Loading ...Treo 650 Memory Debacle
Oh the humanity! The promised nirvana of smartphoneness has been yanked from our clutches! Or so it seems.
Just over this past weekend, a firestorm developed over reports that the Treo 650’s new non-volatile memory stored things less efficiently (so that the same files take up more space), and this means that the paltry 22MB of memory available go even more quickly.
One of the big cheerleaders for the 650, Andrew at Treonaughts, wrote a diatribe of how disappointed he was if the reports turn out to be true. I can’t say I would blame him either.
This is not the first time PalmOne has disappointed us. When the 650 was first announced, we found out that it would have the same amount of memory as the current 600 and also that it’s camera would not be the expected 1.3 Megapixel improved one everyone was expecting, but the same one as the 600 as well. Then there was the whole debacle around the crippling of the bluetooth implementation for Sprint customers which Sprint then had to backtrack on based on the outcry.
I want to be fair to PalmOne and I’m sure there are very valid reasons for not including certain items, be they technical or cost-related. But it is truly hard to imagine why no additional memory could have been added. I realize that the volatile memory in the Treo 600 is cheaper than the non-volatile memory in the 650, but the non-volatile memory in all the flash memory sticks and cards that are sold for digital cameras have come down in price significantly over the last year. I’m betting they’ve at least halved in price. One can now buy 1GB of flash memory with mail-in rebates for as low as $50, maybe lower. And this is retail. Wholesale I’m sure the prices are significantly less. So adding an additional 32MB of memory I’m thinking would add a couple of bucks to the phone’s cost.
PalmOne is currently pleading for a few days while they do a group huddle to figure out whether the claims are accurate and then what should be done about it. It seems like they may be understanding what being a pennywise and a pound foolish is about. Handspring developed the Treo 600 and was subsequently bought up by PalmOne, so I wonder what the corporate culture of PalmOne did to change things in terms of strategy for the 650. Some have suggested that this was merely a marketing strategy that would put out a more basic model first, then trump it with subsequent releases that offered more memory and perhaps other features. But if this were the case, it would be unfair to those who would opt for the top of the line but based on the information that’s been given them can’t expect any new models for another year and so, and this would just alienate some of the earliest adopters and biggest fans of the phone.
Currently the only Treo 650’s on sale are CDMA models from Sprint. This is another snub, in my mind, to a huge cross-section of the Treo’s potential customer base. PalmOne decided to partner with Sprint to give them exclusive rights to all Treo 650’s produced until next year. While this has angered a lot of non-Sprint customer, it also seems to be (as PalmOne’s decisison to keep the amount of memory the same) devine retribution. Now all these Sprint models will be crippled and will have to be, undoubtedly, recalled to the factory for upgrading of their memory. When PalmOne finally gets around to producing their GSM models for T-Mobile, and AT&T/Cingular, they will have to have this memory issue nipped in the bud. But by then it may be too late. The word on the street will grow that the phone has issues and this will at least delay further sales, and possibly just hamper sales in general.
The whole idea of the 650 has been tarnished for me and while I still crave many of its improvements over the 600, I can’t justify putting many hundreds down for such an incomplete product and one who’s company seems clueless. I may yet have to start looking at some PocketPC phones next year, although for now the 600 does everything I need. No doubt PalmOne has a lot of damage control to do right now, and I wish them well. Hopefully they will use this as an opportunity to improve the product even further, even if it means a slight price increase.