For a while now I've been alternating between two phones - the excellent K750i, and the Treo 650. From a Smartphone viewpoint the TREO 650 is the "almost device" - its "almost" the best smartphone I have ever used. The palm software is great, and innovative. The flat form factor of the phone makes it easy to use and carry, and it goes inside a business breast pocket easy enough. The keyboard is superb and means you no longer have to use the stylus for data entry. Little touches impress me, such as having the SIM as a pop in on the top of the phone, rather than having to remove the battery to get to the SIM (why do vendors do this !!) - you don't even have to swirch off the TREO to remove the SIM.

It's the almost phone because it misses a few small things...

- Native Java support - I've got around this, mainly because I am techincal enough to be able to, but I shouldn't have to, should be a core part of the phone

- Native wireless - becoming more and more important for a smart device

- A decent camera - this probably is a little unfair as the TREO takes good pictures considering the 640 VGA resolution.

- Support for 3G - 2.5G is fine but old hat - 3G speed is what I want now...

When I go out in the evening or go on holiday, I just swap over to my K750i due to its very small form factor - this  has the best camera phone by far, and with decent applications installed, such as Opera Mini, and MovaMail, can be "smart enough" for me.

So imagine my mouth watering surprise when Palm release the Treo 700p..especially when they have already released the Treo 700W - their first windows mobile and therefore looking as if they are going to exit the pure play Palm phone market.  This phone has a better 1.3 Megapixel camera, support for higher bandwidth, better memory - sure no wireless but you can't have everything I guess (and why it cannot take advantage of the Palms own wireless card is beyond me...).

Only one problem - its only available in the US. Even worse, it only works on CDMA networks.  In the UK, both O2 and Vodafone have GSM 900/1800 ranges. T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Orange use GSM 1800 only. 3 UK uses 3G/UMTS 2100 which is the 3rd generation network type used in Europe and Asia in the 2100 Mhz band. The US/North America implements UMTS in the 850 and 1900 Mhz bands. As you can see, the handset would need to support  at least GSM 900/1800 - all I can say is Aaargh !!!!  Sometimes Palm I think that you go out of your way to hand your business to Windows, Symbian and any other incumbent with half a brain - you have a great phone, a great OS - with a little tweaking you would have a killer phone and features - With decent technical guidance and global release and marketing there is no reason why you cannot make a huge impression - go figure...

...rant officially over ;)

posted Thursday, 8 June 2006