Having used a Treo 600 since around November of 2003, I've been extremely excited about the new 650. My excitement leve went up after one of my co-workers got his a few weeks ago and I had a chance to give it a spin.
However, since my AT&T contract doesn't end until December I've been holding off from getting one, since I didn't want to pay full price for a new phone, and I didn't want to deal with early termination fees to switch providers. That changed when I visited a Cingular store over the weekend and found out that there was an "amnesty" program for current AT&T wireless customers to switch to Cingular, allowing cancellation of current AT&T wireless plans with no early termination fee (the only fee is an $18 activation fee)
Unfortunately wanting a Treo 650 and actually being able to buy one are two very different things. There isn't a single Treo 650 to be found in any of the Northern Virginia stores (I called about a half dozen or so). Cingular even removed the 650 from their web site ordering system. However when I called them Friday night they assured me that they had them in stock and I would get one in 2-4 days. But when the e-mail copy of my invoice arrived, it showed the device as being backordered. Chatter on Treo Central message boards indicated that folks were waiting for weeks to get theirs. But low and behold this morning I awoke to find an e-mail from Cingular notifying me that the device had indeed shipped this morning via FedEx.
Even though Cingular now owns AT&T, they seem to still be operating as separate companies. For example, the AT&T wireless phone I currently have will not accept a Cingular SIM, so switching to a Cingular rate plan means that you have to get a new phone. It seems that Cingular is moving very slowly to integrate current AT&T wireless users into being Cingular customers. One has to wonder if the anticipated cost savings from the merger are being lost in the extended transition plans. Indeed for much of the last year the only indication of the merger I've seen is that my phone often said "cingular" as the network it was on, rather than AT&T. Cingular will have to address the phone incompatability issue to encourage users of high-end phones to transition to its system, perhaps through a trade-in program (which will likely happen after I've already received my new phone).
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