When the PDA was the popular gadget to have, Palm was one of the most popular electronics makers around. After the demise of the PDA and the rise of the smartphone, Palm jumped into the smartphone business, but never proved as popular in the phone market as it was in the PDA realm with most users. Today Palm offers a line of smartphones including the Treo Pro that offer nice features.

Alltel Wireless has announced that it is now offering the Treo Pro smartphone as of today online and in retail stores. Alltel has beat Sprint to the punch with the Treo Pro, Sprint isn’t launching the smartphone until March 15.

This “Meet Pre” video still has us lusting after the device. It demonstrates some interesting features, like a list of people invited to a meeting and which ones will be going, calendar and contacts and the phone is shown “sending” a webpage to a friend by forwarding a link and an attached .png screenshot.

We will likely hear more about the phone this week at MWC. With more enthusiasm, we hope. Though informative, this video will easily put you to sleep.

Patents are often looked on with disdain by consumers and other businesses. The problem is that many patents that are approved are for technologies that were already around or not new. This leaves firms that have been producing products similar to a newly issued patent open for suit.

Many are feeling that this is the case with the patent Apple was granted on multi-touch and gesture control for computers and mobile phones. Multi-touch and gesture control are commonly used in the technology world. I wondered yesterday if Apple’s new patent would send the company on a crusade of legal action against everyone who is using multi-touch in their products.

Palm just debuted its long awaited new handset, the Palm Pre. What a name. The touchscreen handset has a 3.1-inch 320 x 480 multitouch display, with a silver center button below and touch sensitivity all along the face. The lower part is for “gestures.” What’s that sliding out? A full QWERTY keyboard in portrait orientation. If you like, you can flip the phone on its side for accelerometer-sensed widescreen.

It’s running Palm’s all-new webOS platform, with TI’s new OMAP CPU. According to Palm, it provides laptop-style power, and powers the phone’s smooth transitions, scrolling and the like. Some other specs include EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP and 8GB of built-in flash storage. It also sports a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash, mass storage-friendly microUSB plug and a good ol’ 3.5mm headphone jack.

A common gift people will give themselves for the holiday season is a new phone. With broadband networks getting faster by the minute, a phone that is smart enough to handle surfing the internet, getting email, supporting IM’s and taking pictures becomes more and more attractive. This holiday season we had the opportunity to take a look at a couple of Palm’s smartphones, and in particular we spent some time with the new Olive-colored Palm Centro.

If you’re in the market for your first smartphone or you’re just looking for something that’s slick and easy to use with broadband access you will be well-served to take a look at the Palm Centro. Palm has been getting some mixed reviews lately when placed against some of the latest in smartphone technology such as RIM’s Blackberry or Apple’s iPhone, but we found the Centro to be a refreshing and fun device, and at just the right price.

Smartphones are great for many users, especially those in the business world who can use them for tracking appointments and keeping connected with the office or that boss who likes to know where you are at all times. The catch is that many smartphones require you to be tied to one service provider for years and some people don’t like making that sort of commitment.

For the folks that eschew the contracts associated with your typical smartphone, Palm has announced that the Treo Pro unlocked smartphone is now available to purchase. Palm says that the unlocked smartphone allows users to take advantage of any network they want and even use local SIM cards when traveling abroad.

Palm released a pair of official press photos of the Treo Pro and a video of the handset in action. They didn’t say a whole lot. Here’s what we know: the Treo Pro smartphone has a one-touch Wi-Fi button for wi-fi kung fu action, GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1 OS and sports a high-resolution flush-fitting color touchscreen. Earlier leaks indicate that the Treo Pro will feature a 3.5mm headphone socket, 320×320 pixel display, microUSB connector and has a 400MHz processor. No price or date yet. Video below.

The Palm Treo was one of the original smartphones. As new handsets have hit the market the Treo has become mostly overshadowed by cooler options. Despite that fact, the Treo still continues on and back in May we saw a spy shot of the new Treo 800w.

Palm has now officially launched the Treo 800w and announced that the device is a Sprint exclusive handset. The 800w will sell for $249.99 after discounts and 2-year agreement. The handset will operate on Sprint’s EVDO Rev A network for fast broadband speeds.

No, not the candy bar… If you’re one of those people who like to have totally unique and cool objects decorating your home, then why not display the Milky Way galaxy for all to see and be impressed with? This device is also great for those bent on Galaxy wide domination. Imagine being able to hold the galaxy in the palm of your hand while you laugh maniacally at your enemy’s staship movements.

Living World’s Milky Way galaxy 3D model was created using real space data from Eiichiro Kokubo, Assistant Professor at Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory and Osaka University’s Kato Tsunehiko. Holding the galaxy in your hand isn’t cheap though, it will cost you about $770.

There are a lot of people out there rocking the Treo, even though newer and cooler devices like the iPhone are available. If you are fond of your Treo and want to keep it pristine as the day you unwrapped it, OtterBox has your back.

OtterBox has a pair of cases designed for different Treo models, the 1920 fits the Palm Treo 650 and 750 and the 1921 fits the Treo 680, 750, and 755p devices. The cases are designed to keep your beloved phone safe from rain, dust, dirt and hopefully 3-year olds– the bane of all smartphone’s existence.

Today Verizon Wireless announced that they are adding the Palm Treo 755p to their lineup of Palm smartphones, coming in their own new color of deep blue-green. The Treo 755p runs on the Palm OS and uses Verizon’s EV-DO high speed network to support Direct Push email and Verizon’s Wireless Sync.

The smartphone also comes with a full QWERTY keyboard, 1.3 megapixel camera, mini-SD card slot, Pocket Tunes, Bluetooth support, Documents go Go for viewing Microsoft Office documents and PDFs. It supports editing Word and Excel files and comes with Google Maps for mobile ready to go out of the box. Verizon is pricing the 755p at $349.99 if you sign up for the two year contract, get an $100 online discount and get a $50 mail in rebate.

Opera Mini, which launched in February 2006, has recently released new version of its mobile browser for use on the Palm Treo and BlackBerry mobile devices, with the intention of offering a clean “…no-frills, instant gateway to the World Wide Web on today’s basic line of mobile phones,” according to Rolf Assev who is the Chief Commercial Officer of Opera Software.

Opera Mini is a smaller and more simplified version of the standard Opera browser,and is supposed to offer faster page rendering while using less memory, which in turn means less minutes of air time for the plan subscriber. The mobile version has nothing less than Google as the default page for search. The Opera Mini browser and the Opera 9, which was released in June 206, are available for free download at the Opera site.

Of course you must have an plan …