These are certainly tough times for Palm. They’re in the midst of rolling to an entire new OS and smartphone platform yet they still have a large inventory of existing smartphone devices to sell. Combine that with abysmal economic climate and customers waiting for the new Pre, it’s really not that surprising to see dismal numbers.

Here’s hoping the new webOS and Palm Pre product line will bring growth back to the company.

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Technorati Tags: Palm third quarter revenue numbers

Sprint will begin offering the Palm Treo Pro Windows Mobile smartphone starting on March 15th for a price of $199.99 after a new two-year agreement (after a $100 instant rebate and $100 mail-in rebate, with an Everything plan with data or a $30 per month or higher data add-on. Was that simple enough for ya ?? ).  The Treo Pro will be available online, at retail stores, or by calling 800-SPRINT-1

In case you’re not familiar with the Treo Pro, here are the major highlights:

• Windows Mobile 6.1 OS
• First Palm phone with Internet Explorer Mobile 6 with options for either mobile optimized or desktop-like Internet browsing
• High resolution color touch-screen display
• Full QWERTY keyboard
• Removable battery with up to five hours of talk time
• One-touch Wi-Fi button
• EV-DO Rev A support
• Integrated GPS
• Microsoft Direct Push technology support
• Sprint Navigation with turn-by-turn directions, maps, and points-of-interest searches
• Sprint TV – watch TV or video-on-demand
• Sprint Music – wirelessly download digital music tracks to phone
• Pocket Expres – get the latest up to date web content
• Ringer switch
• Clock and date screen saver
• New voicemail indicator – center button flashes when new voicemail is available
• Dedicated email and calendar buttons

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Technorati Tags: Sprint Nextel, Palm Treo Pro, Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile Smartphones

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.

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

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.

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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

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Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo 800w

• 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.

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Technorati Tags: Palm, Treo 755p, Verizon Wireless

• 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

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

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.

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Technorati Tags: Palm Centro, Smartphone

It looks like the Windows Mobile 6 Professional upgrade to the Palm Treo 750 is right around the corner .. that is if you live in Australia. MobileMag is reporting that Palm will be releasing the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade to customers of the Australian “3″ network around the middle of this month. Other Australian wireless carriers will receive their upgrades later in early September. There’s no word as to when the OS upgrade will make it to the rest of the international market but one would hope that it’ll be fairly soon. The new firmware release version is apparently CE OS 5.2.1239 (Build 17746.0.2.4)

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Technorati Tags: Palm Treo 750, Windows Mobile 6

All ye Verizon Wireless Treo 700p users might finally be able to rejoice. Engadget is reporting that VW will soon launch the Palm Treo 755p smartphone – hopefully by the end of the month. (Yes it’s about time!) The main benefit for going to the 755p? The internal antenna! Gosh – it’s so nice to see that antenna finally disappear!

[Check it out via SlashPhone]

Technorati Tags: Verizon Wireless, Treo 755p

While I was at the Palm Foleo Sneak Peek event earlier in the week here in Los Angeles, no Palm representatives were willing to tell me the exact launch date of the Foleo – only to say that the device would launch by the end of the summer. The folks at SlashGear on the other hand seem to think that the Foleo will be launched on August 22nd. Here’s hoping that Palm will send us a review unit BEFORE the 22nd. Hint hint!

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Technorati Tags: Palm Foleo, August 22

1. Palm would not disclose the nitty gritty specs of the device (sorry – no word on the amount of memory or the processor type/speed)
2. The Foleo is ALL about email.

Ah yes, Palm also served some free (and pretty good) food as well free drinks at the sneak peek event. Yes.. I do enjoy free things from time to time. Palm handed out goodie bags for folks who finished up and were ready to leave the event. Inside the goodie bags were a travel mug, an SD card with music loaded on it, some Foleo marketing materials, mints and a Starbucks gift certificate.

Yes that’s nice and all – but we’re here to talk about the Foleo right? So let’s get down to it shall we?

The Foleo - what exactly is it?

Palm bills the Foleo as a “Mobile Companion” – a device that’s designed to work side by side with a Smartphone – say a Palm Treo device. (It doesn’t have to be a Treo of course but the demonstrations at the event were of course related to the Treo). You can find a list of compatible smartphones here. Think of the Foleo as an extension of your smartphone. Palm’s argument centers on the following – who wants to write and read email on a tiny mobile phone display? Why not have a secondary device deliver a better viewing, composing, and editing experience? To accomplish this, the Foleo wirelessly connects with a smartphone (say a Treo) and synchronizes the inbox between the Foleo and the Smartphone.

