With the Vodafone exclusive on the Palm Treo 500 coming to an end at the end of the year, Palm is gearing up to offer up an unlocked version in Europe according to The Register. Pricing has not been disclosed but the unlocked Treo 500 should be available sometime in January 2008.
The news is not as encouraging for the United States (and likely Canada). While the Palm Treo 500 may have received FCC approval, Palm CEO Ed Colligan (during the latest earnings results conference call with investors and analysts) indicated that there were no plans to offer it in the United States. The Treo 500 is a tri-band device and Palm does not appear to be considering upgrading to quad-band to support the North American carriers.
The Palm Treo 500 is the first Treo not to have a touchscreen. It is powered by Windows Mobile 6 Standard and comes with a QVGA display, a QWERTY keyboard, tri-band GSM/GPRS and single-band UMTS connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, 256MB ROM (with 150MB available user storage), a 2MP camera with 2.5x digital zoom, and a microSD slot.