Handspring
Treo 600

The Treo 600 was the 2nd generation model in Handspring’s communicator family. It was an extremely important product for the company as it had been losing market share in the previous year. Furthermore, Handspring was in the process of being purchased by rival Palm for US$169 million and the Treo 600 was eventually launched as both a Palm and Handspring branded device. It was a radically updated design from its predecessor, the Treo 270, and was available in two different hardware versions: a dual-band CDMA radio (800/1900 MHz) which was offered with US carrier Sprint and a quad-band GSM/GPRS radio which was offered by the Orange network in Europe. When it was announced, Jeff Hawkins, co-founder, chairman and chief product officer for Handspring discussed the fact the Treo 600 was smaller than its predecessor stating that “making things smaller often makes the product better because it forces designers to break through old design ideas.” He described the Treo 600 as “a breakthrough for smartphones". The Treo 600 used Palm OS 5 operating system, had a 160x160 bright colour screen, a VGA camera, an SD/MMC card slot and an improved battery. Two different hardware versions of the Treo 600 will be available: A dual-band CDMA radio (800/1900 MHz Digital only) which was offered with US carrier Sprint and a quad-band GSM/GPRS radio which was offered with the Orange network in Europe. Both variants are included in the Mobile Phone Museum collection.