus and hit the rest pin on the back. You might need to hold it for a bit, but this will cause a "hard" reboot.