Gossip

Confirmation of Symbian Treo - but release date could be some way off

Palm engineers have built a Symbian based Treo, and samples have now been seen in the hands of phone company executives.

But the excitement of seeing one may be delayed beyond next month, say our sources.

The rumours about the SymTreo suggested a launch at the Smartphone Expo, now only two weeks away (11-12 October, London Excel) - but Palm execs say "it's not as good as the Windows version."

And why isn't it as good as the Windows version? Typically, phone company executives sneer at Windows phones, and praise Symbian OS ones. Has Microsoft suddenly become more reliable than Symbian at writing code?

No, says our Man In Finland, the problem is that there's some core Symbian code, which Nokia says belongs to Nokia. And Symbian is caught between UIQ and Nokia in this, and so the phone is, politely, a bodge.