Press Room
Palm Canada Launches New Slim, Sleek Treo Smartphone on Rogers Wireless Network
TORONTO, Dec. 5, 2006 – For people who are ready to move up to a full-featured mobile phone that includes everything needed to stay organized, Palm Canada today announces the availability of the Palm(R) Treo(TM) 680 smartphone, a GSM/GPRS/EDGE(1) quad-band world phone exclusively available on Rogers Wireless, Canada’s largest and clearest integrated wireless voice and data network.
Customers will find the Treo 680 smartphone easy to use, slim and compact, yet packed full of features beyond its stellar phone capability, such as email, web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar, contacts and more.(2) Palm believes this product will appeal to price-sensitive feature-phone owners who want a more capable mobile-computing device.
“The Treo 680 is the smartphone for everyone. It’s small, sleek, fast and is available in four fun colours on the Palm Canada online store,” said Michael Moskowitz, vice president, Americas International, Palm, Inc. “It’s a great phone design for messaging and email, and provides users easy and fast access to the Internet and to their favourite music and pictures. The Treo 680 makes it easy for people to balance their business and personal lives while on the go.”
"As Canada’s leading wireless carrier, operating on Canada’s only GSM network, we are proud to offer our customers leading-edge mobile devices like the Palm Treo 680. Email availability on a stylish, thin form factor will make the Treo 680 particularly appealing to small and medium-size businesses by enabling them to save time by having access to outstanding mobile innovation and email connectivity,” said John Boynton, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Rogers Wireless.
With the introduction of the Palm OS(R) based Treo 680 smartphone, Palm is targeting new users in the rapidly growing smartphone and feature-phone markets. Market research firm In-Stat, estimates that 25 per cent of all wireless handsets worldwide will be smartphones by 2011. Research conducted by Palm suggests a substantial population of feature-phone users have not purchased smartphones, fearing they were too expensive and too difficult to use. The Treo 680 will offer an affordable, simple and fun way to get started and stay connected.
Known for ease of use, Palm differentiates the Treo 680 smartphone from others in the Treo family by offering the following features, along with many additional enhancements:
New Design
The Treo 680 smartphone has an internal antenna and slim form factor, making the device smaller and sleeker than its Treo predecessors in Canada. It has a full, easy-type keyboard, perfect for writing SMS messages and emails, and an optimal 320x320 vibrant colour screen for viewing web pages, photos, media and more.
All-in-one, Smarter Phone
The Treo 680 smartphone has a unique user interface that further simplifies Treo innovations, such as the ability to respond to calls with a preset text message and add new phone numbers to existing contact information, and three-way calling. The Treo 680 also has integrated email and web capabilities, so users can stay in touch with colleagues and friends. The messaging application on the Treo 680 displays text-messaging conversations as “threaded chats,” similar to IM, so users can see their entire conversation with a particular person. The Treo 680 smartphone also can be used as an MP3 player and has an integrated digital camera, camcorder and video player.
Additional Features
The Treo 680 smartphone offers many additional features, including the following:
• Added memory: The Treo 680 smartphone includes 64MB of user-available storage, nearly three times the available memory of the Treo 650 smartphone. Customers can add up to 2GB of storage with expansion cards for those large music or video files (sold separately);
• Improved web browser: The Blazer 4.5 browser is superfast due to its smarter caching rules and includes alternate modes for viewing web pages optimized for the device or as a regular web page;
• Enhanced multimedia: Customers can use the Treo 680 smartphone to stream music (on EvDO networks), play MP3s and manage and share photo albums;
• Built-in dial-up networking (DUN) capabilities: Customers can use the new smartphone as a wireless modem via Bluetooth(R) wireless technology to connect to a compatible Bluetooth enabled laptop;
• Documents To Go: Customers can view, edit and share Microsoft® Word® and Excel® documents on their Treo 680 smartphones in addition to viewing full-featured Adobe PDF files and Microsoft PowerPoint® presentations; and
• Bluetooth 1.2: Customers can connect wirelessly to other Bluetooth enabled devices. The Treo 680 has improved car-kit and headset support, and support for multiple simultaneous Bluetooth connections.
• Enhanced Email and Messaging: The Treo 680 allows users to sync contacts wirelessly, and offers new ways to easily sort and address email.
Availability
The Treo 680 smartphone is available on the Rogers Wireless network from $299.99 CAD when purchased with a three-year voice and data service agreement. The Treo 680 also can be purchased at Palm Canada’s online store (http://canadastore.palm.com) in four cool colours – crimson, copper, arctic and graphite.
About Rogers Wireless
Rogers Wireless Inc. is Canada's largest wireless voice and data communications services provider with offices in Canadian cities across the country, more than 6.5 million customers, and two powerful brands: Rogers Wireless and Fido. Rogers Wireless, which operates Canada's largest and clearest integrated wireless voice and data network, providing advanced voice and wireless data solutions to customers from coast to coast, is Canada's only carrier operating on the GSM/GPRS technology platform, the world standard for wireless communications technology and the only technology that enables roaming around the world in over 180 countries. The company is a subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX: RCI; NYSE: RG), a diversified Canadian communications and media company. For further information, please visit www.rogers.com
About Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq: PALM), a leader in mobile computing, strives to put the power of computing in people’s hands so they can access and share their most important information. The company’s products for consumers, mobile professionals and businesses include Palm(R) Treo(TM) smartphones, Palm handheld computers, and Palm LifeDrive(TM) mobile managers, as well as software, services and accessories.
Palm products are sold through select Internet, retail, reseller and wireless operator channels throughout the world, and at Palm Retail Stores and Palm online stores (http://canadastore.palm.com)
More information about Palm, Inc. is available at http://www.palm.com.
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NOTE: Video and images of the all Treo smartphones are available from Business Wire (http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=5245091) and from Palm’s Multimedia Library (www.palm.com/MultimediaLibrary).
(1) EDGE service not available in all areas. See service coverage map for details. Designed to be compatible with networks implementing GSM/GPRS/EDGE standards, but networks may not be available in all countries or within countries in which it is deployed.
(2) Within wireless service coverage area only. Email, messaging and web access requires data services from a mobile service provider at an additional cost. Email account not included.
Palm, Treo and LifeDrive are among the trademarks or registered trademarks owned by or licensed to Palm, Inc. All other brand and product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.