It’s certainly an interesting concept. As proven over and over, nearly everyone will carry at least one mobile phone – no matter how crappy or functional the phone may be. Many others will also carry a notebook computer – simply because they need email or Microsoft Word or a web  browser. Why not make things simpler but simplifying the notebook down to the bare essentials? That’s what the Foleo is essentially all about.

Here are the main features of the Palm Foleo:

• 10.2 inch widescreen LCD display
• Full-size QWERTY keyboard
• Weight of 2.5 lbs
• Up to 5 hours of battery life
• DataViz Documents To Go for Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files
• PDF viewer
• Photo viewer
• Web browser
• Bluetooth 1.2 wireless technology
• Wi-Fi 802.11b
• SD/MultiMediaCard expansion slot
• CompactFlash slot
• Scroll wheel
• Previous and Next buttons
• One touch email sync button
• Linux OS (kernel 2.4)
• VGA output (with an included adapter)

Here’s what the Foleo is designed to perform:

• Wirelessly connect to your smartphone to read and write emails and view attachments
• Deliver a better viewing experience than your smartphone thanks to the 10.2 inch display
• Provide a small lightweight portable platform
• Provide an instant-on experience
• Provide a larger web experience than your smartphone
• Provide up to 5 hours of battery life – more than enough for a cross country flight

Physical overview

Here are various pictures of the Foleo that I snapped up tonight.

Initial impressions

The display is definitely nice at 10.2 inches. I wasn’t told what the display resolution was but emails and web browsing was certainly enjoyable on the Foleo. The top of the Foleo’s cover has a nice rubbery feel to it making it easy to hold and grip the device. The Foleo’s weight of 2.5 lbs is sheer joy for anyone used to carrying 6+ lbs for a notebook.

Here’s a shot of the right side of the Foleo where all of the ports are located.

You’ve got yourself a headphone jack, the SD card slot, the VGA out (using an adapter, the USB port, and I believe the power connector? (I could be wrong there)

Oh yes – the battery compartment is accessible too.

There are no ports on the left hand side.

Application performance appeared relatively robust and snappy. It was simple to start up applications through what appeared to be something akin to the Windows Start menu. For power users, Foleo provides a terminal (shell) as seen here (though they really didn’t want us playing with it at the event):

Synchronization

The Palm Foleo utilizes Bluetooth networking to synchronize content to and from the smartphone. Now if your smartphone supports dial-up modem access, then you can use the smartphone as a way for the Foleo to get onto the Internet - particularly great if you have Sprint or Verizon data plans since their data networks are rather speedy. (Keep in mind of course you will probably need to pay additional fees for this through your mobile phone carrier. This is definitely the case for both Sprint and Verizon Wireless). The Foleo is also able to connect to Wi-Fi networks so you can easily surf the web, read and write email from any freely accessible hotspot.

It’s all about e-mail

As the Palm reps repeated to me over and over tonight, the Foleo is all about e-mail. The main purpose of the device is to provide a better experience than a smartphone when it comes to reading and writing e-mail. The Foleo is able to connect and sychronize email from the smartphone to the Foleo and back. The full sized QWERTY keyboard makes it easy for a user to compose email messages. Who wants to write long email messages on a small smartphone? Heck I don’t want to write long messages on an iPhone either!

Here’s a picture of the keyboard.

For anyone curious – the keyboard had a pretty good feel to it. Of course anything will be better than typing on a thumb-board.

Here’s a picture of the e-mail application under the Foleo.

As you can see, it has a fairly standard email look and feel to it. To synchronize your email between the smartphone and the Foleo, you simply press the email button on the upper left hand corner and watch it go. Attachments can be downloaded and opened right on your Foleo. The device comes with Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF viewers – which should cover most attachment file formats out there. You can even edit documents and place them on an SD card for transfer to a PC later on.

I was curious to see how far the Foleo takes e-mail synchronization so I asked the Palm rep whether the Foleo supports synchronization of draft messages. Here’s the scenario. What if you start an e-mail message on the Foleo but don’t get a chance to finish it? As it turns out, the Foleo synchronizes the draft message to your smartphone allowing you to later send the message from your smartphone (or of course via the Foleo later on if you wish). Now that’s pretty cool.

Aside from email functionality, the Foleo includes a web browser (which a Palm rep said was Opera), document viewers for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and of course PDF, a picture viewer, a terminal application as we’ve mentioned before, and a file browser.

