Retailer reveals new Palm is the Treo 500v
Vodafone will launch it tomorrow
Palm's new Euro-centric smartphone, due to be announced tomorrow, is indeed based on the design that's been doing the rounds of the rumour sites since June. It will be released by Vodafone, under the Treo 500v moniker.
The confirmation comes courtesy of Dutch handset retailer The Phone House, which posted details in a brochure that was spotted by fansite WMExperts and others. Here's a scan of the page:
The Phone House's Treo 500v promo
The Phone House brochure gives little else away: the 500v is a 3G device, but that's no great surprise. Palm recently confirmed it's not a Centro.
Other reports claim the handset will sport a 320 x 240 display - up from the 750's 240 x 240 - and 150MB of on-board memory, expandable using Micro SD cards. It's said to have Bluetooth 2.0 and a two-megapixel main camera.
Size? 11 x 6.1 x 1.6cm, so slightly wider and thinner than the 5.8cm-wide, 2cm-thick Treo 750.
COMMENTS
Erm...
Have you not just given the world a whole load of other personal details?
Maybe it's only spam that bothers you.
All that fun aside, haven't HTC given you the hardware you desire? Just port PalmOS and you've saved giving Steve that few million quid. Me? oh, a beer would be fine ;p
Title
Steve, drop me a line. Uhm, how do we do this? I'm posting this on Le Reg, so trying to think how you can reach me without giving the world my email or mobile. I know! Visit alex.gonumber.com and click the First Contact icon/link. There you go.
Me.
@wonderkind,
Well, find me a few million quid and I'll have a bloody good go - maybe we should see if we can have Psion's old mailing lists....
Palm have forgotten their roots and values
I lived in Silicon Valley from 1991 to 2000 and as a fellow gadget lover and designer have followed Palm from their early days to today. The original Palm Pilot introduced vital concepts that guaranteed its success, each intelligently conceived by Jeff Hawkins. a) It was perfectly proportioned for your pocket and your 'palm'. b) The screen featured a 1:1 aspect ratio, based upon some fundamental human factors that say that we view the world in a square and so our screens should be the same way. c) It was easy to use out of the box. d) It had a purpose and therefore an immediate 'how could I live without it' appeal. Fast forward to today, and Palm are not only shooting in thr dark but have given in to the inferior Windows Mobile OS, LOWER resolution screens, clunky visionless formfactors and other mediocre characteristics. With their open OS and design panache, Palm could have leveraged some of their older but better designs, seized the moment and created their own iPhone. But rather than force us into a flashy but limiting garden wall environment (iTunes ringtones, is that really worthy of a keynote?!?), taken the form factor of their excellent TX series, added their next generation OS, a phone, a 3MP autofocus camera and a slide out keyboard, and we would today have the ultimate practical and sexy device - that everyone would want, from Crackberry addicts to music loving students. But we don't. And that's a pitty. The iPhone's limitations mean it cannot become the next Palm Pilot, unless Apple open it up a little. There needs to be something else. Thing is, whose going to be the next visionary to deliver 'it'?
