Revisit the Palm Trēo Pro

Let’s take a break from our desire for new news about the Prē™ for awhile, and revisit the latest yet almost forgotten Palm’s creation: the Trēo™ Pro. It is the latest, and hopefully not the last, from Trēo™ line-up which was the convergence of Palm’s PDA with phone functionality and basically put Palm in the map of smartphone market.

For most smartphone users, the Trēo™ Pro doesn’t seem much different from other Windows Mobile-powered smartphones out there in the market. But not for Palm users, or shall I say for Palm-‘addicts’. *wink*

The Trēo™ Pro represent more than physical beauty, it carries the big change in Palm within its slim shell. The sleek body dipped in obsidian black color combined with new screen design that’s flush with the chassis, silently screams out elegant aura and set it free from the old design, or like what Laura M. Holson from the New York Times (NYT) calls Palm’s old design as “calculator-like design.”

“No Detail is Small,” that’s what written on the packaging of Trēo™ Pro. And that is the new change in Palm, which is led by Jon Rubinstein, the executive chairman who was brought in to revolutionize the company.

Stephane Maes, vice president of Palm smartphone product marketing, told a story to NYT when he and a team from Palm were summoned to Rubinstein’s beachside home outside Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to show about 30 different devices. Rubinstein questioned the team about those devices, and after listening to their explanations, he canceled several Trēos in development, because he thought there were too many products. And besides the Cēntro™, the Trēo™ Pro is the other device approved and we admire right now.

Rubinstein is known for his cold steady hand to turn everything he touches into high quality products, after all he was the man that Apple CEO Steve Jobs asked to lead the hardware engineering division at the ailing Apple back then. Rubinstein also known to look for every details, he has regular status reviews where each product is pored over and discussed. The Trēo™ Pro’s jewel-like packaging is just a(nother) example of his relentless passion for details.

The same vision is emphasized by Peter Skillman, Palm's VP of Design who said: "It takes a hundred little details in aggregate that make for tsunami of a great experience, and what we really wanted to do with Palm is to nail all of the little things and actually drive that across the board ... all of these little things matter, and this is what we really doing at Palm." Head on to my old post to watch the Trēo™ Pro video promo.

For those of you who haven’t see the Trēo™ Pro in person, like me, then you can visit Jose Izquierdo’s album (Flickr link) to see glorious shots of unboxing the Trēo™ Pro in detail. A bit of warning; you might want to chain your legs first before going there, because you’ll soon start running to the nearest Palm store wanting to buy a Trēo™ Pro for yourself afterwards. ;-)

Speaking of buying a Trēo™ Pro, I’ve just realized that it is not on sale anymore on certain Asian Pacific countries including here in my country. I visited the local Palm website, and found out that the Trēo™ Pro is not listed there any longer. The others are China & India. Perhaps Palm is planning to put more focus on the next generation of new smartphone: the Prē™…