Sprint’s Palm Treo 800w delayed due to MMS addition to Windows Mobile platform
By Will Park on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 5:14 PM PST In Palm, Rumors, Services, Sprint, Windows Mobile
Sprint (NYSE: S)’s business as a wireless voice-service provider is in trouble. There’s no doubt that Sprint’s future position in the US wireless market depends on Sprint’s (and CEO Dan Hesse’s) ability to turn the company into a data-centric provider. Unfortunately, Sprint’s WiMAX-based XOHM service has been delayed until later this year. That’s bad news, but not as bad as if Sprint had decided to launch a their XOHM network before it was fully cooked and ready to go commercial.
So, while we wait for XOHM to get ironed out, Sprint has decided to work out the smaller details. They’re working on things that a data-centric provider should offer – namely, features like MMS on Windows Mobile smartphones. For too long, Sprint has neglected to bring MMS, also known as “Picture Mail,” to their Windows Mobile-based handsets. But, that’s all about to change. Sprint is working with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to offer the long-awaited MMS feature on their stable of WinMo mobile phones. Sprint Chief Marketing Officer John Garcia says:
We’re working with Microsoft to build a PictureMail application that will work on their Windows product to give you a similar experience as our other products. As some of you may be aware, currently, you can actually do this on a Windows product, but you have to do it through e-mail or Bluetooth. We realize this is cumbersome. We’re working to enhance this for you soon.
That’s great news for Windows Mobile fans that are dying to get MMS on their Sprint cellphones. Unfortunately, it seems that one man’s good news is another’s not-so-good news. Sprint and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) have apparently held up their Palm Treo 800w launch due to the addition of this MMS software. On the one hand, it’s good to hear that the Windows Mobile 6.0 (most likely 6.1 by the time it launches) Professional-powered smartphones will be getting jiggy with MMS. The other hand smacks us across the cheek to remind us that the addition of MMS means we’ll be waiting still longer for the Treo 800w to become reality. That other hand sure is cruel, at times.
It’s been a long wait (for both MMS and the Treo 800w), what’s a few more months?
[Via: WMExperts]
About time, I was seriously getting tired of using beta software that worked only half the time. Although some guy made a program that works pretty well, and that is pretty stable.
This story is false. I just switched from a Treo 755p to 800w and MMS is disabled. After sending feedback to dan@sprint.com, someone from Sprint called me to say that MMS (texting pictures) is disabled on most new Sprint phones. This means no Facebook Mobile uploads or texting photos. The representative said they are getting a lot of complaints about this, and we may see a change in the future. My old Treo 755p was able to text photos. VERY pissed at Sprint!
This happened to me to I’m very disappointed in this phone and sprint ,this phone is some crap I should have kept my 700p, this was not an upgrade.
They should have waited until they had the kinks worked out instead of putting this crap on the market.
They did a good job of hiding the full facts about this phone .No one told me about the short comings of this phone ,not even the sales rep who I talked with at the store
This phone really sux I am so unhappy with this.. a 600dl phone and you can’t even send pics, can’t set call tones, can’t even set ringers… and you can’t even do a simple lil thing like hook up a ear piece to it because u have to have it plugged in to the outlet… ahhhhhhh… i’m so pissed
Glen, you couldn’t have said it better. I have been using the phone for about a month and am frustrated at everything you just mentioned above. Can’t send photos, can’t set call tones, can’t set ringers (which I did for when my wife would call my old phone), and what the heck is up with the earpiece using the same mini usb charging slot?!?!? This is what is going to send me to the iPhone when my contract is up in June.
The iphone can’t do pic mail can it? its not even a PDA. The HTC diamond is supposed to be the first Sprint WinMo phone to have MMS capabilty. I wonder if we can somehow get that app from the HTC 6950 to work on a Touch or mogul or anything older.
It’s now December and I started a contract with Sprint, I had no idea there were still companies that couldn’t send mms. That old sprint picture site is a little behind the times I would say. Seams like somethin you would have to do twenty years ago. I needed a windows based phone, there programming eliminates some of the features on the phone such as insert. I’m going to wait part of my thirties days and see if I find a solution. It can’t be just because of their network, I had helio which works off of sprint system and there was never an issue with mms. Also doing the junk to look at a link to the picture site, I can’t enlarge it enough to see any detail nor save it to the phone. Like being back in the 80s