Treonauts with Treo 650 GSM/GPRS in Hand!!!

[UPDATE: We're very sad that we are no longer able to bring you (huge understatement) the first exclusive pictures...  I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened but palmOne politely requested that we pull the images and I agreed to oblige...  Hopefully we'll resolve this soon and thus continue to pictorially report on what a terrific smartphone the Treo 650 GSM is.  Sorry Treonauts ]

We're glad to bring you (mild understatement) the first exclusive pictures...

At long last we have a unit that we can hold, work with, play with, go to sleep with - our own fully unlocked, quad-band, global roaming, super-smartphone [list too long to add] Treo 650 GSM/GPRS!!!

We've only had it for a few hours so below are just some of the pictures that we thought you'd most want to see.

I never thought that I'd be this excited to see a SIM card tray coming out of a Treo...

Of course I want to turn it on - full blast, Mach 5 speed, rockin'!!!

The Treo 650 screen during the 'Phone' startup process (left above) and our first call using a UK Orange GSM card while roaming in Paris.

Our old trusted Treo 600 next to what will undoubtedly become our new pride and joy the Treo 650.

We've obviously had the unit for much too short a time to provide you with anything but our most basic first impressions:

• The all-silver/grey unit is beautiful (the first picture is the one to do it most justice), it is much more elegant than the Treo 600 with refined touches such as the new volume button and from a design perspective it also feels 'lighter' for some reason than the other Treo 650 units that we held over the last few months
• The build quality has been significantly refined over previous Treo 650 units and for example the battery cover now fits 100% in place giving the unit a very 'solid' feel
• Nobody has been able to report or provide me with any exact figures as to the overall 'data entry speed improvement' with the Treo 650's new keyboard and layout but if I had to make an educated guess I would say that it works between 25% and 50% better than the Treo 600 keyboard.  At any rate it is a keyboard that is much more 'welcoming' to each and every one of my thumbstrokes.
• For those like me upgrading from a Treo 600, the increased screen resolution is such a massive relief to the eyes with crisp looking text even at 2 point that it makes using the Treo 650 an absolute joy and the experience feels somehow 'smoothed' compared to the highly pixelated 600.

Naturally we'll be providing you with a lot more pictures, in-depth hardware and software reviews over the coming week as we begin to use the Treo 650 on a daily basis.

I told you the coming week would be interesting!

Treonauts love new beginnings...