Palm was also showing off a remote desktop application provided by a third party vendor which allowed the Foleo to connect to another PC. That’s a nice tool to have IF your PC is accessible on the network you’re connected to of course. I can appreciate remote desktop functionality but I don’t think  it’s that big of a deal. Folks in IT may think otherwise though.

Let’s start with the positives

The Palm Foleo has a great form factor. It’s small and lightweight which no $599 notebook could ever match. It has instant on capabilities, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and an open source OS in the form of Linux. That also means the Foleo has an opportunity to tap into a vast open source community of developers – the key will be whether Palm can provide all the tools and support necessary to make it easy to get third party developers to develop applications for the Foleo.

And some negatives..

For a mobile companion device, the Foleo is all business all the time – at least in its bare form. There’s no media player application installed on the Foleo. You’ll need to pick one up yourself from a third party vendor (apparently PocketTunes is coming to the platform). There’s no instant messaging application which seems slightly odd considering the emphasis on e-mail. IM is only the next largest form of communications on the Internet. Finally, there’s the price. At $599, the Foleo is a bit expensive for the  general public – especially when you consider you need a smartphone to really make it shine. However, is the general public the true audience for the Foleo?

The real audience..

After spending some time with the Foleo tonight, it’s clear to that the device is ideally suited for the mobile professional; to the person who needs to be connected to his or her email; to the person who can’t wait for his notebook to start up.. and to the person who needs something better than his smartphone’s dinky display. As Palm reps reminded me tonight, the Foleo is all about instant-on access to e-mail above all else. Similar to how Apple claims the iPhone delivers the ”full Internet”, the Foleo delivers the “full email” with it’s wireless connectivity, 10.2 inch widescreen display, and available document viewers.

At $599, consumers might be put off by the Foleo. However, businesses and mobile professionals might just drop the dough for the device – especially if it means it will help them be more productive in their daily life.

Final thoughts…

The question I find myself asking is the following:

Would I be willing to buy the Foleo when it comes out?

As a consumer - no. As a regular consumer, I want a fully functional, fully featured device which means more than email, and more than web browsing. Instant on is nice but I can certainly wait the minute it takes for Windows to boot. Now if the device was $200 dollars cheaper, then maybe I’d consider it.

As a business user – maybe. There have been plenty of times where I wished I had a larger display on my smartphone. Even the iPhone’s display pales in size when compared to the Foleo. I can certainly read emails on my iPhone but I want a full QWERTY keyboard which the iPhone does not supply (but the Foleo does). The Foleo provides all the basic functionality that a business mobile user or mobile professional would want – minus perhaps the IM functionality. This leads me to my point that third party app developers will be central to the success of the Foleo. However, the point is this – the Foleo aims to deliver enough of what you need and nothing else. Most mobile professionals simply need email and the web and that’s what the Foleo delivers.

If the business pays for it? YES. If you’ve ever lugged around a 7 lb notebook on your back all day long, you’ll come to appreciate light devices. At 2.5 lbs, the Foleo is light.. so light you might forget it’s a computer. Now consider.. if your company is willing to foot the bill for the device – would you use it? I think most of you would say yes. Granted, this means you’ll need to carry the Foleo AND a mobile phone.. but is that so different from carrying a notebook and a mobile phone?

The real threat to the Foleo will be hardware vendors that manufacture super cheap notebooks with instant on capabilities. If you can get a small notebook in the sub $500 dollar range that starts up immediately, then the Foleo could be in for some trouble. This is where VIA’s plans for small nanobook systems is pretty interesting and perhaps troublesome for Palm.

I’ll reserve my final judgement on the Foleo when it comes out at the end of the summer. Until then, I think there is a market for the Foleo – I just don’t think it’s as large as Palm hopes it would be. If Palm would provide more functionality than just email and web browsing to the Foleo, then I would be far more positive (and hopeful) of the device. One thing I can say - the Foleo is not revolutionary by any means. It’s just a device that straddles the line between notebooks and mobile phones (yet not nearly as featured or an expensive as a UMPC).

Again, the Foleo is due out at the end of the summer. According to reps at the store, the Foleo will sell for $599. There will be a $100 mail-in rebate initially which will bring the price down to $499.

Here’s a short video clip of the marketing material being shown.

Thanks to Kontrib.com, you can see this article machine translated into:

• Arabic

• Chinese

• French

• Romanian

• Spanish

Technorati Tags: Palm Foleo, Sneak Peek, The Grove, Los Angeles, Palm,