For a company that pioneered the PDA industry and essentially ushered in an age of smartphones, Palm looks to be circling the drain to a slow demise. In the early days, innovations like Graffiti were enough to keep the PDA-maker at the top of the game. Now, after more years than we care to remember, and competitors entering the market by the handful, Palm is seeing its brain-child industry slipping from its grasp.
Following a year of losses and flops, Palm promised to bring us a taste of its once-glory with a new, innovative handset. Every believed that the Palm Treo 800w would be the hero to rescue Palm from a sad death. But, if these new rumors turn out to be true, we’ll have a hard enough time classifying Palm’s Treo 800w in the “high-end” category, nevermind “innovative.”
WMExperts has it on an anonymous (and admittedly questionable) source that Palm’s Treo 800w will be little more than a thinner Treo (finally!), powered by Windows Mobile 6.1.
The Palm Treo 800w is speculated to feature Windows Mobile 6.1, EVDO Rev. A, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, WiFi 802.11g (with dedicated on/off switch), aGPS (assisted GPS), microSD card slot to complement the 256MB of memory (there’s 128MB for “something else”), and a 2 megapixel camera that takes “decent” pictures – all in a package about as slim as the Palm Centro. Oh, and there’s supposed to be a miniUSB plug in place of the HotSync port and headphone jack.
Release window is rumored around April.
Now, that’s a highly-respectable spec-sheet, don’t get us wrong. Touchscreen, GPS, WiFi, and EVDO Rev. A in a thin package are great features, but Palm should have already released a device like this last year. Welcome to the party, Palm. Better late than never, we suppose.
[Via: WMExperts]