Palm 800w comes to the party
21 comments
Filed in 1xRTT, CDMA, EV-DO, Handsets, Palm, Sprint, Windows Mobile
….albeit a bit late for the many Palm faithful that have jumped ship for more exciting waters. Those that have remained, however, have a little bit to look forward to. The Palm 800w is set to be the first Palm device with Wi-Fi, GPS, and EV-DO Rev. A, all of which should be supported and available out of the box. As far as looks go, the handset appears to be a cross between a Centro and a 750, which is either great or disappointing, depending on your preference. We should see this hit Sprint sometime in the next month or two, hopefully sporting Windows Mobile 6.1. But for reals, though, is anything going to actually run out and get this thing?
Funny how the keypad and design looks retro, when you just know they weren’t going for that effect.
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I’d like to be the first to welcome Palm to 2006.
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I’ll join you. The design is wayyy behind the times. What the hell is Palm thinking.
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You just *know* Jobs is putting this up on the Jumbotron when he shows the 2008 competition to the iPhone2
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LOL!!! What a POS!!!
I thought Palm was going out of business???
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Palm, Sprint and Motorola seem to be competing for the “Lamest Company Not Yet Bankrupt” award.
The competition seems to be a dead heat… Emphasis on ‘dead’.
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I might actually buy this, if it had Palm OS. No way in hell with windows.
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Unfortunately, the Palm OS can’t do WiFi or 3G. Take away those features and you’ve got a slightly souped up Centro. Hardly worth noticing.
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I like it. Whats not to like…. it can do Word, Excel, Emails, Entertainment, GPS (i feel that’s a useless feature on a phone, but I haven’t tried it either) and the list goes on.
In the past I have used Blackberry, Treo 600, MDA, Tmobile DASH and currently am using Treo 750. By far the Treo form factor is the best.
Agreed some features are late arrival, like Wi-Fi and 320 X 320 screen, but Treos by far have the best mix of touch screen and qwerty keyboard.
They could have jazzed the design a bit like the Blackberry Bold did, but @ the end of the day no phone will be perfect….not even iPhone or the upcoming 3G iPhone.
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Palm OS can run 3G… i know the Centro on Sprint runs on EVDO Rev0
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@Robert
What do you mean Palm OS can’t do Wifi or 3G? Heck, on Sprint the Centro does 3G and I know Palm sells wifi PDAs running Palm OS.
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Do they even staff product designers anymore? Innovate or get out, Palm. You’re wasting everyone’s time.
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The palm platform along with the desktop software still actually is the the best PIM out there. If palm would jsut get a clue and actaully start putting out a new os (linux) then they would have to worry abouy competition. Iphone can out perform blackberry in every way, but people buy bb cuz the just work.
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Living in Maine, we’ve got AT&T’s spotty service, Verizon’s high costs for hardly anything, and T-Mobile which will likely be last on the list for being upgraded to 3G. So, I either wait or go to Sprint. Not many good options around here.
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I wouldn’t bother with this device. I loved my Treos (had the 650 and two 750s) but Palm can not get their feature set, quality or timeliness right. This phone is too little too late and I don’t see it as a real competitor to the existing offerings on the market from HTC, Apple and Blackberry.
The Treo 750 was not a very well thought out device. Battery life was only just bearable if you didn’t use Exchange ActiveSync and if you did, it resembled the sort of battery life you would get from a phone circa 1990. Quality was another issue. I had mine swapped out twice, once for screen failure and the second for the keyboard. Sounds play in halves. The first half plays, say when an email comes in, followed by a crackling, and the next half a few moments later.
In the end, I ditched the Treo and went for the Sony Ericsson P1i. It does everything that the Treo does and still gives me 3 days battery life.
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Thusly certifying Palm’s imminent doom.
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Another me-too WinMob device with an extremely dated feature-set. What’s the appeal again over any other sexier WinMob device out there?
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As far as I know this is one of the highest resolution Windows Mobile phones on the market. (Short of the minipc phones like the Advantage.)
That plus wifi and GPS make it worthwhile to some.
Personally I am waiting for Android.
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You guys are hell bent on “cool looking” … but isn’t what matters MOST how the phone works? Whether it crashes? If there’s latency within native apps? And the fact that NO ONE has conversational SMS that is threaded except palm and iphone? I will not be buying this product, as I am monogamous with my BB, and eagerly anticipating the Bold/9000, OS 4.6, and even more importantly than either of those two updates, Yahoo! oneConnect, which may yet provide BB threaded SMS… To me, something that works fast, predictably, and consistently far exceed what apparently drives the market! Aesthetics! For some reason, our jet fighters look great! And all they ever focus on, is function. If STUPID CONSUMERS would re-focus on function, we would inadvertently get aesthetic devices eventually, but first things first, we’d get devices that WORK WELL! Why can’t you people grow up?
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My big concern is whether this Treo will suffer from the same problems as some of HTC’s Devices (Elf/Vogue/Titan/Kaiser)… Things like not waking up to notifications, alarms, etc. On the other hand, the Treos have yet to play well with some apps that I like, namely FTouchFlo and Opera Mobile 9.5 (Alpha). Still bittersweet…
Luckily, XDA Devs/PPCGeeks save the day with custom ROMS, but I’d prefer not to flash, if at all possible.
While the RAM is well appreciated, my other big concern is speed. I sense the need for a TI OMAP overclock… >:-/
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I just got one of these (800W) and it seems pretty cool at first. Not used to the Windows naivgation but am catching on pretty quick. I truly need a smart phone (business) and the connection is great (Centro was awful). But the battery has completely died on me twice. First time I though it was because I didn’t give it a complete charge out of the box, but two nights in a row? I’m going to have to have a belt with three or four spare batteries!
I’m obviously not the only one having this issue…maybe Palm will make a super battery for it…then I think it would be just about perfect.
As far as looks go….looks fine to me, this isn’t a fashion show and I rather like the conservative look, then I don’t have people asking me about my phone.
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