Palm Treo 800w and Treo Pro accessories revealed, boredom hard to fend off
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Aug 28th 2008 at 8:50PM
Regardless of brand or model, one of the very first accessories many smartphone owners start rifling through the parts bin for is an extended battery of some sort. Unfortunately, Palm either doesn't know that or doesn't care, because a glance through its fresh round of accessories for the 800w and Pro doesn't reveal any. What we do see is a leather sleeve case for the 800w -- fancy! -- along with a "micro" charger that comes bundled with a spare battery. Depending on just how "micro" we're talking about, that could be a decent investment. It's not the most exciting group of SKUs, but for Treo fans, excitement is pretty hard to come by anyway.
Filed under: Palm, Accessories
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dan @ Aug 28th 2008 9:07PM
Go Palm!!!!!!
www.treonauts.com
Jeff @ Aug 28th 2008 10:06PM
I can use up a 3200 maH battery in one day...I appreciate the elegant one-piece back and all, but an elegant one-piece back'd phone THAT DIES BY LUNCH TIME isn't worth jack to me. Palm needs to look at the old VW pop-top campers- when you need more space, you need more space.
Brandy @ Sep 10th 2008 4:43AM
Check this out.... Yay extended battery!!
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7424/extended-capacity-palm-centro-and-treo-800w-battery-released/
TheGasMan @ Aug 28th 2008 11:32PM
Good lord, you guys can't even lay off Palm about their accessory lineup.
"but for Treo fans, excitement is pretty hard to come by anyway."
Yeah because no one is excited about the Treo Pro at all.
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2008/08/20/palm-treo-pro-unboxing-and-hands-on/
"one of the very first accessories many smartphone owners start rifling through the parts bin for is an extended battery of some sort. Unfortunately, Palm either doesn't know that or doesn't care"
Yeah, I'm just glad Apple provided an extended battery for my iPho... Oh..
Chris Ziegler @ Aug 29th 2008 12:08AM
The fact that the iPhone 3G doesn't have a removable battery, much less an extended option, is utterly asinine. What's your point? What does this post have to do with the iPhone?
backbeat @ Aug 29th 2008 12:28AM
^ Explanation: A defensive, diehard KoolAid-sipping PalmBoy who shadowboxes against enemies, seen and unseen.
DavidB @ Aug 29th 2008 9:54AM
What an assinine post. You guys jump on Palm for not offering an extended battery? Where's your similar outrage against Apple, Rim, SonyEricson, Motorola, Nokia, etc.??? Could you at least TRY to be a little bit fair in your coverage even when you so obviously HATE anything Palm related???
toddph @ Aug 29th 2008 11:01AM
At least you can CHANGE THE BATTERY! (comming from someone who lives with a bag of plugs for his Iphone 3g) GHEEEEZ!
pheer6224 @ Aug 31st 2008 1:00AM
I really hate fanboy banter, but one really must ask you people to stop bitching about switchable batteries when 25% of your coverage is on the iphone.
By the way, the treo pro is a WINMO PHONE.
Palm is entirely different and I think any palm user will tell you that the excitement comes from the available apps, not the devices. Also, you guys are gonna lose me as a reader if you keep saying that palm sucks. It seems pretty damn uninformed to say that palm never did anything for the industry. Hell, they made the first touchscreen phones and also a platform that held it's own against many competitors and paved the way for winmo, symbian, the iphone, android, qtopia, LiMO, Access, WinCE, and most standardized mobile operating systems today.
Chris Ziegler @ Aug 31st 2008 1:35AM
A company's glory three, five years ago buys it nothing in this industry, and it certainly doesn't buy it any free passes on this site. Are you suggesting that we run a few Palm puff pieces because the Palm V was a stellar device for its time (which it was, may I add)? Yes, you're right, the Treo Pro is a WinMo phone -- but so are the HTC Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, and Sony Ericsson X1, all of which have brought revolutionary skins to the table and industrial design that meets or exceeds the standards set by Palm's best.
Point is, Palm came into the business as an innovator and a pioneer. It's not innovating right now -- it's just starting to try to keep pace after years of leaning too heavily on its brand name and its business customer base, and the Treo Pro is a perfect example of that. We'd love to see what Palm could do if it went back to its roots, got Nova out the door, and kept refining its design language.
It's also critical to remember that coverage does NOT equal praise. The iPhone's lack of a replaceable battery is inexcusable, and we've never suggested otherwise.
So yes, if you're looking for validation that everything's peachy with Palm -- or any platform or device, for that matter -- perhaps this site isn't for you. We're just trying to tell it like it is.
