Product Description

The Palm Treo 680 replaces the Palm Treo 650 as Cingular’s Palm OS offer. Treo 680 is a quad-band EDGE device with a Cingular-exclusive industrial design, expanded internal memory, Pocket Tunes™ music player. Treo 680 is expected to appeal to small/medium-sized business customers, mobile professionals and “smart communicators” – consumers who are curious about data devices and are looking to step up from traditional voice/feature handsets to integrated data & voice devices with more power and features.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12114 in Cell Phone Accessories
• Color: Silver
• Brand: Palm
• Model: 680
• Released on: 2006-11-24

Features

• Compatible with MS Outlook – Synchronize Contacts/Calendar/Tasks and Notes with the Treo 680
• Compatible with MS Office files -- Documents to Go application supports creating and editing MS Word/Excel files and reviewing MS PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files
• Fast internet browsing using Blazer® Web browser (HTML browsing or MEdia net) optimized for Cingular’s EDGE network
• Pocket Tunes™ music player plays MP3 and WMA music files and streams audio from the Web
• Treo 680 voice roams to over 185 countries and data roams to over 100 countries using GSM/EDGE

Customer Reviews

Almost the perfect smartphone
If you want a phone that can do practically everything a laptop can do, you have come to the right place. The Treo can do email, play music, videos (e.g. full length movies), games, browse the web, schedule your appointments, etc. Add a 4GB or 8GB sd memory card, and you essentially have an iPod nano inside your phone.

The good : Rock solid - spurious resets/reboots or pauses that plauge other smartphones (incl windows mobile phones and earlier treo models) are gone with this phone. Excellent voice quality on both sides. Unlike the Blackjack and the Moto Q, you can read PDF files sent to you via email, and you can both read **and edit** MS Office files (word, excel). TONS of software, much of it free. Web browser does a very good job. PIM apps are excellent, just like a palm pda - easy to use, syncs w/ your desktop incl Outlook. Works great w/ Windows, Linux, or Mac desktops. Can hot-swap the battery w/o loss of data. Can install less-expensive high-capacity SD cards -vs- the Blackjack which wants microSD. This phone even works with the new 8GB Transcend SD card! PalmOS generally requies less effort to do basic things like add an appointment. GREAT sms features. Excellent user interface features make it very easy to use one-handed, unlike Windows Mobile. Excellent, bright 320x320 touch screen (touch screen is great for games, can work like a mouse for cut-n-paste in office apps, faster navigation). Solid bluetooth stack that works clear across the room. Easy to use the phone to access the internet w/ a laptop (DUN) via USB or bluetooth - Cingular doesn't charge anything extra to do this.

The bad: not a "3G" phone, so data speed is MUCH slower than phones like the Treo 700p or Samsung Blackjack. It goes about 120Kbs (on EDGE network). This does not matter much for email, since this phone can send/receive email "in the background" -- but this is not enough bandwidth to reliably watch live streaming TV for example. Camera resolution is only 640x480 ! (although it does a better job than most phone cameras, even indoors in low light). No built-in WiFi. Although the battery can get you through the day, and the battery life gets much better after the first few weeks (not conditioned properly at the factory?), this phone definitely needs to be re-charged every night esp if you get a lot of email. If you need a phone that can go 2+ days w/o a recharge or battery swap, look elsewhere.

Almost Everything I Want From A Smart Phone
I misplaced my (Verizon) Treo 650 and eventually gave up and decided to replace it after whinging about with my daughter's old LG. Since the rest of the family is on AT&T, I looked at the iPhone but went back to another Treo. (The iPhone user interface is superb, but I found the keyboard unusable for emails/memos/text messages, and I don't often listen to music or watch videos on my phone, so those otherwise great features were not of interest to me. And AT&T had a great rebate.) So I acquired a crimson treo...maybe I'll have a harder time losing it!

If you've owned a Treo, this has all the advantages of the family, using the Palm OS, which I prefer to Windows Mobile. If you've not owned a smart phone before, they are a tremendous productivity booster, and I can say from personal experience what a setback it is to return to a regular cell phone. The 680 synched up quickly with my laptop. (I followed the instructions and re-installed HotSync, assuming I would be re-entering a lot of names, but it saved everything from my lost Treo.) I use email from Earthlink and Yahoo as well as corporate Outlook and it works seamlessly.

