Palm unveils Treo 500v for Vodafone

Palm announced today the Palm Treo 500v, a 3G smartphone running on Windows Mobile 6 Standard. The device has its design redone and offers enhanced communication and multimedia capabilities. In Treo 500v, Palm has for the first time given up the square touchscreen display and stylus, choosing a standard QVGA TFT 65k display instead.

Palm got all fans of the Treo devices astir with the Palm Treo 500v, a fresh addition to the Palm smartphone line. The Treo 500v comes dressed in glacier white and charcoal grey and has undergone several changes. The key ones are the rounded casing, the large call and end keys and the comfortable D-pad. The keypad is the good old QWERTY.

The tri-band GSM smartphone with 3G/UMTS support has the ultimate communication capabilities, such as Microsoft Direct Push technology for delivery of Outlook email, automatic download of Hotmail/MSN, Gmail and Yahoo! email as it arrives. Also on board are the highly comfortable, full-featured internet browser; access to Google maps and eBay, as well as Vodafone live! support for news, sports, and entertainment on the go. Of course, the new smartphone can handle standard office documents, as word, excel and PowerPoint presentations, as it comes with a preinstalled Pocket Office software.

Palm Treo 500v also has 150 MB of built-in memory, expandable via a microSD card, a 2 megapixel camera, capable of video recording as well. It has also a Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and miniUSB slot.

Starting in October the new Palm Treo 500v smartphone will initially be available exclusively to Vodafone customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and UK, and to Vodacom customers in South Africa. There's currently no information on pricing.