Palm's pal Inventec working on Treo-like Mercury smartphone?

We've heard of the supposed "Hollywood" and "Lowrider" Treos that handset ODM Inventec is supposedly building for Palm, but now we're hearing of a seemingly unrelated Inventec "Mercury" phone that crams in all sorts of smartphone good times. The FCC let this one slip, and though we're not sure it's destined for Treohood, we do know it's destined for Windows Mobile and it packs a GSM radio for use with Cingular or T-Mobile. The phone also has a 2.6-inch QVGA touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, WiFi, miniSD and possibly even GPS. We're not quite sure about the size of the device, but it appears pretty small for what they're packing in.

[Via phoneArena]

[unreal mccoy @ Feb 6th 2006 4:47PM]

That thing is dog-butt ugly...

[apeguero @ Feb 6th 2006 4:50PM]

One word: FUGLY!

[Heath Stahl @ Feb 6th 2006 5:30PM]

My TI calculator from 1985 has more style then that.

[gillsans @ Feb 6th 2006 5:31PM]

Hmmm...I think I've seen that thing before

[gillsans @ Feb 6th 2006 5:42PM]

sorry, here's the link:
http://dymo.com/enUS/Products/LetraTag_QX50.html

[crazykitty @ Feb 6th 2006 5:46PM]

Oh... that thing looks ugly...

[Ben @ Feb 6th 2006 5:54PM]

Ugliness of the design aside, the form factor looks a lot better than the Treo 600 or 650. Really what it looks like is a Treo 90, which I think is the best PDA yet to be produced. I have been hoping for a while now that Palm would come out with something basically the same as a Treo 90 but with a good phone and data svc built in.

[TJ @ Feb 6th 2006 6:33PM]

It looks like a Prototype.

[-TB- @ Feb 6th 2006 6:43PM]

Looks more like 240 by 240 screen resolution, like the Ipaq 6500.

[Greenline @ Feb 6th 2006 7:17PM]

I think it looks kinda cool. Not that I can't see why you don't like it, but I think it has potential, I get tired of every smartphone looking the same.

[ChrisXS @ Feb 6th 2006 7:35PM]

Mushy keys plus fugly look are big negatives. Lack of an external antenna is a plus.

What they COULD do that would make it intersting is make the keypad slide down to show more of the screen. Sorta like a Sony P910 inspired design that slides down instead of flips to expose more screen.

Imagine 320x240 when slid up and 320x480 when slid open!

With that picture in mind, take it one step further to make it a rotate and slide design in the same spirit as the flip and fold qwerty clasmshells out there. With that, you can have the screen at an optional wide aspect ratio with the keyboard still usable.

[Ryan @ Feb 7th 2006 12:59AM]

Looks like a Zire (low end) Treo to me. Same white plastic as the palm zire and notice the mini-usb instead of dock connector on the bottom.

[Kevin @ Feb 7th 2006 4:35AM]

the look of it doesn't bother me at all. it's a bit fresh which is more than I can say for every other phone...

[mayhew1955 @ Feb 7th 2006 7:15AM]

The screen is horizontal so the thing is actually huge

[Pat Horne @ Feb 7th 2006 8:54AM]

Yes #13, I think we're looking at a similar design to the Moto Q. Probably 240x320 and not a square screen. The internal pics @ FCC show it to be rectangular.

None of the internals resemble anything produced by Palm in the past. I'm not saying it's impossible, but this does not look to be a Treo.

I'm pretty impressed actually. This is definitely a pre-production model, so the color(s) and fit / finish are certain to be upgraded by production time.

It's GSM too.

[CurlyBoy @ Feb 7th 2006 10:57AM]

Looking at the photos/pdfs from the FCC, it's easy to recognize a lot of the chips they're using (for example, TI's OMAP850 Chip), but I'm not recognizing anything (no chips, anyways), other than an icon showing up in the user manual, that would indicate this thing has built-in GPS. Which is unfortunate, because if it did, I'd probably have found my next phone.

[KC @ Feb 7th 2006 12:42PM]

Ok,I don't get it

Between the new Sony Ericsson M600 being a poor copy of the Blackberry 7100 and this thing being a really poor copy of the blackberry 8700 series WHY isn't RIM suing any of these companies to get some money to fight NTP??

[acidreflux @ Feb 7th 2006 9:03PM]

Look at the space between the keys and tell me that the width isn't enormous. I bet that thing is wider than the ipaq 6500.

[fido @ Feb 7th 2006 10:48PM]

re #16: Looking at the photos/pdfs from the FCC

Could anyone tell me where I can find more details about this device from FCC?
I think it's kinda cool!