10. Multiple Phones, One Treo (er, Visor)

The number of people who have to juggle multiple mobile phones lines is increasing. Syncing data across these different phones is a hassle, to say the least. If instead of buying multiple phones, though, they could just have a couple of different VisorPhone modules, that pain would be a lot less.

Let's say I want to switch carriers (or upgrade to the latest radio standard). I keep my Visor and all its settings, I just go buy a new Phone module.

9. WiFi. Multiple SIMs

Look, Palm, I hate to break it to you, but you're not so great with figuring out how to deal with multiple radios. The PalmOS can handle Bluetooth and WiFi or it can handle Bluetooth and Mobile, but it can't seem to handle both.

If you separated out the radio from the PDA again, you could let somebody else innovate on radios - somebody might come up with a dual-sim VisorPhone, or a UMA VisorPhone, or ...gasp... a VisorPhone that could handle both WiFi and a mobile radio.

8. Solidify Your Brand and Differentiate Yourself

Back in the day, Treo meant Smartphone. That was it. A smartphone was the merger of a PDA and a phone with wireless data. Since then, you let RIM take your lunchmoney away - a smartphone became about email and clacky QWERTY keyboards. Now everybody is making smartphones, it's rapidly becoming a commodity.

But the VisorPhone, well, that'd certainly be unique, wouldn't it? Ain't nobody making those right now. More importantly, though, you'd be re-centering yourself as a platform at the center of an ecosystem. The PalmOS would be "hackable" again like it was in the early days. Let some 2-bit firm make the phone module, that's not what you do. You do sweet mini-computers based on an agile and lightweight mobile OS.

See, what I'm saying is that Nova could be about modularizing the smartphone again.

Why get a smartphone when you could get a Visor that can work with any carrier's VisorPhone module?

7. It would be Nerd-Tastic

There once was a time when I had to explain what a Treo was to everybody that saw me whip out my Treo 180. Show them they keyboard. Explain that it could do, well, nearly anything I asked of it. When you saw somebody carry a Treo, it meant something. They cared about what their phone could do for them. They knew what having a powerful phone meant and they used that power.

Not so with the Treo anymore. These days, a PalmOS Treo is more likely to get a raised eyebrow than a look of wonder. Talking to people about PalmOS isn't "offense" anymore - it's not evangelizing. It's "defense," it's saying "this is why I still think this is a viable platform."

A VisorPhone, though, well there are all sort of reasons to evangelize that. Reasons like the ones you'll read on the next page. The point for now is that those moments in the subway and on the street where people notice a device and say "Hey, what's that? That's cool" will be yours again.

6. Free Yourself from Carriers

Imagine, if you will, developing a new Visor and then selling it to people who then pick up a VisorPhone elsewhere. Notice what happened in that sentence? It's missing an essential piece of your current sales strategy:

Waiting an eternity for the carriers to certify it as ok on their network, all the while watching in agony as their employees leak your latest and greatest device all over the internet. Then watch in continued agony as these same carriers force the price of your device down by introducing subscription subsidies that make your customers think your product is worth less than it actually is.

Imagine, if you will, surprising us like you did with the Foleo, but doing so with literally every device you sell. Imagine charging full price for these devices and having people feel pretty darn good about that.

...On the next page, the 5 best reasons to bring back the VisorPhone

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