Palm "Pro" shows up in March Best Buy Mobile ad for $249

The fate of the Sprint Treo Pro has been up in the air ever since the announcement of the Pre, with units sent to stores called back for testing and reports of endless delays, but it looks like we'll finally be getting the HTC-built handset next month, since it's in Best Buy Mobile's March circular as the "Palm Pro" for the expected $249 on contract. That's certainly better than the off-contract $699 price Big Blue posted last month, but what's up with calling it the Palm Pro? Considering the tips we've already gotten confusing the Treo Pro with the Pre, we'd say truncating it down to just "Pro" is a disaster waiting to happen -- might want to straighten this out, Palm.

[Thanks, Mike]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 22nd 2009 6:41PM]

Man, that would be nightmare for cell phone reps, customers asking for the PRE and calling it the PRO and vice-versa. Hopefully it's just a typo.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 22nd 2009 7:31PM]

Just wait until the "Pro" version of the "Pre" comes out. I'm guessing that Palm is trying to distance itself from the "Treo" moniker as quickly as it can!

The price of these units are just too high, since most of the interested parties that would have bought Pros last year are just going to wait for the Pre (I would have bought one last year and now I'm waiting to ditch my VZ Centro for a Pre on SPCS) - these units are going to be in stockrooms for months to come...

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 22nd 2009 9:32PM]

yeah everybody going to wait for the PRE..I dont know why palm came out with this phone just a waste! should of released it last year!

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 23rd 2009 8:02AM]

The Treo Pro has been available unlocked GSM in Best Buy for months now.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 23rd 2009 9:13AM]

The people that have been waiting for this know the Pre is coming out and are still waiting for this. The reason is simple. We know that WinMo works well with exchange push email, and we don't know yet how the pre will handle it, as well as the security standards that come with.

The Pre will be a sweet phone, but will probably not be 'business-ready' for a while.

One of my managers is aweful with phones, but he'll probably end up with this one. I can't stand the thought of a touch pro coming back in two pieces after he tries to fold it shut.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 23rd 2009 9:52AM]

Waste of a phone. BRING US THE PRE FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 23rd 2009 1:34PM]

Maybe Sprint will be better than AT&T, although I'd hate to switch. Testing a Pro now at the Gartner Mobile & Wireless conference, and Palm can't explain why the 175 units out for testing this week won't stay connected to the AT&T network. What they did confirm is why even though you can't make the connection to AT&T, the WiFi won't take over. We have to thank our Microsoft buddies for that. Apparently cell comes before WiFi in the stack, so if your cell connection is poor or has problems you actually have to shut it off to use the WiFi... c'mon Redmond, we deserve better than this!