Palm Treo 755p hands-on
Let's be real: the new Treo 755p is more or less what the 700p should have been. There's not exactly anything wrong with it, just that it's been a year since the 700p came out and all the improvements to the 755p are rather minor.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after the Treo 700wx landed at Sprint, Palm is back on the same carrier with the 755p — and both Engadget Mobile and Gizmodo's same-day hands-on with Sprint EVDO and Google Maps reach the same verdict: this is the phone the 700p should have been, with nothing broken but little advanced.
First-order effects
- Sprint gets another exclusive-window Treo refresh, giving its EVDO lineup a current model while Palm extends the life of an aging Palm OS design rather than replacing it.
Second-order effects
- With hardware differentiation minimal, Palm's Treo sales lean harder on carrier distribution and bundled services like Google Maps than on any reason for existing 700p owners to upgrade.
Third-order effects
- If annual cosmetic refreshes remain Palm's cadence, the Treo franchise competes increasingly on carrier deals and installed habits — a fragile position as buyers start weighing whole-platform choices over spec bumps.
The trend: Smartphone competition is shifting from incremental hardware revisions toward platform-level differentiation, leaving incremental updates like the 755p exposed.