Colonel Kernel @ Aug 31st 2008 4:45AM
Chris, you guys ARE hard on Palm. To claim that you're not undercuts your credibility.
This post is a perfect case-in-point: You slam Palm for not offering an "extended battery," linking to your post about HTC offering that very thing for their Touch Diamond, but you failed to do some basic, basic math.
The Treo Pro's included, out-of-the-box, standard battery is LARGER than the HTC Touch Diamond's extended battery. 1500mAh > 1340mAh, no? The Diamond's included battery is a pathetic 900mAh, which is blown away by the "cheapo" Centro's included 1150mAh battery.
Until you explain why HTC is spared the scathing sarcasm Engadget.com oh-so-readily lays upon Palm, DO NOT claim that you are "just trying to tell it like it is."
Chris Ziegler @ Aug 31st 2008 3:59PM
Never said we weren't being hard on Palm -- I'm trying to say that they deserve every bit of criticism they receive. We have nothing to gain by hating on a company without good reason, and neither do our readers. No one wants to see healthy competition among a plethora of innovative, capable manufacturers more than we do, but to say that Palm is on par with HTC here is pretty ridiculous. HTC is innovating circles around many of its competitors in the Windows Mobile space, and has been for the past couple years. If Sony Ericsson and Palm disagreed, they probably wouldn't be looking to HTC as an ODM.
Also, I'm pretty sure this post has been blown well, well out of proportion at this point; to say that we "slammed" Palm for not offering an extended battery here is going a bit far. It sucks, we'd like to see an extended battery offered for EVERY smartphone, but we're not losing sleep over it.
Colonel Kernel @ Aug 31st 2008 11:45PM
Palm IS deserving of an impressive amount of criticism: endlessly delayed new Palm OS, already-past-ancient old Palm OS, poor feature set, staid industrial design, plastic stylus, smaller and smaller batteries, etc. But Engadget.com goes above and beyond in their criticism of Palm. It is silly to claim that every last bit of it is deserved.
Palm announces ten standard accessories for the Treo Pro before it is released. That was a curious/annoying/frustrating/glaring ommission when the Centro was released. This time, they did good. It would have been valid to mention that, but you instead go with "boring."
You're the one that made the comparison between Palm and HTC. By linking to your article about HTC's "extended" battery for the Touch Diamond, you're claiming that a 1340mAh Extended battery is somehow better than a 1500mAh Standard battery. Again, 1500 is a larger number than 1340, isn't it? Where is Engadget's criticism of HTC's inclusion of such an inadequate 900mAh battery?
HTC pulled a fast one on you, too. That isn't even an "extended" battery. It's the standard 1340mAh battery that comes with the Touch Pro. To give the Diamond such a little waist, HTC had to literally starve it of energy. It isn't thin, it's anorexic.
THIS is where I fault this post. HTC skimps on it's Touch Diamond by giving it a 900mAh battery, fattens it up with something decent, and you make light of it. Palm packages the Treo Pro with a battery that is 2/3rds larger than the Diamond's standard battery and still 160mAh larger than their "extended" battery and you rip them ("Palm either doesn't know ... or doesn't care") for not doing what is the job of the aftermarket industry, especially when their included battery is as good as it is.
HTC is an excellent company with excellent products and the Touch Diamond is one of them. The Treo Pro, while clearly the best device Palm has ever offered, still falls short on most categories except one: its battery is superior by far.
Be fair. That's all I or anyone asks.
Mark @ Oct 28th 2008 3:24PM
Ahhh... the effects of a global economy.. (sic)
I'd think that the folks in the press would have a better memory.
Since there are many companys that focus on accessories and Palm is attempting to develop baseline products with ever shrinking resources, Palm got out of the extended accessory business a few years ago. (they will develop/provide a few 'basic' accessorys and let the aftermarket folks take care of the rest. I recall a press announcement about it after one of their many re-orgs.)
'Fanboy' comments aside, many users of recent Palm devices and press reports have mostly praise for Palms recent product releases. They stand out not because of the 'Palm' name but they are great devices.
While HTC arguably manufacturers a large percentage (if not the majority) of the WM devices in the world, if someone wished to get 'bored' a quick look at the spec sheets for the dozens upon dozens of like devices that HTC's released one would be writing 'boring' all over them.
Splattering the market with every possible feature configuration and getting one or two good products out of the bunch is surely more boring then reasearching and developing a singular or small quanity of products that are readily accepted 'as-is' by the market as good products.
There is no amazement that HTC has better funding and resources then Palm.
It is amazing that after dozens of duds the press would praise HTC for finally getting a few almost right when Palm and others have been doing that all along.