Palm Once Again Drops Price of Unlocked Treo 650

When the unlocked Treo 650 went on sale last February, Palm, Inc. was selling it for $600. That price very, very quickly jumped up to $700.

Just last month, though, Palm cut $50 off this price.

And it has just done the same thing again. This means that this version of Palm's latest smartphone is now once again selling for $600.

Because this phone isn't locked to any carrier, it can be used with most GSM wireless service providers worldwide by plugging in a SIM card.

Why All the Jumps?

When Palm first started selling the unlocked Treo 650 for $600, it cost just $50 more than what Sprint was charging for its version with a service contract.

It's never been confirmed, but it's been widely assumed that the carriers pressured Palm to raise the price of this smartphone to $700.

Since that time, though, carriers have started charging less for the Treo 650. Sprint, for example, is now selling it for $350.

This gives Palm room to drop its price.

An Overview of the Treo 650

As a smartphone, the Treo 650 has been designed to be both a handheld and a mobile phone in one.

To make writing email and SMS messages easier, this model has a small QWERTY keyboard below its 320-by-320-pixel touchscreen.

In addition, the Treo 650 includes Bluetooth wireless networking, so it works with wireless headsets.

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.

Also, it has an 1,800 mAh swappable battery, which Palm says is good for up to 6 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.

The unlocked version of this device is a GSM/GPRS quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) phone, which means that it can be used by most carriers around the world, but not all. It won't work with Sprint PCS, for example.

The Treo 650 supports EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), so its average data transfer speed --when used with carriers with an EDGE network -- is around 135 kilobits per second (kbps), noticeably faster than regular GSM/GPRS networks.

More information is available on the Palm web site.

Related Links

• Brighthand Reviews the palmOne Treo 650
• Take a Trip, Get a Free Palm Smartphone

Thanks to Palm Infocenter for the tip.