Treo 680 Smart Phone

This is a long, but I hope informative and objective, review of the Treo 680.

First, I have been a Palm OS user and proponent since the Palm Pilot in the mid 90's. I have been a huge fan of the simple yet powerful OS that, since the beginning, has integrated applications and had many simple, but powerful shortcuts. Palm was what the Apple Newton wanted to be. It was so good to see them make the logical move into cell phones.

I finally made the jump from a Palm PDA to the Treo 650 in early 2006. While the 650 was not perfect, I was amazed by the integration of cell phone technology with the powerful and intuitive Palm OS on the 650. Alas, after two years of faithful service, I encountered a problem with the 2.5 mm wired headphone jack. AT&T no longer offered the 650 in 2008, and the only "comparable" Palm device compatible with the AT&T service was the 680. Despite other negative reviews, I chose to re-sign for 2 years and get the 680. The available Centro seemed too much of a compromise.

Unfortunately, tech products are sold on a "feature chart" and the Palm offerings had to compare favorably with the Blackberry offering. Hence, marketing requires certain specs. Bad move. For the original 680s, a software patch did improve battery life, but mine came with that patch and it is still disappointing. One thing I noticed immediately was that the battery was significantly shorter than the 650. I had always been impressed with the talk/standby time on the 650, and reviews panned the dismal 680 battery life. Indeed, it is much shorter with the standard 680 1200ma LiOn battery, but spare Palm batteries are cheap ($15 online) so they are a good investment. Extended life aftermarket batteries are available, but they require a different back for the case, and none of the stock 680 cases accommodate them well. The 680 is lighter and smaller than the 650 by a small amount, but the loss if functionality and battery life was, to me, too big of a trade off.

In any event, the spare battery options have worked well for me. I can get several full days of standby, but why have a phone if you don't use it? While I don't do all that many calls, I do use my Treo as an I pod and listen to a lot of music and pod casts. This uses battery almost as much as talk time. The Treo 650 would last 8 or 10 hours of music play time, but the 680 only give me 4 to 5 hrs. Hence the spare battery. Since you must put the battery in the Treo to charge, a separate 680 charger is a valuable option. Alas, I don't have one.

Note that if mobile e-mail is a vital application for you, consider a Blackberry. It uses a Push Technology which means that when an e-mail arrives at your e-mail server it is immediately
"pushed" to your phone. The Treo e-mail is nothing more than what you get with a typical PC based e-mail client. It checks the e-mail server every once in a while for new e-mail. That requires activity on the part of your phone. That causes battery drain and if no e-mail is available, unnecessary internet traffic costs. If that's OK, consider a Treo.

The next obvious difference is in operational speed. The 680 is SLOW!!! Despite the fact that it uses the same processor, it is much less responsive than the 650. This is very frustrating. I don't know if it is the additional 32 BM of memory (a plus!) or the 5.4.9 (vs. 5.4.8 Treo 650 OS), but it is slow. It is most noticeable in the performance of my key add-on applications like Treo Voice Dial, P-Tunes, and Tom Tom Navigator 6.

On the other hand, there are some nice additions to the 680. The phone log finally works the way you expect. If you go into the phone log in the 650 you have to go though 4 or 5 steps to place a call to the number listed. In the 680, the first option is to dial the number. Bingo! Also, he 680 with the software patch (which my phone came with) not only improves battery life but supports 4 gig SD cards (650 only supports 2 gig).

Regarding the Palm Treo OS, one notable shortcoming is that it is not multi-threading like the Windows Mobile and some other mobile OS offerings. What this means to the user is that only one program can run at a time.

Note, however, that within the Palm OS the native applications (Calendar, Phone, Memos. To-do, Jot, etc.) are indeed multitasking (in effect multi-threading.) So while you are on a call you can open the calendar program and make appointments, look up contacts, or open the handy Jotter (in the 680 and above) and jot notes directly on the screen. All the native Palm apps are available when in one program or the other. Another attraction of the Palm OS is that there are so, so many great programs available; free, shareware, and otherwise. The Treo can do most anything you want. Unfortunately, most do not support (or support well) multi-threading technology.

One important (to me at least) exception is P-tunes, an MP-3 player program. The basic program is comes with the 680 but was a worthwhile upgrade on the 650. This program turns your Treo into an I pod like device, which now integrates with Windows Media Player to sync tunes and pod casts.

The real power though is in the fact that the people at Normsoft, the authors of P-tunes, did it right. They found a way of multi threading their program with both the native Palm OS apps and at least some other 3rd party apps. When listening to P-tunes when a call comes in the call is available for pick up. In the unlikely event you are listening on the built in speaker or if attached to an audio jack speaker system, the phone interface allows you to pick up the phone and take the call on speaker and places P-tunes on hold. With the included Palm wired headphone pressing the inline button halts P-tunes and answers the phone.

The same goes for placing out going calls with P-tunes and the voice activated Treo Voice Dial program. Placing a call halts P-tunes once the voice activated call command is recognized. When the call is competed P-tunes restarts the song/pod cast about 5 secs before it halted so you have a sense of continuity. This is a great feature that is not available in many other phones. Again, the big problem with the 680 is the delay due to the slow response. Even plugging in the headphones causes a 1 - 2 sec delay in switching from the speaker phone to the head set. Not a huge problem, but indicative of some deeper problem in the implementation of the Palm OS in the 680.

