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Palm's most advanced Palm OS handheld is the Treo 700p (see our review), which is offered by CDMA/EV-DO carriers Sprint, Verizon Wireless and Alltel in the U.S. It has been shipping for about a year.

Since the Treo 700p's release many users have reported a number of bugs and performance issues with the smartphone. They are particularly frustrated because Palm has yet to release a software patch to address these problems, while - for example - quickly rolling out an update for the Treo 680, which has only been available a few months.

Today, Palm product manager Steve Sinclair posted some detailed information about the long-awaited Treo 700p ROM update (it'll include SMS send/receive performance boosts, MP3 playback, phone app launch speed, among other things enhancements), which he calls a "maintenance release" on the company's recently launched blog. This update will also replace the smartphone's radio firmware.

A maintenance release, which brings together a number of changes from "call centers, online forums, carriers, retail stores, etc.," according to Sinclair, is beta tested "internally and externally, run through pre-certification checklists" and then handed to a mobile operator for final certification.

The Treo 700p maintenance release is now in the carrier certification phase. Sinclair estimates customers will finally see the update on May 28th.

Sinclair explains why the Treo 680 update, which he calls a "patch" arrived so quickly; because this simply fixed a localized error with the camera that caused the shooter to drain the Treo's battery too quickly. Also, it didn't touch the device’s radio/telephony software.

A maintenance release, like the one coming for the Treo 700p, by contrast, is - in essence - a series of patches and fixes that have been brought together under one umbrella.

Will this explanation hold water for Treo 700p users? Not likely for the majority who've waited upwards of a year for better Bluetooth performance, for example.

As Sinclair admits, it's "been a much longer project than expected.”

More on Treo 700p
The 700p, Palm's first Palm OS Treo to support high-speed EV-DO cellular networking, includes a 312MHz 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, and is a vast improvement on the Treo 650's mere 23 MB of memory.

Palm's 700p measures 2.3 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches and weighs 6.4 ounces. It has the familiar QWERTY thumb-keyboard, a speakerphone, infrared port, ringer/silent switch, four application keys, and a 5-way navigator.

The camera (for picture and video) - a 1.3 megapixel type with a self portrait mirror - while still far lower resolution-wise than many other smartphone models from other vendors, is much improved over the 650's VGA model.

Since the 700p is a Palm device, and not a Pocket PC phone, like the 700w, Palm was able to bump the resolution of the display to 320 x 320 pixels, compared to the Windows Mobile model's 240 x 240 pixel screen. Microsoft's square resolutions are limited to that resolution or the higher 480 x 480, which no vendor has chosen to go to yet.

The 700p is the first Treo you can trickle charge (up to 500 milliamps) via the standard cable out of the box. It comes with a removable lithium ion battery.