Treo 800w: Who Gets It and When?

Things we know about the Treo 800w: it will launch on Sprint first for $249 with contract on July 13th (or 10th for those willing to hunt it down early via backchannels), then eventually come to Verizon. Phone arena has heard the same, but wonders: why the delay with Verizon. Typically these things are delayed because of an exclusivity deal, but we're not really thinking that's the case here. See, during the last Quarterly Conference call, Palm CEO Ed Colligan stated that there are not any exclusive deals:

You know, each one of the different launches will have a little different dynamics and -- but in general, they will be pretty broadly distributed early out the gate, and so I wouldn’t -- you know, they are not going to be exclusive for any period of time, you know, in any particular region.

Of course, Colligan could be referring to some sort of permanent exclusivity, but we're doubting it. As Malatesta has noted during our podcast, Sprint isn't exactly in any kind of place to be spending money on guaranteeing exclusivity and Palm isn't in any kind of place to be risking having their only high margin Treo available on a single carrier. So we're going with the delay on Verizon being due to the fact that Verizon is famously rigorous with their device testing and approval process.

We promise, the wall-to-wall coverage of the Treo 800w will eventually give way to actual hands-on experience with the device, it has to soon, because the sucker is due out on Sprint within a week. We're going to hold our drawing for the Rumortastic Treo 800w giveaway on the official launch day, which we're still assuming will be July 13th. It might make a few of y'all have to wait an extra day or so to go out and buy yours, but we hope it's worth it.