Research group SquareTrade recently conducted and released the results of a massive cellphone study. They tracked over 15,000 handsets over their first year of use, and denoted discrepancies in reliability. The iPhone malfunctioned 5.6% of the time. The Blackberry (various incarnations) malfunctioned 11.9% of the time. The Palm Treo took the cake by malfunctioning a whopping 16.2% of the time. The company compiled some handy charts on the matter, which are located above and below this writing.

It looks like it’s the end of the road for Palm. Analysts are not very optimistic about the future of Palm, citing that the company’s cash burn rate is through the roof and out of control due to setbacks.

Palm is the creator of perhaps my favorite smartphone ever, the Palm Treo 650. Unfortunately the people at Palm have no idea how to run a company because the company has split then reacquired itself numerous times instead of making any type of new innovation in their phones in the last 5 years.

Hopefully they can get their act together and continue to make history assuming they can launch Palm OS 2 without any further delays.

Sprint’s website is noting that the Palm Treo Pro will be arriving to the service sometime in the future. There is no official page for the phone, which is currently available only in Europe. However, it was spotted in a product drop-down menu. If you are holding out for the stateside release before you upgrade your Sprint contract, note that the similar 800W model is available now. The Pro is just slightly thinner with a nicer battery.

Shots of Sprint’s Q4 gadgets include the LG Rumor, Touch (aka, Vogue), Palm Centro, and the Blackberry Pearl 8130.

Sure looks real. Speculation has it that this is the Centro, the Palm OS-based phone that represent Palm’s smallest to date. That keyboard sure looks small, but if it does EV-DO and only costs $99, then it might be appealing to some folks with little fingers.