Seriously, in a world of N95 8GBs, GPS BlackBerrys, the HTC Touch, the iPhone and other similarly sweet devices, how does Palm expect its new Treo 500 to compete? Now officially announced, after various leaks, the Palm Treo 500 is coming to Europe first on Vodafone, but offers little to get excited about.
3G but no HSDPA; no GPS; no wi-fi; just a two-megapixel camera; only a 16bit (65,000) colour screen; no touch-screen… The Treo 500 is a bog-standard Windows Mobile 6 device. For a company that once created market-defining products, it must be embarrassing for Palm to be outclassed by even Hewlett Packard.
Judging by the majority of the comments on the Official Palm Blog, a lot of the company’s customers feel the same way as we do about the new Treo. But with reports that Elevation Partners’ partial acquisition (and board takeover) of Palm being approved by shareholders, perhaps the Treo 500 will mark the end of an era of uncertainty for the company?
Dull though it is, here are some more shots of the Treo 500.
Connectivity is kept contemporary with the inclusion of a mini USB socket and Bluetooth 2.0 with support for stereo (A2DP) headsets.
A two-megapixel camera… You can get away with that if you’re offering other hot features, but in the absence of big storage (the Treo 500 has 256MB, of which 150MB is available for storage — although it does have a microSD slot) as offered by something like the N81 8GB, or wi-fi… or in fact anything interesting… Palm, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re in trouble…
0 Responses to “Palm’s Treo 500v finally goes official, and officially underwhelms”
Leave a Reply