palm Treo 680 Smartphone (AT&T)

I really wanted this phone to work but after going through 2 of them in 6 months I gave up.

I loved it for the 1st month though I noticed the signal strength is quite weak. My housemate who is also on Cing and owns a Samsung Blackjack would have all his bars and the Treo 680 could barely make or receive a call.

I put in a 1 gig SD to hold music and soon thereafter the phone would freeze a few times a day. I would have to reset the phone by pulling the battery out rebooting the phone. I also had did the "hard reset" a few times and downloaded the software patch - but it didn't help much.

The straw that broke this camels back was the headset jack wouldn't know if the headset was in or not. So the phone would be on headset mode even though there was no headset attached. I could answer the phone but the caller couldn't hear me - this was not an isolated incident.

After 3 months I got a new phone under warranty and within a month all the old problems resurfaced - leading me to believe that this is a simply a defective product being sold to the public.





I bought Treo 680 after months of online research on various sites like Treonauts, Treocentral, CNET and ofcourse Amazon. I probably was prepared for the worst. I primarily use my Palm Treo for making calls and using organizer functions. I don't use much of e-mail or Internet via this device.

The battery life is not too bad. I did install the latest AT&T ROM update and my phone lasts me almost 2 days (without e-mail and internet use).

It does feel a bit bulky to me. It weighs mighty 5.6oz and after a few hrs, you start to feel the weight. I have used Palm m515 for years and it recently died and I thought that was heavy ( m515 was almost 4.5oz)

I have used it for 3 days only. Phone audio quality is as good as any other phone. I have only used it in a metro area and so far no complaints.

Another issue for people who buy it on Amazon is the Data plan. You have to buy the data plan when you buy this phone, but you can cancel it at anytime with AT&T without any penalties as long as you keep the voice plan.

I debated for a long time b/w Palm 680 and 750 (windows mobile) This is not the ultimate device, but it does what it is supposed to.

Overall 4****


Naturally for me the Treo 680 was my first smartphone choice from Cingular a long while back, and I expected great things from it. During the first stretch of the honeymoon period I LOVED this device, for it was basically a lateral move from my previous Palm TX pda. All the calendar entries and contact information had synched with no trouble at all to my Mac and other than the added phone application nothing much else felt any different.

Then came the battery life that left much to be desired! Usually I am a stickler for recharging my devices EVERY night even when there is more than enough power for the next day. But nightly charging with the 680 had become a NECESSITY! Without overnight charging the Treo would barely make it past my morning coffee. It seemed like just navigating the menus with the stylus brought down the battery level right before my eyes!

I took a chance on the qwerty keyboard in texting and word docs editing and did not like the feel of the buttons at all. They were cramped, too small and the feedback too rigid for any sort of comfortable typing with my fingernails. My current Nokia E61i qwerty feels like plush cotton compared to the Treo 680 and its buttons are perfectly spaced.

The camera is good for what it is: a basic snapshooter. There is no way to expect any kind of great resolution or vivid colors from the VGA camera, but it gets the job done nonetheless.

Call quality was truly excellent and is up to par with my Nokia. Actually I will admit that the Treo's call volume was better in comparison to my E61i. Reception, on the other hand, was a little bit shaky in my daily usage. There were a few times when the phone would reset itself in standby or in the middle of a call, but not as frequently as my first Sony Ericsson p990i.

Wifi has become a standard that I have become accustomed to in smartphones and it is a shame that this Treo does not have it...but at the same time it isn't a dealbreaker either.

Eventually I took the device back to Cingular due to the unwieldy bulkiness and horrible battery life. Despite this return, the Treo was an okay device that was an adequate introduction to the world of smartphones.
We've all gotta start somewhere.

I have a Cingular 680 and I am having a bad problem with repeated non-functioning which happens in association with garbled text on the line where you normally see AT&T.

A patch for the problem has been promised by Palm for several months but is not out yet. It is important that peole know about this problem as it is quite widespread. You can read more about it on the Palm and cingular user forums.


