Treo 650 Coming to Alltel

Alltel will begin offering Palm Treo 650 smartphone tomorrow.

With Axcess Mobile Link, Alltel customers will be able to connect to the Internet at speeds up to 144 Kbps. This service costs $59.99 a month for unlimited access.

The Treo 650 will cost $400 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year service agreement.

More information is available on the Alltel web site.

An Overview of the Treo 650

The Treo 650 is Palm's latest smartphone, and has been designed to be both a handheld and a mobile phone in one.

Most users agree that viewing web pages on the Treo 650 is much more satisfying than on typical smartphones because it includes a 320-by-320 pixel display, a much higher resolution than most of its competition.

To make writing email and SMS messages easier, this model has a small QWERTY keyboard below the screen.

In addition, the Treo 650 includes Bluetooth wireless networking, so it works with wireless headsets. Some, but not all, versions of it support Dial-Up Networking (DUN) via Bluetooth, which means that they can be used as a wireless modem for other devices, like a laptop.

This smartphone runs Palm OS Garnet (5.4) on a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor.

The Treo 650 has only 23 MB of built-in Storage capacity, so the device's SD card slot is an important feature.

It has an 1,800 mAh swappable battery, which palmOne says is good for up to 5 hours talk time and up to 300 hours standby time.

The Treo 650 is 4.4 inches tall, 2.3 inches wide, and 0.9 inches thick (113 by 59 by 23 mm) and weighs 6.3 ounces (178 grams).

This model's built-in camera is capable of taking both still images and video. Maximum resolution is 640 by 480 pixels for photos or 352 by 288 pixels for videos.

More information on this smartphone is available on the Palm web site.