Unboxing photos of Palm’s new Treo 800w for Sprint

By Michelle Ruhfass • July 13, 2008

Hot out of its box is Palm’s new smart device, the Treo 800w. Looking similar in style to its sibling the Centro, the 800w is a bit longer and wider, measuring 112mm x 58mm x 18mm (4.4″ x 2.3″ x 0.7″) in total compared to the Centro’s smaller package of 107mm x 53mm x 18mm (4.2″ x 2.1″ x 0.7″). The new 800w serves up some high quality features underneath its shell including a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system and both 3G and WiFi connectivity.

The Treo 800w for Sprint comes in a steel blue hue and was nicely covered in soft touch paint. First things we quickly noted along with the new paint job was that the full QWERTY keyboard seemed a bit more spacious and the keys themselves were raised a bit higher than on the Centro, more like those of the older Treos that have been so popular. The 800w’s keys are not made of rubber but of plastic and provide solid tactile feedback. The large 2.4-inch 320×320 pixel color TFT touchscreen is nice and bright, and the included full length stylus comes in handy when doing some on-screen work. Another nice touch is the Treo 800w’s screen saver mode that displays date and time info when the smartphone is not being actively used.

One niggle we noticed from the start was the that device’s two softkeys do not light up like the rest of the controls, which makes the phone harder to use in darker situations. Apart from being a bit heavy in hand at 142g (5oz) and 5mm longer in length and width than the Centro, the new Treo 800w looks like another nice feather in Sprint’s hat.

Other features of note include: