According to the latest rumors, ODM handset manufacturer Compal Communications is facing delays in producing “shipments of smartphones to Palm from mid-year to the end of the year”; the company has also reportedly seen orders from Motorola canceled. While likely to prompt much speculation about the state of the Pre, the report – which originated in Chinese-language paper Commercial Times – fails to mention any specific Palm device.
Update: Palm speaks – after the cut
Palm finally came clean on the Treo Pro smartphone this week, after a variety of leaks and PR blunders tipped customers and media alike to the handset’s existence. Running Windows Mobile 6.1, Palm describe the Treo Pro as “innovative and elegant” and are quick to cash in on the company heritage. Strip away the PR hyperbole, however, and it’s questionable what you’re left with. Far from innovative and 133g of cheap-looking plastic away from elegant, lined up against rivals this “new” Treo looks shabby before its even out of the gate.
After a quickly-pulled early release yesterday, Palm have now officially announced the Treo Pro smartphone. As expected, the Windows Mobile 6.1 device has WiFi b/g, UMTS (triband), GPS and Bluetooth. It’s quadband GSM and has a 320 x 320 flush-fitted touchscreen.
Early this morning, Palm released two official press photos of the Treo Pro along with a short video of the handset in action. The company didn’t reveal a whole lot of information other than the following: the Treo Pro smartphone features a one-touch Wi-Fi button, GPS, runs the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS and has a high-resolution flush-fitting color touchscreen.
Click over to watch the demo video and see more images
After the first hint of the Palm Treo Pro, the floodgates have opened. Over at PHONE Magazine you can see twenty live photos of the device from Chinese forum Treo.net.cn, together with more details of specs. There are also some particularly interesting comparison photos of the Treo Pro alongside a Palm Centro and a Treo 650, showing the difference in size and thickness.
Details of Palm’s upcoming smartphone, the Treo Pro, have been unearthed on a hidden flash presentation at the company’s site. The presentation, since taken down, details a Windows Mobile 6.1 GSM handset with 3G, a much slimmer body and a flush 320 x 320 touchscreen.
The budget ultraportable trend showed no signs of slowing this week, as Acer’s Aspire One hit US shelves priced from $379. Meanwhile, sources close to Dell’s suppliers tipped the company’s upcoming ‘E’ netbook as carrying a mere $299 price tag, and perhaps even landing as early as next month.
As for grown-up notebooks, Intel finally made the Centrino 2 platform official, and with it the promise of not only faster processors but native draft-N WiFi support and longer battery life. In fact this week the company had plenty to be pleased about, as they soundly thrashed arch-rival AMD with their Q2 2008 financial performance.
If you’re searching for a phone with some serious rumor history, look no further; the Treo 800w has been knocking around the internet for months now, promising Palm’s fabled usability together with CDMA 3G connectivity. Now conjecture no more, the touchscreen smartphone has been confirmed as part of Sprint’s new line-up, and we’ve had the 800w in for testing. Read on for the full review.
So the people at Palm were kind enough to send me their latest Bluetooth headset offering, the Series 3, for review. I have had it for about 2 weeks and I have been using it a lot, primarily with my Helio Fin, but I paired it with the Centro I have here too.
It works amazingly well. I truly was impressed, I have a Jawbone sitting around here, and the Palm, in my opinion, worked better than it. Part of that was due to the fact that the Palm headset has easy to use buttons, where as with the Jawbone I had to nearly drive the damn thing into my skull.
For those of you who don’t know it yet, we have another site in our network, OnCentro.com, its dedicated to the new Palm Centro that has been released exclusively on Sprint’s network for 90 days. They won’t stop selling them after 90 days, but that’s when the exclusivity ends. Well, we got our hands on one of this nifty little devices and reviewed it.
So lets run through it real quick, it has a QWERTY keyboard, a touchscreen with stylus, a microSD card slot that supports up to 4GB of storage, a 1.3MP camera, and EV-DO. Furthermore its available in multiple colors, has an included messaging app, works with Sprint’s OnDemand service, and all that fits into a 4.3×2.1x.74-inch package.
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