Yes, the Palm Treo Pro finally got formally announced today by Palm Inc. As most of you know already (thanks to a ton of leaked pics), the Treo Pro is a new streamlined smartphone running the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS and featuring email, Wi-Fi, and GPS capabilities. Features include the following:

• One-touch Wi-Fi button supporting 802.11 b/g
• Today screen enhancements - perform web searches directly from the Today screen
• Ringer switch - silences the device immediately
• Screen saver - lets users know at a glance without turning on the device what time it is and whether they missed a call or have a new text message
• New voicemail indicator - center button flashes to let users know that a voicemail is waiting
• Dedicated email and calendar buttons
• Microsoft Direct Push technology - direct connection to Exchange Server 2003 SP2 and 2007
• Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 allows IT professionals to manager large Treo Pro deployments
• High speed UMTS/HSDPA support
• Integrated GPS receiver for maps, and turn-by-turn directions and point of interest searches
• Qualcomm MSM7201 400MHz processor
• 320 x 320 TFT flush touchscreen
• Quad-band GSM support
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR support
• 2.0 megapixel camera with 8x digital zoom
• microSDHC card support
• microUSB 2.0
• 3.5 mm stereo headset jack
• Measures 4.49 x 2.36 x 0.53 inches and weighs 4.69 oz

The Palm Treo Pro will be available from Vodafone and O2 in Europe, from Telstra in Australia, and will be available in an unlocked version in the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific. In the U.S., the Palm Treo Pro will be available for a price of $549.

Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo Pro, Windows Mobile Professinal 6.1, Windows Smartphone

New preview stills of the upcoming Palm Treo Pro (Treo 850w) have surfaced on the net courtesy of Treo8.com. No firm information on specs but the pics reveal it to be a GSM phone with a built-in stylus running of course, Windows Mobile (hence the w).The phone is thinner than previous Treo models.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm Treo 850, Treo Pro, Windows Mobile

Palm is trying to tell the world that it’s still a relevant company in the smartphone market by announcing that two million Palm Centro smartphones have been sold in 25 countries around the world. Thanks to data from the AdMob advertising network, Palm also announced that the Centro is now the 7th most popular device around the world. Keep in mind of course that this data is entirely based on mobile advertising analytics. AdMob also showed that Palm ranked number 2 in the U.S. in terms of mobile advertising reach and number 3 worldwide.

While two million Centros is certainly no small feat, let’s not forget that the Apple iPhone 3G hit one million units in literally the first weekend of availability.

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Technorati Tags: Palm Centro

Sprint and Palm have announced that the new Palm Treo 800w is now available for Sprint subscribers. The Treo 800w runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and includes support for EV-DO Rev A data speeds. According to Sprint, the Treo 800w is “Palm’s most business-friendly phone yet.” Features include:

• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Five way navigation controls
• One-touch buttons
• EV-DO Rev A support with download speeds up to 3.1 Mbps
• One-touch Wi-Fi button with support for 802.11 b/g
• Integrated GPS
• Supports Sprint Navigation
• Connects with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 SP2 or 2007
• Support for Microsoft Direct Push Technology
• Today Screen enhancements
• Dial from the Today screen
• Voicemail controls
• Sprint TV enabled
• Speakerphone
• Built-in 2.0 megapixel camera
• Bluetooth
• 320 x 320 External display
• Memory card slot (microSD)
• 256 MB user memory and 128 MB program memory

The Treo 800w will be available for $249.99 after discounts and a two year contract.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm, Sprint, Treo 800w, Windows Smartphone, Windows Moble 6.1 Professional

Above is supposedly a picture of the upcoming Treo 800w smartphone. The rumored specs on this phone are as follows:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 OS
• 400 MHz CPU
• 128MB RAM
• 256MB flash memory
• Built-in GPS receiver
• Wi-Fi support
• EV-DO Rev A support
• microUSB support

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo 800w

If you’re an AT&T Wireless user and a fan of the Palm Centro, then you’ll be happy to hear that AT&T is now offering the Palm Centro to its subscriber base. The Centro will be initially available in Glacier White and will sell for $99.99 after a two year contract and a $100 dollar mail-in rebate. Features of the Palm Centro include:

• Quad-band world phone
• 1.3 megapixel digital camera with video capture
• EDGE support
• Bluetooth 1.2
• AIM, Yahoo! and Windows Live IM
• Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support
• XM Radio, AT&T Music, and MusicID support
• Push-to-Talk support
• Measures 4.2 x 2.1 x 0.73 inches and weighs 4.23 oz
• 3 hour talk time
• 10 day standby time
• QWERTY keyboard
• Runs Palm OS 5.4.9
• Intel 312 MHz processor
• 64MB flash/ 64MB RAM
• microSD slot
• 2.2 inch 320 x 320 touch-screen display with 64K colors

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm, Centro, AT&T, Smartphone

Verizon Wireless and Palm announced the immediate availability of the Palm Treo 755p for the Verizon Wireless network. The 755p will be available in an exclusive deep blue-green color and may be purchased now on the Verizon Wireless website here. The 755p will be available in Verizon Wireless Stores starting on January 7th.

