Even though palmOne's Treo 600 is one of the most popular and best-reviewed smartphones around, it is—at almost a year old—getting a little long in the tooth. That's why expectations for the company's next-generation mobile handset is so high.

After month's of speculation, at the CTIA Wireless I.T & Entertainment Expo this morning in San Francisco, palmOne finally unveiled the Treo 650, its follow-up to the Treo 600.

Although not a reinvention of the Treo 600, the Treo 650 fixes some weaknesses of the earlier model (why reinvent the wheel if it isn't broken), while adding some nice new features.

palmOne’s President Ed Colligan, who gave a keynote address at the CTIA conference and spoke at a press conference not long afterwards, said “a smartphone is a mobile handset that is great to use in your business and personal life.”

With that in mind, it should deliver a keyboard and pen-input, a high-resolution screen, e-mail, PIM functionality, a Web browser, and excellent phone capabilities. To him and his colleagues at palmOne, the Treo 650 achieves these features and more.

Hardware
The new smartphone's dimensions, 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches (113 x 59 x 23 mm), weight, 6.3 ounces (178 grams), and overall appearance is similar to the Treo 600's. Like the earlier model, there is also a Secure Digital slot, which should—when a driver is ready sometime after initial shipment—;support palmOne's new Wi-Fi SD card. Treo 650 also integrates a QWERTY thumb-keyboard like the Treo 600, but with an improved backlight and a more user-friendly design.

Unlike the Treo 600 and its 160 x 160 screen, the Treo 650 will have a high-resolution 320 x 320 display, which should make it easier to read documents and Web pages. The Treo 650 also integrates Bluetooth, a glaring omission in the current model. Bluetooth allows Treo owners to use wireless headsets and print to Bluetooth printers, for example.

Unlike early rumors, the Treo 650 does not have a one-megapixel camera. Rather, it includes a VGA model for 640 x 480 or 352 by 288 pixel images like the Treo 600. The new smartphone’s camera is supposed to be better, however, with improved picture and video taking in low-light situations.

To palmOne, the CMOS camera solution it uses in the Treo 650, as opposed to a CCD implementation like with the Treo 600, doesn’t deliver good enough quality pictures in dim light at one-megapixel as it does at VGA.

As we reported with other recent Palm-based devices, such as palmOne's new Tungsten T5 (see Review: Tungsten T5 – palmOne’s Bold Guess), the Treo 650 does not run PalmSource's newest operating system, Cobalt. It uses an earlier version of the platform called Garnet 5.4.5. (Although PalmSource shipped Cobalt to device manufacturers late last year, not once device has appeared with it.)

With the Treo 650, you also get a 312 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor and twice the memory, 32MB, of the Treo 600—only around 23MB (a paltry amount by today's standards) will be available to the user.

At today’s press conference, palmOne defended its decision not to include more memory as an attempt to keep costs down. Plus, the expansion slot lets you add as much memory as you want through an SD card (a 1GB card goes for as little as $60). Of course, if you install another SD peripheral, such as the Wi-Fi card, then you’re stuck with the smartphone’s limited memory capacity.

As for the CPU, it uses Intel’s Wireless Step technology to determine how much power is needed for a particular function, with goal of preserving battery life. It is also MMX-enabled for improved mobile multimedia.

As with the Tungsten T5 and its 256MB of memory, the Treo 650's RAM is non-volatile flash. That's means all your data will be maintained in the event of a complete power loss. This makes data much safer than with most other smartphones and PDAs.

Unlike the Treo 600's battery, the new smartphone's is removable. So you can carry an extra battery (sold separately), and swap it out for additional power on the fly.

Software
palmOne's e-mail application, VersaMail, supports POP and IMAP e-mail clients, so users can download mail wirelessly or synchronize with their desktops. You can also view photos, HTML, and native Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments.

For users whose organizations use Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, the Treo 650's built-in Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync support will enable direct corporate e-mail and calendar synchronization.

Additional software includes, of course, a Web browser, MP3 player and the standard array of Palm OS PIM applications. It comes with the latest version, 7.0, of DataViz Documents To Go for Microsoft Office compatibility.

Users can dial contacts by name from their contacts list or enter a name or number on the QWERTY keyboard or on-screen dial pad. Phone features also include speakerphone, speed dial, conference calling, call history, and caller ID.

As with the Tungsten T5, the Treo 650 uses palmOne’s new multi-connector rather than the company’s longtime universal connector. As a result, the new model isn’t compatible with older Treo or palmOne peripherals, but will work with Tungsten T5 add-ons going forward.

Availability
palmOne will make the Treo 650 available as a dual-band CDMA/1xRTT and a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) world phone, with pricing to be set by individual carriers. Sprint will be the first mobile operator to deliver the new smartphone, with other American and worldwide carriers rolling it out in 2005.

Sprint’s VP of Sales & Distribution Jim Garcia said in the palmOne press conference that the Treo 650 would sell for under $500, depending on the service plan. The carrier will offer a $150 rebate to new customers as well as current customers who have been with them for 18 months or more.

Although palmOne will continue to sell the Treo 600 at a reduced price, Sprint said it would phase the older handset out. Sprint hopes to build on its Treo 600 business—the most popular smartphone its sells—however.

Treos also deliver the highest revenue per customer for all of Sprint’s cell phones and smartphones. These revenues are most likely generated by data services, such as e-mail and Web access, not to mention downloads of ringtones, games, and other types of wireless content.

The industry expects data services, rather than traditional voice plans, to account for an ever-increasing percentage of carrier revenue with each successive year.