Another critical application IMHO on the Treo is Treo Voice Dial, formally from Voice Signal. I have mentioned this product before in this review. This amazing product allows you to choose to open any application on the Treo. You can choose to open any onboard application, lookup any one in your contact list, or send an email or text message to any one in you contact list, but the real power I found was in the Call function. It allows you to call any entry in your contact list by voice command (eg. "call Bob Smith, mobile") WITHOUT VOICE TAGS. I don't know how it does it, but each entry in your contact list is analyzed and a voice map is made. With out teaching, you then press a button (either the side button or the button on a wired headphone) and you are asked to "Say a Command" WITHOUT VOICE TRAINING you could say "Call Bob Smith" and the Treo would either dial Bob Smith or if he had two phone numbers, you will be asked "which number?".

This powerful program works on the 680, but the time it takes to search the database and analyze the voice input as unacceptable. Also, new or changed database entries must also be analyzed, adding to the response time. The 650 was acceptable, but the 680 is untenable.

For joggers, walkers, bikers, and drivers, P-Tunes integrates well with the optional Tom Tom Navigator 6 software. When navigating, if a call is received, Tom Tom navigation is suspended with the call is received, and MOST OF THE TIME (but not all, for what ever reason) navigation continues when the call has ended.

This does not apply when placing a call. Tom Tom ends when the Phone icon is pressed or Treo Voice Dial is invoked, but it does resume navigation again when the call ends IF the program is restarted manually. Since P-tunes was able to restart automatically, I believe it's a Tom Tom programming problem.

Here enters a major hardware shortcoming. The Bluetooth implementation does not support the A2DP Bluetooth protocol which support Bluetooth Stereo and other advanced technologies.

Perhaps this is why the Treo does not support the great functionality inherent in the powerful Treo Voice Dial Program. With a wired headphone, pressing the inline button initiates brings the phone out of the sleep mode and starts Treo Voice dial. No hands, no eyes required. Not so on supported Bluetooth headsets. Similar functionality requires several button presses to wake the phone and start Treo Voice Dial. Not good when driving. This hardware shortcoming is why I have clung to a wired headset, which ironically, leads to the failure in my Treo 650 audio jack.

The overall organization of the main (home) screen display is similar to other Palm devices and so quite friendly, but the default screen in a new device is a weird screen tied to the Phone icon button. It takes some getting used to, but I have grown to like it a lot. The 650 phone button took you to a dial pad screen with other functions available, but the 680 phone button defaults to an iconed splash screen with tabs at the bottom. It works well, and the only complaint is that I can't change the color scheme of the dial pad screen. Small potatoes. The other tabs are intuitive and handy.

I find the button layout a bit frustrating when migrating from the 650 because they moved important buttons around quite a bit. This does present a bit of a problem as, due to force of habit, I press the wrong button occasionally. Nonetheless, I'm sure I'll get used to it. Besides, it is less uncomfortable than moving to a totally new system.

The unit comes with lots of Icons on the main screen that seems to promise unlimited potential (push to talk, mobiTV, TeleNav) to name a few. Unfortunately, like many PCs these are only short cuts to paid upgrades. The down side to this strategy is that they are difficult if not impossible to remove if you don't want them. I don't mind this approach, but give me an easy way to delete them from the "desktop" and remove them from the memory.

Tom Tom Navigator 6 - The implementation in the 650 was almost flawless. It was fast, functional, and easy to use. The best feature with the Tom Tom on the Treo was that every contact in you contact list with an address is that you could navigate to them. Often you would need to help interpret the address if it was not exactly as Tom Tom expected it (they like many others use a standard abbreviation for addresses that I don't always use), but it was fast and effective. On the 680 the same basic functionality was available, but operation and keyboard response was slow.

In addition, the center button on the 5 way navigator button was a "select" button in the 650, as well as the touch screen and enter button. Not so with the 680. The center select button works in only certain Tom Tom functions. Most of the time you must use the touch screen or the enter button. Seems like a small issue, but in-car operation requires a simple and easy use interface.

An additional frustration is that, in the 650, touching the map display of a road or Point of Interest (poi) brought up a window displaying information on the selection. The same action on the 680 brings up the "menu option" screen, leaving you no way to get the information. The same goes for the other context sensitive areas of the 650 maps. They do not port to the 680 interface.

Also if you are upgrading the Tom Tom Navigator 6 software from a 650 to a 680, a software patch is required, but not well documented. The 650 software will crash (with no ill effects) when put into the 680. On the plus side, Tom Tom was fabulous in helping me find the required patch. They also confirmed that the 680 implementation is less than optimal.

Is the 680 a great phone? It is good, but unfortunately, it is not a worthy successor to the 650. While it does most of the same things, and a few things (very few) better, it is not an "upgrade". It is a marketing compromise. It you can find one, get a 650. IMHO, avoid any Windows based system. They are just so difficult to use. Phones should be simple.