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For years Wi-Fi hadn't been a priority for Palm with its PDAs, until the release of the Palm TX and LifeDrive Mobile manager, and today that trend unfortunately continues with the handheld-maker's smartphones. Not one Treo model on the market integrates the widely-used wireless technology. Wi-Fi is nearly a check off item for most other smartphone vendors nowadays, including Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, those who sell HTC-built devices like Cingular and T-Mobile, and many others, however. Even RIM has admitted to plans to placing the technology in future BlackBerrys.

Not Palm, however. But this may change soon.

In a recent statement to the Washington Post, Palm CEO Ed Colligan said his company would release Wi-Fi-enabled Treos. He doesn’t say when, however.

"We do believe Wi-Fi is an important technology. There's no question that we'll ultimately put in our products, but at the right time," said Colligan.

In order to leverage Wi-Fi today, Palm's models like the Treo 650 and Treo 600 must use Enfora's bulky Wi-Fi sled. With the Windows Mobile Treo 700w, at least, you can use the device's SDIO slot with a more space-saving friendly WLAN SD card.

So why has it taken so long for Palm to consider Wi-Fi for its smartphones? Because of the drain on battery life, according to Colligan. That's a bit of a red herring.

As Geek.com points out, smartphones with smaller batteries than a Treo's—which use a standard 1800 mAH, but can go up to 2400 mAh—do just fine with Wi-Fi. Take the Nokia N91 and its mere 800 mAh battery, for example.

The real reason—the same as to why it took Palm so long to make the technology more widely available with its PDAs—the company, unlike so many others in the mobile market, simply didn't see a reason to offer Wi-Fi in its smartphones.

When PDAStreet met with Palm representatives a few months back to get a preview of the Treo 700p, we asked about the lack of Wi-Fi in the smartphone. Palm senior product manager Steve Sinclair said at the time Wi-Fi shouldn't really be missed because of the device's high-speed cellular-broadband EVD0 technology.

"No more looking for a Wi-Fi hot spot, let alone paying for a Wi-Fi hot spot," Sinclair asserted. There's a simplicity and convenience in knowing you can get broadband access wherever you are, and you pay your carrier a nominal fee to have this feature on your regular cellular bill, he added.

Another Palm rep emphasized how he didn't have to pay hotel Wi-Fi fees because newer Treos support for dial-up networking, which allows users to leverage those smartphones as a means to access the Internet or corporate network from a laptop via a Bluetooth or USB connection.

Perhaps what Colligan's statement to the Post indicates is a growing awareness on the part of Palm that it is not one or the other (Wi-Fi or cellular 3G) that consumers want, but both. It's about time.

And with dual-mode technology, which seamlessly hands offs calls and data connections between cellular and Wi-Fi networks, depending on which is best or most cost effective at a given moment, on the near horizon, it's probably best that the company finally starts to integrate WLAN into its smartphones if it wants to keep up with competitors.

There are rumors that an upcoming Windows Mobile Treo, codenamed Lennon, may integrate Wi-Fi. This device could be headed for Cingular by the end of the year. And it may be similar, if not the same, as the GSM 3G/UMTS Treo (possibly named the Treo 750v) slated for Vodafone this fall.

The worldwide carrier giant just setup a Web page for the smartphone, which will enable its customers to send and receive data (e-mail, video and the Web, for example) at about 400 to 700 kbps; comparable to what CDMA/EVDO-operators like Sprint and Verizon offer for Palm's Treo 700w and Treo 700p in the U.S.

The Windows Mobile 5.0 for Pocket PC Phone device will also support Microsoft's Messaging and Security Feature Pack for Exchange to deliver push e-mail out of the box.