Guru Labs: May 2006 Archives

Us folks at Guru Labs have long been Treo users and most everyone at the office has one.

There are extremely powerful communication tool and whenever we doing a Linux training gig on the road the Treo makes it easy to stay in touch (and even drop in on #utah).

The Treo700p will be official announced on Monday May 15th 2006. However, in some places of the world that time has already arrived and the press embargo has been lifted.

For official/non-rumor Treo700p details check out the first article to be published at Treo Central, titled "Palm Reveals Treo 700p Smartphone".

The 2nd article now online is from Palm themselves, see the "Treo 700p Smartphone". There is a PDF as well as a flash demo.

An anonymous Sprint employee posted page "4" of their weekly sales "playbook". It in it shows the Treo 700 launching on May 28th. In the thread discussing this new info it has also confirmed that this is the Treo 700p (and not the 700w).

This info is from www.TreoCentral.com which has the best forums for Treo owners and fans.

The Treo700p is soon to be released and I plan on upgrading. Some of the new (rumored) features to be included are:

* EV-DO support on CDMA networks
** Can receive incoming calls while actively using data
* Increase of built-in memory to 64MB
* Update of all built-in apps
** New "fast mode" in blazer
* 1.3MP camera
* FAT32 support (can be hacked into a Treo650 today with a custom rom)
* Enhanced keyboard

The EV-DO support is probably the "killer app" as it provides DSL-like speeds.

The N. Utah Sprint EV-DO coverage map shows EV-DO coverage available today in orange and future coverage in beige.

I look forward to the EV-DO Rev A rollouts as that greatly increases the speed down and up while providing much better latency that will make VoIP and interactive apps (such as ssh) a joy to use. Unfortunately I doubt the EV-DO radio in the Treo700p will support EV-DO Rev A. Oh well, it just gives me yet another reason to upgrade to a future Linux based Treo.

Palm has just announced a Trade-In Program for old PDAs and SmartPhones that can be used as credit towards the purchase of a new Treo 700p (or any Palm PDA).

Some of the Trade-In values I checked:

Treo 650 in excellent condition = $170
Treo 650 in good condition = $142
Treo 600 in excellent condition = $65
Treo 600 in good condition = $53