Perhaps it’s the slightly Fisher-Price look to the front panel; perhaps it’s an inherent distrust of overtly soap-shaped objects after a particularly disturbing prison themed nightmare... either way, I’m not quite managing to get excited about Palm’s latest Treo, the 500.

Still, from the sound of it I’m the one missing out; the 500 has already whipped up some interest in what the company has managed to achieve despite using the Windows Mobile OS, and Andrew over at Treonauts has done a good job of highlighting the physical improvements in his unboxing feature of the 500v Vodafone version.

So why should I get interested?  Well, it’s significantly thinner than the Treo 680 (as seen in the photo below), and despite being an entry-level smartphone it apparently feels solid in the hand.  Palm have also made a few of their famed usability tweaks to WM6, including an application carousel, which should go some way to silencing critics of the powerful-but-picky OS.

Treonauts [via jkontherun]