The Palm Treo Pro was first released in October of 2008. Available only as an unlocked model, the unlocked Treo Pro (see review) appealed to world travelers and business professionals who find great appeal found with a smartphone that will work with virtually any SIM card. The flip side of the coin is the lack of wireless carrier means there isn't a subsidy to drive down the cost of the phone. Thankfully, that’s all changed with the Sprint release of the Treo Pro. With a 2-year contract agreement, the Treo Pro on Sprint is $199.
Peter Skillman, VP of Industrial Design for Palm, walks through the elements of hardware design on the Palm Pre. From the hardware to the packaging, Palm's mantra with the Pre was "no detail is too small". Speaking of the packaging, the Palm Pre packaging is similar to the Treo Pro. Like the Palm Pre, it's small and it's "green". Skillman also demos the Touchstone accessory that allows you to charge the Palm Pre without having to plug it in. Simply drop the Palm Pre on the Touchstone and it starts charging.
The Treo Pro was released a few months back to much fanfare and despite a slight delay, I was finally able to get my hands on the latest Palm device and put it through the paces.
There is a report from eWeek's Andrew Garcia who has found troubling results with respect to talk time on the Treo Pro. According to Garcia, the Treo Pro "could only squeeze out about 2 hours and 40 minutes of talk time when connected at the faster rate on the AT&T network- significantly below the 5 hour rating Palm claims for the device on their specification sheets."
