Pleasure Doing Business With New Palm Treo

There's a brand new smartphone on the market that's sleek, slim, super fast and loaded with 21st century smartphone features.

No, it's not the iPhone(AAPL Quote) 3G. It's a newly designed handset from Palm(PALM Quote) -- and it's a winner.

Early this morning, Palm and Sprint(S Quote) announced the Treo 800w, the Centro's big brother. It's smaller and sleeker than any of the older Treos, and doesn't have the ugly antenna hump on top.

Palm Treo 800 Made for Business

In a side-by-side comparison, the new Treo is only slightly longer and wider than the Palm Centro but is just as deep. The 800w has a touch screen and a stylus as well as a larger version of the Centro's keyboard. It's even easier to use on the 800w.

The first thing you need to know is that this phone has been designed as an enterprise workhorse. That means it is made to primarily handle tasks that business users require to do their work -- not primarily as a music/video/Web browsing media center, which is also able to make phone calls.

The new smartphone runs on Microsoft's(MSFT Quote) Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition operating system.

Before you dismiss this completely, I agree that previous Palm/Windows Mobile devices left a lot to be desired. I couldn't stand them, to be honest.

That's not the case with this one. Right off the bat, I'll tell you that both speed and battery life between charges are both greatly improved.

There are all sorts of nifty features on this phone. As for hardware:

320 by 320 pixel touchscreen (use your finger or the infamous Palm stylus)

5-way navigation device with one-button shortcuts to your email and calendar

Full QWERTY keyboard

802.11b/g Wi-Fi (with a dedicated on-off button)

Built-in GPS

EV-DO Rev A wireless data connections (average upload speeds of 350-500 kbps)