New Treo 650 - Is the middle of the road the best place to be?

Michael Gartenberg | October 26, 2004, 11:35 AM

The first Treo blew me away with the power and integration of Palm OS and a phone done right. The 600 was the most usable device of that ilk for the time. Speculation has been rampant about what would come next. Yesterday, Palm confirmed what the world has known for a while and it looks like the Treo 650 fixes a lot of the issues I had with the first unit. The few minutes I spent with the unit shows Palm did a lot of things right. The screen is high res 320x320, the battery is removable and there is Bluetooth on the device (but in my conversation with Palm, it seemed they will not support the hands-free profile needed for auto use). The keyboard also looks enhanced a bit making it easier to type, I found I simply couldn't type on the old one given the shape and size of the keys. I suspect that among Treo users, this is a good (but not great) update. There's a few things missing. First, there's no WiFi or plans to support the existing Palm WiFi SD card. A year ago that mattered less but for a device this size, it's really something that could have made it differentiated. Second, Palm OS 5 is not my favorite platform for phones. There's simply too many limitations in a mobile setting when I can't multi-task (and have my email download, while I browse the web.)

The Treo will do quite well I suspect but it may not be a grand slam home run. There's also a lot more competition on the market than there was a year ago and clearer choices for phone usage. There's dedicated cellphones that have limited data capabilities for things like IM and brief web sessions that can do calendar sync. There are full featured Smartphones that are phones first and foremost but that can also do a lot of other things well at much lower costs (including those with built in keyboards) that simply weren't on the market a year ago. There are high end PDAs with WiFi and large screens that can do telephony. All of these meet different needs for different market segments. The Treo alone seems to be a middle of the road device. Not quite a high end cellphone (a bit too large for that) and quite a high end PDA. It's a 50/50 device but sometimes being in the middle of the road isn't the best place to stand.