Palm One Says They'll Develop Cell-Phone Line

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.

Comments

Treo 300

[karmatic]

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.

Re:Treo 300

[erick99]

I think this is the relevant part of the interview that confirms the Treo 650 rumor.

PJA: Let's talk straight for a moment, Ed. There have been marketing pix of the Treo 650 out on the web for months, and in the past week, at least 2 people have had Sprint reps let them use and photograph actual T650's. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak... Handspring embraced the web community, and leveraged them to build a lot of pre-release buzz for the 600. Why is pa1mOne issuing all the 'no comments'?

EC: Were not being cagey...we have a plan for release and marketing of the next-gen Treo...and the Treo family. We appreciate the fact that there's a lot of interest built up already. However, we're not going to be rushed by any news leaks on the web.

PJA: Sooooo...there will be a next-gen Treo? Will it be released before the end of the year?

EC: Absolutely! We will be making an announcement soon.

Technology Company releases new Technology Shocker

[hattig]

Hold the front pages everyone! It appears that the unthinkable has happened!

Get this! A company in a high-competition marketplace is going to release new products to compete with other companies!

Yes! You heard that right. They aren't going down the tried and trusted route of hanging on to the previous design, they are going to move forward, expand their offerings and try to get more people interested.

But! But! I hear you say, why would a company do such a thing?

Beats me. Sure beats me.

Heh predicted this weeks ago

[Mike Rubits]

Great move from Palm, especially to counter MS' Smartphone and/or PocketPC Phone Edition. If Palm can manage decent battery life - especially important because people don't want their PDA to die out when their phone dies too - Palm could have something here.

The new product lines will be something to keep your eye on, even more interstingly how this will affect their normal PDAs with PocketPC's rising market share.

Love it, but the $

[jchristopher]

Love the Treo 600, had a chance to play with one, but can't justify the price. It's been out over a year and there really haven't been any big price drops.

You can buy a decent Sony Ericsson T610 phone for -$150 with a year's service committment, and buy a decent palm for $99 for a net cost of -$50.

Buy a Treo 600 instead and you have a net cost of at least $300 after activation, a difference of $350. WTF?

There's no way it costs $350 more to make a Treo 600 than a decent cell and palm. No wonder Palm stock is tanking! Everyone I know would buy one, but they've priced it out of reach of the vast majority of people.

Re:Love it, but the $

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what's funny. I've been a Palm guy for years, starting with a III, moving to a IIIx, and jumping to a cheap little Clie SJ-30. I've used the hell out of these things.

I just got in on the Amazon -$175 (they upped it!) deal on the T610. I was thinking of using the money to upgrade my battered SJ-30. But first I used the phone's built-in Bluetooth to sync wirelessly with iSync on my Mac (it just worked). And then I used the phone's included XTNDConnect software to sync with Outlook via the IR port on my work Win2k laptop. And with about 10 minutes of work, my contacts, calendar, and task list are synced across both of my laptops, my phone, my Palm -- and even my iPod. Without a sweat. I was kind of amazed; I can enter a new contact on my phone, and it appears *everywhere*. Neat.

And then I realized: hey, wait. If I've got all my phone numbers, my Outlook calendar, my task list, a better ringer for reminders and Mophun games on this phone, why the heck am I carrying around this Palm? Graffiti? I never enter any more than a line of data. I figured I could put up with T9.

And so I stopped carrying around my Palm. It's a couple of weeks later, and my Palm is sitting dejectedly in its cradle. The T610 isn't even a Palm or WinCE smartphone.

Pretty cool for a phone they paid me $175 to carry. Score this round: SonyEricsson 1, Palm 0.

The link to the story....

[hawkstone]

The page was unintuitive and confusing, but here is a permalink to the story that actually works.

Do people still use PDAs?

[Anton Anatopopov]

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.

Good, and Obvious

[GarfBond]

This has been well known in palm fan sites for a while now, and it's really obvious anyway.

This is also really good for the consumer, cause, if you haven't noticed, the Treo 600 is a really great device (best PDAphone combo out there), buuuuuuut, it continues to stick around the $500 price tag at the phone retailers. For me, that's way too much to pay for either a phone OR a PDA. What having a complete lineup will do is finally bring the 600 down into mainstream prices.

Too little too late

[Akimotos]

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.

Re:Too little too late

[mobilebuddha]

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!

