Devotees of Palm’s Treo brand of smartphones (whoever is left raise your hands) have a new model to get excited about: the Treo Pro.
On Wednesday the company announced it would begin selling a sleeker and more elegant version of its once popular Treo for a suggested price of $549 in the United States. It is being sold here without a contract – meaning you can choose between AT&T or T-Mobile’s G.S.M. networks and switch at will. It will also work with many wireless networks in Europe and Asia, which makes it easy for customers to take abroad.
The Treo Pro is powered by the largest battery Palm has ever used in a device giving it five hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby. (It’s 4.49 inches by 2.36 inches wide.)
It also has a one-touch Wi-Fi button for easy Internet access and a switch that silences a ringing phone immediately. (That way you don’t have to fiddle with turning it off or, worse, hanging up on someone if you don’t want to be bothered.) The screen saver too shows clearly whether there is a message waiting or a call missed. And there is a center button which flashes too if a voicemail is waiting, as well as one-button access to e-mail or the calendar.
Palm, which has been beset by trouble the last few years, hopes the Treo Pro will bring back a little of the consumer-friendly sheen Palm has lost to competitors like Research in Motion and Apple. Next year will be the real test. That is when it plans to introduce a device using the new operating system Palm’s engineers are furiously working on.
Source: Business Week and NY Times
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