Palm Treo 680
I’ve been testing the Palm Treo 680 the last couple of days. So what do I think?
I’ll get to the pricing in a bit, so let’s start with the slightly sleeker form factor. It’s a tad smaller than the Treo 650, and the antenna is gone (now how in the heck will you get the phone out of a carrying case?). They’ve modified the keyboard to match the Treo 700 layout. The keys are slightly more square. The menu button however is now down in the lower right hand corner and if you are a current user, takes some getting used to. Why they buried the menu button down in the lower right corner is beyond me. Burying the menu button on a Palm is like burying the Start button on a Windows Mobile phone. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the green key is for. They’ve also moved the SD slot (still full SD, no mini or micro) to the right hand side of the phone behind a cover. I don’t understand why the phone still weighs so much. They’ve made the phone smaller, removed the antenna, but it’s still heavy.
They’ve also changed to a tabbed interface on the phone screen that allows quick access to things like internet browser favorites and call history.
What else did I notice other than the form factor and the tabbed interface? Practically nothing other than the bump in internal RAM (from 32MB to 64MB). It’s still Palm OS 5, still has a 312 MHz processor, still has the 320x320 screen, there aren’t many additional apps out of the box (other than Docs-To-Go, which isn’t even the latest release). Disappointed? A little. Why didn’t they do more?
It’s still only a GPRS/EDGE device, in a world where almost all new phones have UMTS capabilities (the soon to be released Treo 750 is UMTS). The Palm OS is still an antiquated single thread OS, so I can understand why they didn’t put UMTS in it (how can you do voice and data at the same time with a single thread OS?). Why didn’t they put Bluetooth 2.0 spec in? It’s only Bluetooth 1.2. There’s no wi-fi (yes, I know, Palm doesn’t put wi-fi in its handsets). There’s only a .3–megapixel VGA camera. Yes, that’s right folks, a .3–megapixel camera again in a world of 1.3 and 2.0 megapixel cameras. And, there’s the proprietary connectors for their phones that don’t allow you to charge via USB.
I should also add that Pocket Tunes MP3 player bombed more times than it worked, and the streaming video player also didn’t work well. I didn’t take the time to load Docs To Go, and other than that, didn’t notice any additional apps. Basic PIM apps remains unchanged, although I received several errors while working on Palm tasks and had to reset the device to get back in to them.
How’s the phone work? It’s ok. It IS better than the Treo 650 audio, but that’s not saying much since the 650 was awful. The speakerphone doesn’t have much volume, and sounds distorted (pops) when you put it on max volume. You almost need max volume because I couldn’t hear well while outside or in my car at highway speeds. So, it’s OK, not great. There are several PDA’s out there that I’ve tested recently that had better audio qualities (HP 6945 and Cingular 8525 to start) from a phone perspective. Getting the phone to dial extra digits automatically is also quite cumbersome. With a Windows Mobile PDA, I can input the extra digits (,,xxx,xxx) straight in contacts, and dial straight from contacts. I can’t do this with the Palm OS Treo. I have to go to an extra screen and input extra digits. Speed dial entries are also a little cumbersome.
Which brings me back to pricing. Palm is asking $399 on their website, and Cingular wants $199 with a contract? More disappointment. For what they’ve changed, and what they’ve left the same, they should have dropped the price more. $399? For this? Most of the technology is old, and I prefer the 650 keyboard layout from a Palm OS perspective. They didn’t add a single new piece of technology (like UMTS, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g), and it’s the same old single thread OS. On a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I’d give this a 2. For Palm, this is a step back not a step forward.