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BargainPDA.com is reporting that PalmOne plans to release a successor to the Treo 600 on March 1.

This would be the first Treo to come to light after PalmOne's merger with Handspring, the original designer and maker of the Treo 600. It is no secret that PalmOne plans to extend the Treo brand into a series of smartphones. Jim Christenson, PalmOne's Director of Public Relations emphasized this when PDAStreet met with him at CES earlier this month.

It looks like the upcoming Treo 610 will include mostly the same features as the Treo 600 except for the addition of a high-resolution display and Bluetooth as well as more memory. The current Treo model only has a 160x160 pixel screen whereas most current PalmOne handhelds feature 320x320 displays or higher in the case of the Tungsten T3.

The addition of Bluetooth would allow Treo owners to use Bluetooth-enabled wireless headsets and connect to other local Bluetooth devices, such as printers, wirelessly. The Treo 600 has 32MB of RAM. The amount of additional memory in the Treo 610 isn't mentioned in the BargainPDA.com story.

About the Treo 600

The Treo 600 features a smaller more phone like form factor than earlier Treos, yet still maintains a fully integrated QWERTY keyboard. The device measures 4.41 x 2.26 x .87 inches and weighs 5.9 ounces in the GPRS version and a little over 6 ounces in the CDMA edition.

The smartphone gets a considerable boost in power over previous Treos with a 144 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP CPU, 32MB of RAM (22MB to 25MB usable) and Palm OS 5.2.1. Treo also gets memory and peripheral expansion support with a Secure Digital In Out (SDIO) slot.

The Treo 600's CSTN display only has a 160x160 pixel resolution and is smaller than the screens on the older Treo 270 and 300. It measures 2.7-inches diagonally. However, the screen has been improved and is good for both indoor and outdoor viewing. The Treo 600 uses a 1800 mAh rechargeable but non-removable battery for two weeks of standby time and six hours of either talk or online time for the GSM edition of the smartphone and five or more hours for the CDMA Treo 600.

The Treo 600's keyboard features a domed key shape and improved layout, with more surface area than those on earlier Treo products, and letters and numbers have been enlarged for better readability.

It features a five-way navigation system (up, down, left, right, center) that is tightly integrated with the bundled software on the device for moving within and between applications using one hand.

Additional features include a new proxyless version of the Blazer web browser to enable full web browsing and secure access to corporate intranets with better frames and JavaScript support, a built-in VGA (640 x 480 pixel) camera for taking and sending pictures and setting up picture caller ID, and a dual speaker architecture for phone and system audio.