Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Gizmodo by way of TreoCentral has the first real pictures of the Treo Ace, or as they are calling it the ‘Treo 650′, the successor to the current Treo 600. It looks good, although not dramatically different. The keyboard seems to be the major design change. The keys look larger and/or flatter. The entire key is backlit instead of just the letter on it. They have also moved the ‘menu’ and ‘home’ buttons up to the top above the five-way navigation, which should make these often-used buttons easier to isolate. They’ve also made the alt key its own key as opposed to being shared with the ‘0’ key. Hopefully that will mean that hitting 0 after some other letter will not launch a popup menu of special characters, as for me it has the tendency to do now. They’ve added an extra shift key on the left as well, but I use an application called Keycapps 600 that does away with the need for shift and alt in most circumstances. However, the number and special keys still are different from the normal computer keyboard layout, which makes things more difficult to find. It also looks like the screen is high-res as has been said before. There’s a lot of discussion about this over at TreoCentral, myTreo.net, and Engadget about this, so enjoy!

Update: There’s a rumor on TreoCentral that this unit will not work with any of the accessories made for the Treo 600. I can see cases not working exactly because of slightly different button layouts. But all accessories? The Treo 600 is pricey enough, ranging from $200 all the way up to $800 depending on whether you get it with a mobile phone plan or which plan you have and which provider you have. Acessories add up very quickly on top of this. This unit will no doubt carry the same premium because it, like the last one, will be in huge demand. Unless the phone companies subsidize the phone to a much greater level than the Treo 600, users who want to upgrade will be extremely upset and a lot of them will opt to hold out a lot longer. When the phone itself is so expensive, often one justifies the additional cost of accessories and software as being “investments” which can be carried onto future generations. For people buying high-end phones like the Treo 600, the desire to have the latest technology is a given and that comes at a hefty price. So it’s assumed that eventually one will upgrade, but to have to also upgrade every other accessory one has is a bit much. Get ready, PalmOne, because if this rumor turns out to be true than you will be dealing with a lot of very grumpy and some very irate users for the next 6 months.