Who'll pay $550 for the Treo Pro?
Made official after a couple of hours of speculation a few weeks ago, Palm's Treo Pro is now ready to roll.
Running Windows Mobile 6.1 on a 400MHz CPU, it has 128MB of RAM, 3G, Wifi and Bluetooth, a 320x320 touchscreen display, and GPS. A micro-USB port replaces the thingie hole, meaning no new cables for Treo-come-latelies that may hypothetically exist.
The unlocked price tag, however, is a stout $550. Too much? Or the happy price to pay for carrier freedom? Also: PalmOS is so very dead.
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Palm OS dead means palm company dead, as far as I'm concerned, until/unless they come out with an open-platform box.
Well it certainly beats the iPhone in the "bezel inches per dollar" metric.
They would have lost me at "Running Windows Mobile 6.1", even if I hadn't already switched to The 3G Coming of JesusPhone. Nice going, Palm; this is another 10-year customer who isn't looking back.
I'm in with Jack. Palm OS user since 1998, and I'll be making the switch next week. Windows Mobile is not getting a place in my pocket.
Also: way to be years too late on getting WiFi working, Palm!
I just recently upgraded to a Treo 800w. Paid ~$250 for it as part of Sprint's upgrade plan. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and seems pretty similar to the Treo Pro, but it has a 333MHz processor instead. All in all, I'm pretty happy with it. I wouldn't mind some iPhone type screen real estate, but then I also like having both a hard keyboard and a touchscreen interface. Mail and messaging are quite usable, and I can install any apps I want without having to resort to any sort of jailbreakery. I can also handily use it as an ssh/telnet, rdp, and irc client. It does GPS navigation right out of the box as well. Threaded SMS is nifty, but I'll probably use that less and less as more of my friends get mobile email.
Having said that, the browser and overall UI design don't even come close to my brother's iPhone, and I haven't tried listening to any music or watching movies on it (which isn't at all why I got the Treo in the first place), but I imagine the Treo pales in comparison there, too. I run Macs at home, and have come to really appreciate the aesthetic and technical sensibilities of their designers. I miss that somewhat on my WM6.1 phone, but still find it to be a very capable device. I don't really miss PalmOS (but the last Palm I had was that IIIe with the cyberdelic clear case).
I've also been pretty happy with Sprint as a service provider. No customer service complaints, and I never seem to lack a signal when I need it.
I'm eagerly awaiting Fennec to shore up the browser issues. Once that drops, I'll be completely satisfied with my phone for what I paid for it. I'm not sure if I'd pay $550, but for a couple of hundred bucks, if I had it to do over again I would.
I like my Palm Centro. It's not as flashy or slick as an iPhone, but I didn't want to have to jailbreak it just so it would sync with my (Linux) PC. No Windows, thanks, so that leaves Palm. I can run all my old freeware and op[en source favourites, and with a data plan it works fine. Palm OS may be dead, but its corpse still walks the Earth.
Oh thank Goodness they put all that money into the Folio instead of the Palm OS. Oh, wait . . .
Agree with some of the sentiments here... Hate WinMo, love Palm OS. Or at least, like Palm OS pretty well. The main reason for buying Palm, for me... No way is Palm getting any more of my money if they abandon their own OS...
Why would anyone want to buy this? The Nokia E73 has everything the Treo has - o.k. no touchscreen - , (probably) better sound quality, way more RAM, no Windows-Mobile AND is cheaper. Palm is officially dead.
Eh. I'd join in on the Palm's Dead stuff, but . . . haven't we been saying that for years and years now? True, I have no idea how they do it (aren't you supposed to make products that appeal to people, to stay in business?), but they keep sticking around.
I've got a Treo 755p (only because I accidentally smashed an old 650), and I have yet to come across a good reason to move away from that platform. It does everything I need, tho' perhaps in a less pretty way than, say, the iPhone. But the iPhone doesn't have a keyboard, and as much as that may seem to work for some, there is no way it's a decent replacement for those of us who are heavy text/email users. So until someone else can come out with a touchscreen/qwerty keyboard phone with an OS open to third party apps, I don't see moving away from a Treo at all.
My wife just bought a Centro and loves it; she has a keyboard AND she can use all of her favorite software from her old Palm.
Sadly, I'm quite certain that PalmOS is on life support. They've dropped support for Java since January 2008; that means no Opera, no applications other than ones developed specifically for PalmOS. THAT, I think, is what makes current predictions of PalmOS's demise quite likely to come true.