Views, Rumours & Releases From 3GSM

As I mentioned previously, I’ve spent the last few days in Barcelona for the 3GSM World Congress to get a glimpse at what the mobile industry is up to.

Overall there was surprisingly very little new, ‘cool’ or really innovative to see among the hundreds of exhibitors – perhaps it is indicative of an industry that is somewhat struggling to find meaningful developments outside its core telephony offerings.

I also have to admit that I was rather bored seeing the hundreds of standard and feature phones on display by the likes of Samsung, SonyEricsson and Nokia all of which only seem to be able to deliver but a fraction of what our Treo can.  I guess that once you own a Treo it’s rather difficult to go back to a ‘normal’ phone no matter how appealing its design might be.

Having said this, let me take you through some of the most interesting 3GSM highlights:

PALM
Palm did not have an exhibition stand at 3GSM but instead the company opted for a rather nice and large outdoor private meeting area (below) where many of its European carrier partners and international suppliers inevitably sat down to discuss the future Treo roadmap.

Many new Treo 700w boxes as well as ‘Top Secret’ locked steel cases (presumably holding Treo prototypes) were seen on the premises.  A few people later confidentially confirmed that they had seen the famed ‘Hollywood’ prototype due to be released later this year and that it was indeed thinner and slicker than the Treo 650…

PALMSOURCE
On Tuesday, I attended the ACCESS/PalmSource press conference where they announced the ACCESS Linux Platform (ALP) which will become the future PalmOS platform for our Treo.

Naturally I was delighted to learn that progress continues to be made on the next generation operating system for our Treo but the presentation was highly technical and aside from a short demo there was little in the way of any tangible ‘front end’ developments.

PalmSource assured me that all of the company’s resources are currently working on getting ALP ready at the soonest.  However, the fact is that ALP’s SDK (which licensees and developers need to develop new products) will not be released before the end of 2006.  We should therefore now get used to the reality that an ALP powered Treo is unlikely to become available before the end of 2007 or early 2008 – nearly two years away.

I am always looking for something new and better so naturally I would have liked to see ALP ready sooner.  However, I’m not one to cry over spilled milk so I am getting used to the idea that my next two Treo smartphone upgrades in 2006 (Treo 700p or Hollywood) and 2007 will still use PalmSource’s Garnet v5.x.x operating system – albeit with additional improvements and modifications.

Since the Treo operating system will not see major changes until 2008 devices are released I believe that the burden of creating a truly appealing Treo worth upgrading to will fall squarely on Palm who will need to use all of its hardware design skills to deliver some truly ‘sexy’ next generation Treo smartphones.

SANDISK
In light of the recent first pictures and some specifications of the Treo 700p (which benefits from FAT32 driver support to use SD Cards larger than 2GB) I was curious to meet with SanDisk (one of the largest manufacturers in the field) to learn more about the future release of 4GB and 8GB SD cards.

Apparently, even though some 4GB SD cards have already been released by third-parties, the reason that SanDisk and other large manufacturers have not yet released theirs is because the SD Card Association has not yet released final specifications and also because most handheld devices (Treo, PDA’s, digital cameras) on the market today cannot read cards above 2GB.

Assuming that no other delays occur, 4GB SD cards should appear commercially in May-June this year with an 8GB announcement near September and release in Q4 2006.  I certainly would not mind ending the year with multiple 4GB and at least one 8GB card for music on my Treo…

TREO KILLERS
A few months ago Nokia announced (see Another Treo Killer? Nokia’s E61) that it would be releasing a new series of ‘enterprise’ phones including the E61 pictured below which I had the opportunity to play around with at 3GSM.

As you can see the device is wider than our Treo but although the keys are larger I found them more difficult to use (space bar is too small, keys are too hard and one handed operation is more painful) while the 5Way is cumbersome and the screen although large is not touch screen.  Overall, the Nokia E61 like its almost twin MotoQ seems to compete more directly with BlackBerry handhelds than with our Treo smartphones. 

One thing that I continue to like about the Nokia E61 though is its support for ‘advanced voice services’ such as VoIP and other SIP-based call services which will work with Cisco and Avaya WLAN and IP communications. 

At any rate, we will have plenty to like and talk about with multiple Treo smartphone releases in the coming months…

Treonauts always want something new and better…