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Palm's latest smartphone, the Treo 750v, is now available for sale from Vodafone in Europe. The Pocket PC Phone is free to £212.77 (about $270) depending on the service contract in the UK and 299,89 Euro with a two-year agreement to 649,50 Euro a la carte in Germany.

In related news, Vodafone-owned operator M1 of Singapore announced this week it would become the first Asian carrier to offer the Treo 750v, which will be - as it is in Europe - the first Windows Mobile Treo on the continent. M1 said it’ll launch the 750v later this month.

As for Europe, inaugural Vodafone launch countries for the Treo 750v over the next several weeks, in addition to the UK and Germany, will also include Austria, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.

Palm's Treo 750v, along with a cheaper Palm OS model called the Treo 680, are also headed to Cingular Wireless in the states later this year or earlier next.

The quad-band smartphone is the first Palm to take advantage of GSM carrier's 3G/UMTS networks. It is Palm's sleekest looking and compact model yet - weighing 5.4 ounces (154 grams) and measuring 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.87 inches (111 x 58 x 22 millimeters) - mostly because the new smartphone loses the signature Treo antenna.

The 750v runs on Windows Mobile 5.0, a 300 MHz Samsung processor, and 128 MB of nonvolatile flash memory (60 MB user available). There's a square 240 x 240 pixel resolution touch display that supports over 65,000 colors. This is a lower screen resolution than the 320 x 320 type used in Palm OS Treos, but that's because Windows Mobile is built to handle it.

A 1.3-megapixel camera for picture and video lets you take images up to 1280 x 1024 pixels in size with a 2x digital zoom. For audio, there's a microphone, speaker, a 2.5-mm headset jack, and Bluetooth with support for stereo headsets. There's also a miniSD expansion slot and a replaceable/rechargeable 1200 mAH lithium-ion battery that Palm says offers 4.5 hours of talk over a GSM connection and 10 days standby time.

The 750v ships with Microsoft's Messaging and Security Feature Pack (also known as AKU2), which includes Direct Push and data access to Exchange server, for free out of the box. This delivers push e-mail, calendar entries, contacts, and tasks; native S/MIME support, certificate-based authentication to all Exchange data; and remote and local device wipe.

As with previous Windows Mobile Treos, the 750v includes enhancements exclusively added by Palm and not available to other devices running Microsoft's wireless platform. These would include Today Screen improvements, such as the ability to "dial by name" with a few keystrokes on the keyboard, perform a web search directly from the Today Screen, and one-touch dialing with personalized photo speed dials.