Re:Too little too late

[Akimotos]

True, in the US the TREO 600 is marketleader, but face it: other phonecompanies really haven't put much effort in the 'split standard' us market. Real smartphones (like the P900 and the P910) are only now coming to the US in huge quantities. In the rest of the world, TREO is non-existent and to my frustratation, the are even outsold by the all those windows smartphones ....

About the point of the 600 you mention:

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); The P900 has that too. You have a major call history. If you add an 'advanced phone manager', you have very advanced features regarding to whitelisting, blacklisting, etc. I couldn't find it for my TREO600.
The P900 standards comes with support for WAV, MP3's as ringtones and you can make userlists. Every list (or every user) can have his own MP3 (complete songs, if you want it), every MSG (SMS, MMS) can have it's own song, every emailaccount can have it's own song ... the TREO is no macht here.

2) Multiple #s per name, phonebook size limited only to memory Same on the P900 .. phonebooksize limited to memory (and extendeble with Memory Stick Duo's), very extended addresscards per entry. I mean: I use Isync (MAC) to synchronise with the standard (very flexible) addressbook of my MAC. Some of my contacts have 7 phonenumbers... no problem. Have never been able to get that right in my Palm. Not even using their own software.
And Symbian has flash memory. So, if you run out of juice, you don't loose any information at all. Never.

3)SMS (with conversation grouping ability so you have better idea of who you are talking with) Nothing special really. Look at the standard Message facilities of the P900. It supports multiple POP accounts (currenly I read 12 or so), advanced SMS & MMS features (although I wonder who will use the MMS).

4) it fits in my jeans pocket The 600 looks okay, but the Candybar formfactor is better. That's why Blackberry just released a candybar. It has an external antenna... maybe needed in the US, but not necessary in Europa and the rest of the world.

5) I get around 90-110kilobit/sec transfer rate, probably the fastest you can get next to the newest GSM EDGE phones. Yeah, but not for a day. Use it for three hours and your battery is dead. The P900 is justs as fast, but can hold out for 2 days very intense GPRS use or 4 days average use (checkin mail, chatting).

6) HTML compliant web browser that displays graphics, javascript Hahaha, the standard TREO 600 browser is just a laugh. Not even better than the standaard Symbian P900 browser. But who cares on Symbian for the standard browser. We have Opera.

7) Palm software base.. no discussion there See, see that's what I thought. I have owned a Palm since the '90's and was one of the first in Holland to have 'm and I have owned the complete range (till T1). Even got a special edition of the V from Palm, because I sold a big bunch of it to a customer.
Since the Atari Portfolio (early 90's) I rely on PDA's ... so after Newton came Palm.
Anyway, I have tons of software for my Palms, both freeware as paid stuff. When I switched to Symbian, I really wondered about how to go without all that software.
But for Symbian there already is an awfull lot of software available. Not as much right now as for Palm, but they are picking up. And all major Palm aplications are available for Symbian (including Bugme, Worms and Quickoffice).
And - although not for me - they have awesome games on Symbian. Really nice, full screen games for which you just put your handheld in an landscape mode to have a small game console. Like I said, not for me, but a lot of people love it.

8) mp3 player with SD for storage The media department is much better developped on Symbian. Palm doesn't even come close. I mean, the P900 has a vid

Re:Too little too late

[Fnkmaster]

While I agree with most of what you say, I reached the opposite conclusion. The Treo 600 has some annoying issues, but is still the best SmartPhone on the market. Yes, the P900 comes closest, but it can't really compete with Palm OS for usability, application availability and power/simplicity balance.

The one thing the P900 does well is BT, which is nice, but with the Treo 600 my need for BT is much more limited, since the data capabilities are quite excellent, and the thumb keyboard makes real email, SMS and IM applications usable. Yes the GPRS battery suck problem is an issue, so I let it disconnect when it's not being used, since reconnection takes a pretty trivial amount of time. I have almost never used enough data in one day to suck the battery dry, I think it's happened to me twice. Yes, it is fishy that I can use the thing for 3 or 4 days of regular voice use without needing a recharge, and one to two days with modest data use, max, but this is a small compromise to make for the power of this phone.

Hopefully Palm One will continue to offer their upgrade program in the future so I can get the promised improved battery life and bluetooth in the Treo 650 for a reasonable price. Then my life would be truly complete. I just hope Palm keeps delivering, so I don't have to stoop to getting a Symbian device... ugh.

iPalm?