My 650 degraded over time to the point of being unusable. I made the 'obvious' jump to a 680. The 680 is basically a 650 that works better but the horrible battery doesn't even last one day despite all the upgrades and tips.

The battery in the 650 has twice the size and at least that much more capacity.

Palm should fix the software or at least offer an extended size battery compartment rather than leaving so many buyers out in the cold.

Time to time the phone frezzes up the battery would last a half a day. the signal is poor sometimes its difficult to get out a call. i had always wanted a treo from the time i saw them, but in this treo 680 i was very dissapointed. i already bought it so i have to go ahead and try to work with it but right now i am not happy with my puchase. i hope the other models would be better than this one.

I have tried 4-5 of theses phones over the last 4 years. This one works the best of all I have tried. The latest was the Cingular 8525 (HTC makes it) and it dropped 80% of incoming calls on pickup and 20% of outgoing calls. I thinks Windows was loading a DLL - (;<))) The Palm OS is much quicker to respond to input than the Windows based SPs.

I've had a Treo 650 for a long time. I wasn't 100% sure I'd want the 680, when it was first announced, but a big nasty scratch on my 650's screen helped me decide to take the plunge. I'm so glad I did. The lack of a protruding antenna makes it fit in my pocket much better, the internal slot for the SIM card eliminates my worry that it might get lost, and the covered SD card slot is very welcome, because the darned thing always popped out in my 650. The only thing lost from the 650 is the reset button. To reset the 680, you have to take out the battery. That's not a big deal, since even on the 650, you have to remove the battery cover to get to the reset switch. What's better on the 650? The main thing for me is that the cell phone's radio is slightly more sensitive and that it will take 8gb SD cards (SDHC). I use this phone for everything, since it's also a great Palm organizer. In addition to that, I've installed a registered version of Pocket Tunes, so it's a very good MP3 player. It's even compatible with PlaysForSure, if you're into that. That's why I'm so happy to see the 8gb support. I also use the phone to play games, like Monopoly and Scrabble, when I'm waiting on line or in a boring meeting. I have absolutely zero complaints about this phone.


Believe it or not, i consider going from a BlackJack to a Treo 680 an upgrade. i guess the whole battery problem depends on the usage and the person. My battery problem is that i cant kill the darn thing!
I am one of those people that depletes a battery completely before recharging it. I do it to my laptop and my iPod and the PDA i had before the BlackJack, the Tungsten 2E. Devoted Palm users will absolutely dispise the Windows Mobile 5 available on BlackJacks. Mainly because you CAN NOT create and edit word, excel or pdf files and the biggest problem for me was its complete depndence on Outlook. Which i absolutley can not put up with. Even the contacts wouldn't backup! Needless to say, the Treo 680 saved me. If you do go the way of the blackjack without Outlook, look into SBSH's programs Facade and Papyrus. However, if you go with the lovely Treo check out "DialByPhoto" i think the coolest part is how you can set up a "Favorite 5" like TMobile offers but still have all the reliability of Cingular.

I have owned Palm organizers since the days of the original Palm Pilot and have loved them (I think I had three different models over the years). I wanted a smart phone so I could check my email so I gravitated to the Treo 680 so I could stay with a Palm product and so I could stay with my current mobile provider, Cingular. Now I am counting the days until my 2 year commitment ends so I can punt this awful, awful product. I may even bite the bullet and pay off my commitment early just so I can get rid of it.

The battery problem is huge. You must remember to stick this in a charger whenever you can. If you forget and leave it in your pocket overnight then it will be dead the next day. I have turned off every thing I can find that sucks power and it still drains amazingly fast. It won't even last a day if you make very many calls.

The reception is terrible. I've had a Cingular phone for a long time and was able to get good reception over most of So. California (except for my house of course). With this phone I think you have to be right underneath an antenna to get a signal. I was on a conference call yesterday and got dropped twice. I am envious everytime I get in an elevator with someone who can talk on their cell phone because mine will freeze up any time I try that.

