Palm Treo 850w WM Smartphone – Details

Palm Treo 850w WM Smartphone - DetailsMore details of the new Palm Treo 850w Windows Mobile smartphone have appeared on the Internet, and we have to say that finally it’s a bit of a looker to our eyes.

The new phone incorporates design elements of the hugely popular, low-price Palm OS Centro smartphone and the Windows Treo 500v phone, which we reviewed favourably last year.

According to leaked photos, the 850 features the traditional Treo/Centro thumb board, with the keys running in straight rows rather than the gently curved “smile” configuration of earlier Treos. It certainly looks a lot more enticing than the Treo ‘Drucker’ 850 prototype models seem back in January.

The new Treo 850 is thinner than the Centro at 14 but a fair bit wider and longer, at 60 mm and 113 mm, respectfully.

The phone features circular dedicated call/end buttons, and a round navigation pad, plus two softkey buttons for navigating Windows Mobile.

Disappointingly, the touchscreen only manages a 320-by-320-pixel resolution, although it has lost the annoying deep recessed edges that make it a bit tricky to access the corners of the Centro’s screen.

Palm Treo 850w WM Smartphone - DetailsRunning on Windows Mobile Pro 6.1, the leaked specs look pretty good, with the phone packing GSM, EDGE, and UMTS with HSDPA 3.6 connectivity and an Assisted-GPS receiver.

At long, long, long last Palm have finally fitted a Treo with built in Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g). There’s also Bluetooth 2.0 EDR + A2DP, with the camera being upgraded to an par-for-the-course 2MP jobbie.

Onboard storage adds up to a reasonable 256 MB NAND-Flash (with greater than 175 MB for user) and 32 MB SDRAM, backed by a microSD expansion slot.

The battery looks reasonably substantial at 1500 mAh battery with Palm sensibly dumping their proprietary connector for a Micro-USB connector for both power and sync.

Internet rumours put the Treo 850 on course for a July 2008 release date, with the price hovering around the €270 Euro mark. We’re still hanging on for the new Palm operating system which will surely be the making or the breaking of this fast-fading smartphone pioneer.

Via

Photo: The Boy Genius Reports