Palm Fights Back: Treo 680 Unveiled
No more speculation; Palm unveiled its new Treo 680 at the DigitalLife conference in New York today.
This announcement is seen as Palm’s answer to the new generation of smartphones like Motorola’s Q and BlackBerry’s Pearl - smartphones that are aimed at a broad consumer market. Smartphones as they say, “for the rest of us”.
Aside from being the first new Palm OS (version 5.4) Treo in two years, and the fact that it doesn’t have a stubby antenna, what else is new?
A slimmer form factor. Funky colors - copper, arctic, and crimson, which will be available for sale unlocked from Palm’s website, for use on any GSM carrier. (The carriers themselves will have one color choice, “graphite”.) A mini-SD card slot (instead of a plain SD card) and a VGA camera are included. Fortunately, it will have Bluetooth (never mind earlier reports to the contrary). Also, Datawiz Documents to Go will reside in ROM, offering users attachment-viewing and editing capabilities without eating up memory.
But the 680 will NOT have support for Palm’s WiFi card and no UMTS or HSPDA capabilities - just the run of the mill GSM/GPRS/EDGE.
This is all about “competitive pricing” and marketing to the masses. By leaving out a few features Palm hopes to price this Treo down under $200 (we’re guessing at that), and sell a gazillion of them to consumers who didn’t know they needed a smartphone in the first place. Watch for big time marketing campaigns from Palm in the future to get that message across.
Palm did not include specific pricing info or carriers in today’s announcement - but it did say the 680 would be available within “weeks”.
[via Brighthand]
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