Treo 700wx Materials Leaked

[Jon Westfall]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://gadgetsonthego.net/2006/08/sprint-posts-treo-700wx-user-guide.html' target='_blank'>http://gadgetsonthego.net/2006/08/s...user-guide.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Now that we've officially beaten the Treo 700wx to death, it's not like we can imagine there's anything more you need to know from Palms new handheld. But just in case you wanted the hard specs list lifted straight from their leaked marketing materials"</i><br /><br />Information is now leaked that looks fairly official. Couple this with rumors of the device's availability, and I'd say that Sprint users now have another choice in the Windows Mobile arena!

[Craig Horlacher]

...that they still gave the thing an anemic 240x240 display. What are they thinking?!?!??! I don't see any excuse because A: it's physically more than large enough for higher resolution and B: the palm OS version has had 320x320 since the 650. What is up with this?

I'm sure it will be a great device for many people. It's just not for me and I don't understand why they make it this way.

[JesterMania]

Not having 320x320 could be a software limitation of WM5 and getting software to recognize this setting. I read somewhere that it's trickier than expected for software in the WM platform to run under different resolutions (not nearly as easy as on PC where you can operate 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, etc. quite easily).

I'm sure the square design would appeal more to those that want a sort of traditional phone-like form-factor, but still want the full WM5 OS (vs the Smartphone version, Symbian, etc.).

[Anjuan Simmons]

I'm glad to see they gave it a decent amount of memory, but the low rez screen (especially since I'm using SlingPlayer's Mobile application a lot these days) and the lack of integrated WIFI (definition of insanity) make it look like a loser to me. I'll happily hang on to my PPC 6700 which is the best PDA Phone Sprint currently offers (in my opinion, of course).

[Craig Horlacher]

Not having 320x320 could be a software limitation of WM5 and getting software to recognize this setting. I read somewhere that it's trickier than expected for software in the WM platform to run under different resolutions (not nearly as easy as on PC where you can operate 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1600x1200, etc. quite easily).

I'm sure the square design would appeal more to those that want a sort of traditional phone-like form-factor, but still want the full WM5 OS (vs the Smartphone version, Symbian, etc.).

That's strange, but it would explain it. I hadn't heard that before. I don't think it could be a wm5 issue (since there are wm5 devices that do 480x640) but I guess maybe wm5 phone edition (or whatever it's called) issue.

Maybe someday! What does the JasJar use? Isn't it a phone with a 480x640 and some form of WM5?

[whydidnt]

The 240 x 240 is a limitation of WM5, not just the Phone Edition. Supported resolutions are 240 x 240, 320 x 240, 480 x 480 and 640 x 480. Originally WM only supported 320 x 240, and from a design standpoint, it made sense to support these derivatives. Palms 320 x 320 is actually double their original 160 x 160 - and all native Palm apps are pixel doubled, so you don't really get to see more information on the screen-- though media such as pictures obviously looks better in higher res. I think a 240 x 320 landscape screen such as included on the Moto Q woud be the perfect compromise between size and function. Maybe the Palm 850 will go that direction. It would probably be a better solution for many apps than 480 x 480 because of M$ decision to pixel double their "VGA" resolutions, meaning, we probably couldn't run 320 x 240 apps on a 480 x 480 device.

The Sprint 700wx is one of the worst kept secrets ever. I can't remember seeing this kind of detail, pre-release, on almost any other device, though I'm sure it's happened. I find it interesting that we still don't see any published information on the amount of RAM included - we see the ROM numbers, (user accessible), but no RAM. I'm going on faith that the previous video and pictures we saw were accurate and Palm doesn't pull a Palm and ship these with 32 MB. :wink:

[SteveHoward999]

Yeah I read Microsoft's rather wet excuses as to why they crippled square screens to such a low resolution. I don't buy the excuses at all - it's hassle to get 240x320 software to squeeze down into 240x240, but no problem at all to get it to fit in 320x320!

And as for the Treo - I guess I'm just not assimilated enough to care about it. Looks cute, but it is just not strong enough in any of the areas that I consider important.

[x51vuser]

It should be 240x320, RAM 128 MB, WiFib/g
These people already sent PalmOS to the toilet and it is sad to see they do the same to the device.

[Kash76]

It should be 240x320, RAM 128 MB, WiFib/g
These people already sent PalmOS to the toilet and it is sad to see they do the same to the device.

That would look quite odd on a square screen!

The base res for PPC is 240x320, MS did a survey for square screen resolutions and most of them said it would be easier to adapt to 240x240 instead of having to write code to adapt to widening their apps to 320.

That is the reason for the res. I'll take the benefits of the 700wx over the large and bulky 6700 any day. As for WiFi, there are only a couple of instances that I have seen it needed and for those times I will have a SDIO card.

[Janak Parekh]

Yeah I read Microsoft's rather wet excuses as to why they crippled square screens to such a low resolution. I don't buy the excuses at all - it's hassle to get 240x320 software to squeeze down into 240x240, but no problem at all to get it to fit in 320x320!
Hmm? What do you do with the border? The problem is that with a screen this size, resizing a 240x320 app to 320x320 with black borders makes everything small.

And as for the Treo - I guess I'm just not assimilated enough to care about it. Looks cute, but it is just not strong enough in any of the areas that I consider important.
It's for people who use the device as a phone a lot. The lack of a slider/flip makes it very easy to manipulate with one hand as you pull it out of a pocket.

--janak

[SteveHoward999]

[quote=SteveHoward999]Yeah I read Microsoft's rather wet excuses as to why they crippled square screens to such a low resolution. I don't buy the excuses at all - it's hassle to get 240x320 software to squeeze down into 240x240, but no problem at all to get it to fit in 320x320!
Hmm? What do you do with the border? The problem is that with a screen this size, resizing a 240x320 app to 320x320 with black borders makes everything small.


You are going to have to explain that better, cause I'm not seeing your problem.

A little bit of a black border is a small price to pay for all existing software working fine without need for every developer around being forced to change all their products and every square-screen user being forced to upgrade to the changed products.

[Janak Parekh]

You are going to have to explain that better, cause I'm not seeing your problem.
The 700w has a small square screen. Increasing the resolution will decrease the size of all the controls on the device. I've used 240x320 apps scaled (games, particularly), and many of them are extremely small and the controls are difficult to use. The black borders also look quite lame. Believe it or not, I'd rather take the way it is. 8O

And, it's worth pointing out that by now the vast majority of apps work fine in 240x240 native, with the exception of games (which is a little disconcerting, admittedly). Even 240x320 productivity apps work, albeit with a scrollbar on the right side.

--janak