[Doc Ruby]

There hasn't been any real question of whether PalmOne would continue their Treo line, especially when rumors of a Treo "Ace" were confirmed by announcements of the 650 with Ace features, in the rumored Ace release window (2004Q4, possibly even October). Palm spun Handspring "back in" on the strength of its Treo 650 last year. The real question is why they'll keep splitting/confusing their market by selling two "tops of the line", a T5 and a Treo 650, with similar features, instead of a single combined unit that's second to none. The other compelling question is whether Apple would finally spend that fat bankroll they've nursed for decades, rolling all that Palm/Handspring tech into a musical iPhone that changes the world even more than did the original Macintosh. Steve Jobs, please "Reply to This" .

Re:iPalm?

[afidel]

Steve doesn't want to get into the smartphone market because he can't controll the experience enough. They wouldn't controll the price, they wouldn't controll support, and they wouldn't controll the network it runs on (unless they did an exclusive deal which would be stupid as it would be too niche a market to justify the development costs). Not only that but Steve seems to have a personal grudge against PDA's since the Newton was the first project he killed on his return since it was a pet project for the man that ousted him.

Treo 650 pics

[Anonymous Coward]

Engadget has pics of the Sprint version of the Treo 650 here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/2487384516216828/

Palm's focus on phones has clearly hurt their PDAs

[Mal Reynolds]

Sure, Palm One's Treo's are nice. But a lot of us don't want our cell phones built into our PDA's. And some of us in medical and security conscious fields can't bring cell phones into work environments. Unfortunately, it looks as though Palm One is putting all their development into Phones, at the expense of their PDA's.
I had $400 bucks put aside to buy the new top of the line Palm PDA. I'd heard the T5 was about to be out, and was ready to buy it day one. Then I read the feature list and was shocked to find it has none of the new features I was looking for.
It is a horribly disappointing device. It has no Wi-Fi, they've removed the voice recorder and vibrate alarm that was present in the T3, and they've made it out of plastic instead of the T3's metal housing. It has no camera, only a single memory slot, which means no place at all for an external memory card if a Wi-Fi card is installed.
And that new multi-media version of Palm OS? The one based on BEOS? The one that was released to developers nearly a year ago? No it isn't present either. They're using the same old Palm OS that's on every other Palm device on the market.
Sony is of course out of the Palm PDA market, but devices they released 8 months ago are still better than what was just announced by Palm. It's sad really, I don't want to buy a WinCE machine, but the only machines with big hi-res screens, built in Wi-Fi, removable batteries and featuring full multimedia support are WinCE.
Message to Palm: Get off your butts, crash develop a feature laden, high end PDA (not cell phone) and release it in the next few months. Either that, or just cede the entire high end PDA market to the WinCE machines. Or hell, just license one of the many Taiwanese designed WinCE PDA's and drop PalmOS on it.

I'm not a huge fan of my treo 300.

[Mustang Matt]

It has some really annoying "features"

1. The battery is internal so it's not easily pulled/replace (see comment 2)

2. Sometimes the palm OS will crash and there will be a reset button on the touch screen but it's so locked up you can't hit it, and the phone's power button won't work either so you have to leave the screen open until the battery completely dies.

3. This phone's SMS doesn't work with Sprint's network so the keypad is only really useful for managing the phone book.

4. Treo 300 doesn't have built in modem software like my old Kyocera 6035 so I can't hook it up to my laptop and dial up to anything. I might be able to use Sprint's vision software but I'm not sure if there are additional charges for that.

5. It doesn't use the standard audio jack for the headset. I thought my phone was broken until I discovered there was a special headset for it. I'm not sure what the difference is. It's still mono with a mic. I can't imagine what different wiring patterns there would be.

6. Battery life isn't great.

7. No bluetooth! (I don't think the Treo 600 has it either.)

8. I can't sync it up with Mozilla Sunbird! (yet) but this is no fault of Palm's I suppose.

9. It seems like I have to go into sprint and get PRC updates more often than I did with other phones. This might be a sprint thing I'm not sure.

10. It's not a very bring screen.

Overall I'm glad I bought this phone used off ebay for $100 vs paying new prices for it. I wouldn't buy it again.

Re:I'm not a huge fan of my treo 300.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Errr... Do you have a point? I mean, the Treo 300 is very old, I'm not sure how it's supposed to relate to this artical.

Re:I'm not a huge fan of my treo 300.

[Planesdragon]

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.

URL for Ed Colligan interview

[pjarts]

Hi, I did the interview with Ed Colligan for Palm Addict. The correct URL is: http://palmaddict.typepad.com/palmaddicts/2004/10/ _this_morning_i.html PJ Arts