Beefed-up Treo 700w for Sprint on September 3?

It's been no secret that Sprint customers could expect their very own Treo 700w once Verizon's exclusivity clause ran its course, but until now, we haven't had a date on when it'd all go down. Well, things are finally starting to come into focus, and if the rumor mill's aim is true it looks like it'll drop on August 27 for business customers and September 3 for us lay folk. But here's the real scoop: folks are whispering that the device Sprint will bring to market is a souped-up 700w re-dubbed the "700wx," rocking twice the RAM (amid other tweaks). So far this is all unconfirmed, but given the 700w's paltry 32MB of the stuff, it seems like a reasonable change -- and it shouldn't take long to get this all confirmed with the rumored release date looming near.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 10th 2006 11:53PM]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSS!!! Now I can rid of this BULKY PPC-6700 that I had to buy the EXTRA SUPER SIZED battery....

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 2:19AM]

I was going to buy another battery for the 6700 till I saw this, I hope it's true.

Goodbye 6700, We have had good and bad times, but I'm in love with another.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 7:48AM]

I'm willing to bet that Sprint won't be the only carrier selling the 700wx. After all, there is no way Verizon wants to sell a lesser product than any of its rivals. So I'd bet that Verizon will dump the aging 650, lower the price on the 700w and intro the 700wx at $100 more than the 700w.

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 8:24AM]

magoo If you like to browse the Internet on your device (think unlimited data plan) you'll like the speed of EVDO. Our internal newsgroups have been raving about EVDO on other devices. How fast is EVDO? Where available, you can receive speeds up to 400-700 kbps, and peak speeds up to 2.0 Mbps when downloading content.

[erwos Posted Aug 11th 2006 8:38AM]

Definitely tempting, although I still wish it had WiFi. I guess EVDO makes up for that somewhat, and there are always SDIO cards (now that the SDW-821 is out), but it seems like such an obvious feature to have at this point. Maybe the carriers think that having WiFi is some kind of an inherent admission that their network "isn't good enough"?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 9:06AM]

It's not the carriers that make the deicision on wifi. It's the phone manufacturers...

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 9:53AM]

YES!!! Truth be told, I rarely use the either phone to surf the net, cause it still takes a little time to load up. I'm usually near a computer. But when I'm not, I have both the PPC-6700 and a Blackberry 7230. I know, 2 phones??? Yes, I get asked that question all the time. In the industry I work for (radio station manager) I don't like the fact that you can look me up in any trade magazine and find my POCKET PC #!!! So I decided that I would have a seperate # and phone for the friends and family... I had the Treo 650 early, when it first came out for Sprint. Only reason I switched to the Pocket PC was cause I got in a wreck, spill a BUCKET OF COKE (a 42oz drink from Mickey D's) on my Treo... Now I'm going back!!1

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 11th 2006 1:37PM]

I have been waiting for this for 8 months! Although my current contract expired June 1st (to get the max rebate). I have been calling and e-mailing Sprint for weeks trying to get info. Finally earlier this week, when I called to cancel my service because I can get the 700w from Verizon now and Sprint was not giving me any answers, I was told, "we just got notified a couple of daya ago that we will have the 700w available by mid-September. Combined with this, I am very happy - question is, since I get a corporate discount, can I convince them to let me in on August 27th!?>!?

[Omagus Posted Aug 11th 2006 4:35PM]

While it's true that the manufacturers choose what to put on a phone, the carriers to have significant say. Palm could make a Treo 700 with wi-fi and Verizon would say, "No thanks, we don't want that. Now if you could make a version without the wi-fi, then we'll order 100,000 of them." And the reason they do that isn't necessarily because they think their data coverage isn't "good enough" (after all, mobile data coverage is till more widespread than wi-fi networks) it's because they want to make SURE that they are getting that monthly fee for data. If a casual user has the wi-fi option, the carriers could potentially lose out on that.

Magoo, you should have sued. It worked for the lady with the coffee.