Treo 700w Camera Test

Thanks for the pictures....

But the shocking sentence is at the end. You mention that the Treo 700w will not be available until the end of January. Up until now all of the data (mostly weak) was saying early, early January. Do you know something more specific?

Too bad someone couldn't develop a slave flash that plugs into the Audio Jack. Would it be that hard to make it flash when it recieved an Audio Tone from the Treo?

Someone Make it so...

Ad send me a freebie!

Same as Bob L - why do you indicate late Jan/early February? This seems to contradict all of the statements made by both Palm (when they said EARLY Q1 - note that Palm's financial quarter ends in Feb) and Verizon (by putting up the coming soon page last week). Thanks for the camera review. You mentioned it be4 - but specifically are the connectors the same?

Bob & 808e46m3: all of the information that I have received to date leads me to believe that a late Jan to early Feb is the most likely range for a full commercial release of the Treo 700w by Verizon.

808e46m3: the connectors are exactly the same on both the Treo 650 and Treo 700w.

Cheers, A.

I want to say thank you for all the information you put out, becuz it sure has help me with Treo.. On to the subject at hand,

From preliminary result from the 700w and 650, there's not really much difference between the Two, or am I just being optimistic here, the reason I say that, should I be happy with my 650 or should I go an upgrade to the 700p when it comes out, or the greater question is - will I be so far behind if I don't get the 700p and stay with the 650..

How about important info like Data speed, phone reception, battery life... Thanks!

Is the end in sight for Palm OS?
The new Windows-based Treo smartphone could be the first nail in Palm OS's coffin

, IT Week 06 Oct 2005

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In late September Palm unveiled a Treo smartphone running Microsoft's Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS. Many observers interpreted this as the beginning of the end for the Palm operating system as we now know it.

Following Sony's exit from the PDA market last year, Palm is the only significant licensee of Palm OS. However, its current products run versions of Palm OS 5, and not the newer Palm OS Cobalt that Palm's former subsidiary PalmSource released last year.

Palm's latest device, codenamed Treo on Windows, was developed because many corporate customers have a Microsoft-only strategy and demanded Windows on mobile devices to match their fleet of desktop PCs, according to Palm. "We're selling Treos to many small firms and consumers, but enterprises are only interested if they already have a Palm OS strategy. If they have a Microsoft strategy [for mobile], they don't want to change," said Palm's European vice-president, Francois Bornibus.
Palm insisted it will continue to offer Palm OS Treos in the future. Tony Cripps of analyst Ovum commented, "Palm will have to [keep offering Palm OS], to maintain its beachhead with GSM operators. No Windows Mobile Treo targeted at this market will see the light of day before the second half of 2006."

However, it seems unlikely that any further Palm OS Treos will be developed. Current models run an ageing version of the Palm platform, and to extend this to match the 3G network support in Windows Mobile 5.0 may prove costly.
If firms will not buy Palm OS handsets, Palm may simply decide to cut its losses and ship only Microsoft-based models once the Treo 600 and Treo 650 reach end-of-life.

Might the same thing happen to Palm's handheld range? Ken Wirt, senior vice-president of marketing, said his firm was waiting for PalmSource to port the Palm environment to Linux before moving away from Palm OS 5. He said that there were no plans to produce Windows Mobile PDAs. "It will take us about a year to build a product on Palm OS for Linux after they come out with it," Wirt added.

PalmSource was recently acquired by Japanese software firm Access, but still expects to deliver Palm OS for Linux in the first half of 2006. Wirt said, " We're very optimistic about Linux - it will give us much broader access to chipsets, different processors and radios, because every vendor that puts out a chipset writes Linux drivers for it."

Wirt said he did not think PalmSource's acquisition by Access would affect the Palm OS for Linux project. "We've worked with Access for a while - its NetFront powers our Blazer browser - so we have a good relationship," he added.

While Palm looks set to continue shipping Palm OS 5 handhelds for the near future, Wirt admitted there would have to be a cut-off point. "At some point in the future, we would obviously prefer to be on one platform," he said.

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Sounds like the commercial (retail) customers will have to wait until late January to early Feb, but the B2B customers usually get a two week lead time so that would mean early to mind January if this is right. Good for me.

What bothers me, is that there still hasn't been any real indication as to when the 700p will be coming out. I would assume that they'd be coming out around the same time, but who knows. And the pics from the 650 look a little better to me.

Will be able to run Pocket PC on 650s?

No WM for the Treo 650 but you wouldn't want to anyways, just wait for the the Treo 700w or get the Treo 700p if you want Palm OS.

a friend of mine had trouble with his brand new Treo 650 and a service tech told him to bring it back and try to get the 700w, "the service tech thought that the 700w would come out on December 16,2006". My friend is anxiously waiting till tommorrow and hopefully get one of the first 700w's

ofcourse this is all just a guess, but we'll know tommorrow.

Richard

Glad to see the info is back up and it was a server issue. Based on the info we don't get a cradle with the Treo 700w. Is this the new direction Palm is going witn the Treo's so we have to buy a cradle?

Do you know if the 700w properly generates EXIF? That's one of my major issues with the 600 and 650 is that they do not generate the correct EXIF which makes it a huge pain when you are trying to put cameraphone pictures into a catalog such as iPhoto.

has anyone ended up testing the photo quality of the 700p compared to the 700w? I am a poor artist and the quality of the camera in the phone is very important to me! I would love some posted pictures at I find the above examples very disturbing in that the 700w takes such less saturated color.