New PalmOne Design: Treo 650

In a completely expected announcement, palmOne has formally announced the Treo 650. There are few, if any surprises, considering they've done an amazingly bad job of protecting against leaks. I'm not sure they even really wanted to protect this information given the numerous pictures available, references to the Treo 650 on palmOne sites and a marketing person referring to it in an interview last week. Alas it's here though, and a major improvement in many ways over the Treo 600.

So the good news is that it's announced. The bad news is that no one is offering it...yet. From our conversations with various people in the know, it sounds like several carriers are close to getting the Treo 650 certified, so it should be available by more than one service provider this year. You can expect Sprint PCS to be at the head of the pack, though it doesn't look like they're getting any special treatment this time as they have in the past. Both a CDMA/1xRTT and GSM/GRPS/EDGE version are available to carriers now, so there won't be any lag waiting for the hardware. With the CTIA kicking off today, it will be interesting to see if any carriers pre-announce plans to carry the device.

more: bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2270 (151)

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