CC BY 2.0 ↗
Handspring Treo 600
- Year
- 2003
- Creator
- Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky
- Company
- Handspring (later palmOne)
- Location
- Mountain View, California
- Room
- The Rebuild ↗
Description
The Treo 600 is a small mobile phone with a thumb keyboard and the Palm operating system. Handspring announced it in 2003 and shipped it in the fall of that year.
Importance
The Treo put a phone, email, a web browser, and an organizer in one handset, four years before the iPhone. It used Palm OS, the software of the PalmPilot, which Jeff Hawkins designed and Palm shipped in 1996. In June 2003, Palm agreed to buy Handspring, and the Treo became the most popular product line of Palm.
Interesting fact
Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky left Palm in 1998 to start Handspring, so the 2003 purchase returned them to Palm.
Sources
- Handspring fourth-quarter fiscal 2003 results, with Treo 600 announcement (Form 425) ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 2003-07-22
- A History of Palm, Part 4: Reunited with Its Founders ↗Low End Mac · 2016
- A History of Palm, Part 3: Handspring, from Rival to Partner ↗Low End Mac · 2016
- Treo 600 Release Dates, Interview With Hawkins ↗PalmInfocenter · 2003-10-03