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Regional operator Alltel Wireless has become the second U.S. carrier to deliver Palm's latest Palm OS smartphone for CDMA carriers, the Treo 700p. Verizon and Sprint debuted the smartphone back in May of last year.

Pricing for the Alltel edition of the Treo 700p is $350 after a $100 rebate and with a two-year service agreement.

Unlike the Palm platform Treo 680 for GSM operators, which debuted late last year, the Treo 700p is considered a high-end rather than a mid-range smartphone. Hence, the discrepancy in price: Cingular offers the Treo 680 for a little less than $200 with a two-year contract.

The Treo 700p sports 3G wireless technology, EV-DO (with data transfer rates averaging between 400 and 700 kbps) for CDMA carriers like Alltel, while the Treo 680 doesn’t include the GSM counterpart, UTMS/HSPDA, and it has a 1.3 megapixel (still low for a smartphone of its caliber and price) to the other device's mere VGA shooter.

Palm's Treo 680 features an updated design, however, nixing the Treo's signature external antenna for an internal one.

Alltel picked up Palm's newest Windows Mobile smartphone for CDMA/EV-DO carriers, the Treo 700wx, last month. The operator is the nation's fifth largest carrier overall.

More on Treo 700p
The Treo 700p, Palm's first Palm OS Treo to support EV-DO, includes a 312 MHz Intel XScale processor, Palm OS 5.4.9, SD card slot, and 128 MB of non-volatile memory (60 MB available to the user), which will survive a complete power drain like all recent Palm devices.

It measures 2.3 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches and weighs 6.4 ounces, has Treo’s familiar QWERTY thumb-keyboard, a speakerphone, infrared port, ringer/silent switch, four application keys, Bluetooth, and a 5-way navigator. The camera includes a self portrait mirror.

The resolution of the smartphone's display is 320 x 320 pixels.

Treo 700p's removable lithium ion battery is the first you can trickle charge (up to 500 milliamps) via the standard cable out of the box.

And, of course, the Alltel edition comes with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ActiveSync support for synchronization of contacts, e-mail and calendar out-of-the-box. Palm is making this technology generally available for the Treo 700p and the unlocked version of the Treo 680 on Monday.