A week ago we reported on the apparent confirmation of the long-running suspicion that, yes indeed, Cingular Wireless would be the first mobile operator to the deliver Palm's latest Treo in the U.S. Now comes evidence, in the form of a leaked PowerPoint presentation, that the Treo 680 may ship very soon—in less than a week, on November 5th. Not only that, the document offers up what appears to be the pricing scheme for the new smartphone.

It says the Treo 680 will go for $425 a la carte, $350 with a year commitment, and $350 with a two-year contract. Throw in an unlimited a data plan on top of this last deal and the price drops to only $175. A sample print advertisement in the presentation lists the Treo 680's price as $200, however.

The same document reveals the pricing for another upcoming Cingular smartphone, the HTC-built 8525 Pocket PC Phone, which is the follow up to the 8125; which was designed and manufactured by the same ODM. The handset is supposed to go for $560 without a contract, $485 for a year commitment, and $410 if you sign up for two years. The presentation lists the expected release date as October 29th, yesterday, but this obviously hasn't happened yet.

We'll let you know exactly when the Cingular 8525 and Treo 680 are made available.

Cingular has made a major push to greatly expand its smartphone lineup of late. The new Treo and Pocket PC Phone join other recent additions to the wireless operator's stable of supported devices, including HP's soon-to-come iPAQ hw6920 Mobile Messenger, Nokia's E62 and the Cingular 3125 (also known as the HTC Star Trek). It is also expected Cingular will add RIM's new Pearl and, possibly, the Treo 750 in the near future as well.

Most of these are part of a trend towards lower-cost models that go for $200 or less compared to the several hundreds of dollars people used to have to pay for smartphone. While these types of devices only accounted for about 2.5 percent of cell phones shipped last quarter, according to the NDP Group, the numbers are growing rapidly. For example, this year the number of smartphones sold is expected to grow to 80 million compared to 49 million the year before, reports Gartner.

Carriers like smartphones especially because users of these devices are likelier to sign up for and use, often expensive, data plans to access the Web, send and receive e-mail, and leverage other content services. This has the potential to raise the average revenue per user (ARPU) of smartphone owners considerably higher than that of everyday feature phones.

With voice revenues dropping, the importance of data services to operators has grown considerably over the last couple of years. Greatly subsidizing the cost of these devices and obtaining smartphones for less, puts the power of these advanced handsets within reach of more people.

More on Treo 680
As with the Windows Mobile Treo 750v, the Palm OS Treo 680 loses the Treo's signature external antenna, making it decidedly sleeker-looking than the Treo 650, which it replaces. Its GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) type for global compatibility.

The Treo 680 also sports a VGA camera, a 320 x 320 pixel resolution touch screen, 64 MB of user-available memory, a 312 MHz Intel PXA270 processor, and Bluetooth. Its 1200 mAH lithium-ion battery is supposed to last up to 4 hours talk and 300 hours standby time.

At 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.8 inches and 5.28 ounces, the 680 - which will ship in Graphite, Crimson, Arctic, and Copper (known to most folks as silver, red, white and orange) - is the smallest Treo yet.

Palm has upgraded the user interface and introduced a new simplified five tab phone application with the Treo 680. In addition, the Address Book and contacts are now built directly into the phone application.

DataViz Documents To Go v8 is bundled for Microsoft Office document viewing and editing, the VersaMail e-mail has been upgraded, and Pocket Tunes (upgradeable for DRM protected content) will plays music files.

Google Maps delivers directions, local search, moveable/scalable maps, location satellite imagery and live traffic updates. And a threaded chat application tracks SMS conversations as if they were an instant messaging exchange, so you can view everything in one place. Palm has also updated the Web browser for faster performance and more accurate delivery of content, the company says.

In addition to Cingular, Palm expects 19 more international carriers will pick up the Treo 680 by June of next year.

More on Cingular 8525
The Cingular 8525 is based on the HTC's Hermes design, which means the smartphone looks a lot like lot like its predecessor, the 8125, but with some important differences.

As with the 8125, the new Pocket PC Phone is used in a portrait orientation as a phone or traditional PDA. A now-you-see-it-now-you-don't QWERTY thumb-keyboard slides out from the side of the unit, switching the device to landscape mode, however.

Unlike European editions of the Hermes Pocket PC Phone, Cingular's won't feature a second front facing camera. So self portraits and video calling will be out of the question. Its single camera, a 2-megapixel type, resides on the back of the unit. Cingular will ship a version of the smartphone, the 8500, without any shooter at all.

There's a 400 MHz processor that doubles the speed of the CPU in the 8125, 128 MB of ROM, and 64 MB of RAM, in addition to a QVGA touch-screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and microSD slot.

HTC adds three buttons to the new model for Cingular: OK, Start Menu, and Push To Talk.

Unlike the 8125, the 8525 takes advantage of Cingular's high-speed UMTS/HSDPA network, exchanging data at speeds of between 400 and 700 kilobits per second (Kbps). In locations where this 3G technology isn't available, users automatically connect to the operator's much-more widely distributed 70- 135 Kbps EDGE network.

The 8525 has a more powerful 1350 mAH lithium-ion battery to the earlier model's 1250 mAH type. It adds a trackwheel as well.

The new quad-band GSM phone measures and weighs the same 4.3 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches and 5.3 ounces as the 8125.