(There was one problem with Outlook and my prior 650 - Versamail could not handle the it's-time-to-change-your-password message and woudl lock up. I don't know if it's going to be an issue with the 680 or not, but a password change on the 650 took care of the problem. YMMV.)

Battery life has been a common complaint of early 680 users. There are two factors here. First, the battery is smaller to help make the phone slimmer, and I like the new form factor. I regularly just plug it into the car charger and it's not an issue. The other factor is the firmware - before version 1.09, there were some battery-draining bugs in the 680. All the Treo forums I've researched have indicated that the May upgrade corrects most of the battery issues. There are now extended batteries available as well, although they require a different cover and make the phone larger.

I have not looked at all of the negative reviews, but I think that most of them will be from before May 2007, when the AT&T version of the upgrade became available. So I would suggest that readers consign these to the dustbin of history -- it's not a huge problem anymore.

There are a couple of drawbacks to the 680 for the 650 user besides the smaller battery. There is no Wi-Fi card available for the 680, which would be useful in the future. The SD card has been moved to the side from the top, which makes it harder to accidentally pop out the card. The 680 SD cover seems flimsy, but will probably be OK if one is careful to replace it correctly.

So...if you want a lighter weight Treo than a 650, and can manage to charge the battery daily, the 680 should meet your needs. I am ecstatic to have a Treo again, and the 680 has yet to disappoint me. Highly recommended.

Upgraded From a 650
I purchased the 680 as an upgrade to my 2-year old Treo 650. I wanted to get a smaller, lighter phone, with more horsepower. I tested many Blackberry units in store and some of them are really slick. In fact, the only reason why I did not go with a Blackberry is the Palm OS. After using the Palm OS for many, many years, I just couldn't get myself to switch to the "other side".

Anyway, I'm happy to report the 680 is a smaller, lighter, faster version of my 650. The interface has improved, menus are easier to navigate, and email has improved also. In regards to email, Verizon (my last provider) does not use "versamail". The lag time between getting an email on your server, and getting it to your handheld was 15 minutes or more. Now, with versamail, you instantly get mail to your handheld. Again, this is a huge improvement as far as I'm concerned. Occasionally, the phone will reboot itself. More than my 650 did, but start up is quick, and it hasn't posed a problem for me.

Here's the only (and BIG one) negative for me. Yes, you guessed it, the battery. With normal use you will not get a full day of battery life. Luckily for me, I spend most of my time in the office, or in a car, so it's not a huge negative for me. Figure on this, the battery will last you half of what you are used to with a 650,

Overall, I definitely recommend this phone to all.

*** UPDATE 9/11/07 ***

It seemed like my battery life was getting worse and worse. I could not make it through a full day, with only moderate usage, before it went dead. This now became an issue for me.

So, I started searching for ways to improve battery life. If I wasn't successful I would have to possibly move on to another phone. After ciphering through a lot of wasteful reading, I found the needle in the haystack...here it is:

"If you encounter a poor battery life on your Treo 680 and you have to recharge very often even if not using the Phone function, the issue might have been caused by an incorrect first charging of the device.
Please follow the steps below to solve the issue:

1. Connect your Treo to a wall charger.

2. Remove the battery from the Treo and wait for at least one minute.

3. Remove the SIM card from the device and wait for another minute.

4. Put the battery back into the device (without the SIM card) then let your Treo charge for at least 4 to 6 hours and for this duration:
o Do NOT press any key after reinserting the battery.
o Do NOT switch your TREO On or Off either, it will do so automatically after a short time.
o Do NOT enter the SIM card PIN if prompted to do so, just wait!

After you have done the above, you now need to make some changes with your settings. This is the final piece of the puzzle. Here's how to do them:


Go to Prefs > Power and:
* Turn "Beam Receive" OFF
* Set "Auto-off after" a 15 seconds
* Set your "Screen Brightness" to a medium setting (3 or 4 clicks under MAX or even less)
* Set "Dim backlight after" to 30 seconds
Other settings:
* Turn Bluetooth OFF if/when you are not using a wireless headset or other BT device
* Go to Prefs > Date & Time > Set "Automatically set" to "Nothing" (this makes a very significant difference in power usage
* You can use a software utility called KB LightsOff to turn off the keyboard lights of your Treo when they are not needed
* Also Phone Technician which will completely turn off your screen during a call to save even more battery life.

I am happy to report that the battery life of my phone has improved by 100% !!!!!!!! If you do all of the above you should get the same results as me...good luck!