"Black Tie Edition" Treo 650 is real, shipping in US

Well, color us a bit surprised. It turns out that the rumored "Black Tie Edition" Treo 650 for Asia-Pacific was not only real, it's coming to this side of pond as well. The specs sadly haven't changed from what we've reported before: you get the same old Treo 650 repackaged in black, a unique hard case, a dual-purpose stylus/pen, and that's about it. The Black Tie Edition is shipping immediately for a whopping $599 unsubsidized; we're not holding our breath for our 700p-toting readers to make the switch, but for folks on GSM carriers, this is now the snazziest Treo money can buy.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 20th 2006 6:44PM]

The minute the housing pops up on ebay, I'm slipping my 650 into the rubber.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 20th 2006 10:31PM]

So, I assume the 700x is better in terms of hardware, yeah? (correct me if I am wrong). Then why do thye insist on trying to milk this as long as possible? Reminds me of Motorola and their V3/i. "Well, we could to a little more innovation, but releasing the 2-year old technology V3i in velvet sounds really cool!"

Colors are so 1999 imac...

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 21st 2006 9:20PM]

Palm is doing this because they can't get a UMTS/HSDPA Treo 700p/w out yet. The US carriers don't have a big enough footprint yet. I'm not really sure about Europe. This black tie Treo 650 is a stop gap to keep making some money until the UMTS/HSDPA Treo 700p/w comes out at the end of the year (hopefully).

Joe