Features of the Treo 755p include the following:

• Intel XScale 312MHz processor
• Sleeker design with an internal antenna
• Soft touch feel
• Large high resolution color touch screen (320 x 320 resolution and over 65K colors)
• Bluetooth 1.2 support
• QWERTY keyboard
• 1.3 megapixel digital camera
• Built-in support for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and PDF documents
• Palm OS 5.4.9
• VersaMail 3.5.45 with built-in Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support for Microsoft Direct Push Technology
• EV-DO support
• 60MB of user available memory
• miniSD slot
• Google Maps

The Treo 755p will be available for $399.99 after a $50 dollar mail-in rebate and a new two-year customer agreement.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo 755p, Verizon Wireless

Palm announced yesterday an update to Windows Mobile 6 for the Palm Treo 750 smartphone which is currently offered exclusively in the U.S. by AT&T. The update is available as a free download for existing Treo 750 customers. The new Windows Mobile 6 update will “facilitate High-Speed Download Packet Access (HSDPA) capability” as well as provide access to AT&T’s multimedia services including AT&T music, CB, and AT&T mail. Enhancements found within Windows Mobile 6 include:

• Microsoft Direct Push Technology connection to email, calendar, contacts, and tasks
• Email enhancements
• Ability to set an out-of-office message from Treo Smartphone
• Mini-SD storage card encryption, password, and PIN improvements, and remote data wipe
• Ability to search for email messages on Exchange server
• Meeting request and scheduling conflict improvements
• Improved Calendar with Day-at-a-Glance bar

You’ll be able to download the update here:

http://www.palm.com/750updateATT

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo 750, Windows Mobile 6 Update

I took a project management course this summer and one of the key lessons I learned from the course was recognizing when a project should be killed. There are times when a company embarks on a project only to find later on that the project really doesn’t make much sense at all. Good project managers or company executives will recognize this and even kill the project before it finishes. Some projects just shouldn’t see the light of day. Case in point? The Palm Foleo. The Foleo was announced earlier this year and the overwhelming response was.. somewhat.. how shall we say it.. underwhelming? The problem with the Foleo was - it didn’t necessarily make sense in a world of advancing smartphone and notebook technologies. It might have made sense for a small niche of business mobile professionals.. but realistically that was it. Thus it was no surprise that the Palm Foleo mobile companion product was killed earlier this week by the CEO of Palm, Ed Colligan. The announcement was made on the “Official Palm Blog” as Colligan stated the following:

To that end, and after careful deliberation, I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all of our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market. We will, of course, continue to develop products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from our internal platform development perspective, we will focus on only one.

According to Mr. Colligan, Palm has been building a new next generation software platform and the Foleo just didn’t fit into that plan simply because the product was based on a secondary platform (Linux) and a completely different development environment. With the product needing additional improvements, it made little sense for Palm to continue developing and marketing the product when the core focus of the company was going to be on its next generation platform which will debut later in their new Smartphone products.

Of course.. that’s the official story. One has to wonder about the negative feedback that the press and the user audience has been providing to Palm over the course of the last 3-4 months. Even when Palm held their sneak peek events in July, the response was fairly tepid to say the least. It just didn’t make much sense for someone to purchase a $499 device that was more limited in functionality than a full fledged notebook or even a high end smartphone!  Sure you had a larger screen and keyboard but there were new products coming out from folks like ASUS and VIA that would pose a challenge to the Foleo - both in terms of product capabilities as well as pricing.

So the Foleo is no more - at least for now. The company will refocus its efforts on a single platform and will take a limited charge of less than $10 million dollars to their earnings. Things could have been worse of course had Palm decided to go full force with the Foleo.

I’ll say this much - Kudos for Palm for realizing that they had to do something about their product.

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Technorati Tags: Palm, Foleo, Foleo killed, Palm kills Foleo

I’m sure most of you have already seen this picture by now but heck… I thought I’d post it up too. It’s the latest leaked (and supposedly official) image of an upcoming Palm Treo Smartphone called the Centro. There’s not much info on the new Centro except to say that it’s smaller than the current Treo lineup and it’s actually a different color for once. The Treonauts are reporting that the Centro will work with EV-DO (since it does bear the Sprint logo on the upper right hand corner) and comes with the Palm OS Garnet system. Sprint will supposedly have a 90 day exclusive deal with the Treo Centro and the phone may be as cheap as $99 dollars with a contract.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Palm Centro, Smartphone