Yes, it freezes up often. The only way I have found to unfreeze it is to take out the battery and let it do a hard reboot.

The versa mail program that it came with from Cingular is hard to work with. You must leave your work computer on to check the corporate mail. That means if I am traveling with my computer, the phone's corporate mail program will not work. It often will not sync anyway.

I don't think the browser that comes with the phone will work with Java, so I cannot check my Yahoo mail either. I tried going back and forth to the pre-Java version of Yahoo and that is too much of a pain.

I get all kinds of weird messages with the phone. I haven't ever been able to sync up the Palm features because of some legacy files from my previus palm software, something that never happened when I upgraded before.

Yes, there is a manual that is huge. It is hard to use on line so I guess I need to bite the bullet and print out the whole thing and then take a week of vacation to read it and see if I can make any of these neat functions that I read about work.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't actively think how much I hate this phone. I actually signed on to Amazon today just to write this because the phone wasn't working properly today. What a piece of junk!


Palm could not resolve all the issues associated with Treo. I bought this phone few days back and it freezes frequently.

The Pros: PDA, good mobile phone that really gets out, a camera for all those 'Kodak Moments', all packed in one for a good price
The Cons: You'll need to get a replacement longer life battery (Seidio makes one), and the browser (Blazer) has MANY problems.

I'm very happy with the purchase of this smartphone. I've wanted a TREO for a few years but could never justify spending big bucks for one. You can work around the problems with the unit with new battery and browser software, it's a nice little phone.

I haven't bought a memory card for it, so I can't report on the mp3 capabilities, but I am going in that direction. Somehow I don't think it will replace my iPod, but you never know.

I've had my Treo for a month and heavily use it for many applications, I especially love having the Goodlink email application, my family videos, mp3's, pics, and all my office documents at a touch of a finger. Yes the battery life goes quickly but I don't mind charging my treo every night.

The slick and slim design is a real eye catcher and feel great in the hand.[...]

in the one month of usage, my Treo has hung, one time, a simple reset fixed it and hasn't hung since.

I bought this even though I saw a lot of negative reviews, some about battery life, some about dropped signals. So far I have had neither.

I have owned many Palm devices over the years and I will be the first one to say that Palm can make lemons, and when that happens they usually deny it until they come up with a patch much later, if they ever do. Not the most customer-oriented, quality-oriented company out there. But their OS is still the easiest to use in my mind, and with the myriad of apps out there you can make it do whatever you want, pretty much.

The screen is on the smallish side compared to the TX, but it's not that bad, especially for a phone. It's pretty reliable, and I have put a lot of my old software on it. The battery is what surprised me the most; I was expecting something really bad, but so far I have never been under 50%, and I am a heavy Palm user. I don't use the phone part of it much, just a call here and there, and I turn the phone function off at night. I also bought KBLightsOff, which turns off the keyboard lights unless you are using it, which probably helps a lot. So with these two settings, battery life is close to the TX in my opinion.

I have one dead pixel, but that can happen to any electronics manufacturer. I don't like the 2.5mm jack at the bottom of the device, that's a terrible place to put it. But with an adapter I can use my good headphones and sound is good. Get pTunes Deluxe so you can use subsription music like Napster or Yahoo Music. I should receive my 8GB SDHC card tomorrow, which will turn my Treo into an iPhone killer, IMHO. And for way less than $599...

Sound level is OK, and you can get software that boosts it up if you're deaf. Speaker level is LOUD! The SMS program is great, the phone app is great and fast.

So, overall, it's a great device. I wish Palm wouldn't charge an arm and a leg for accessories, but you don't have to buy from them...

I've had the same problem other users are having with the losing signal and never finding it again with Cingular. I've gone through 4 phones - the same thing over and over. Never did they (or I) put 2 and 2 together to see that it was the SD card (although right now it's working, and the card is not in it - go figure!). So, I guess the options are not download things, but have the phone work, or download things onto my SD card, and not have a phone?

I got a new Treo 680. Sync'd well with my Mac, everything great except I couldn't get the Bluetooth to connect to my car (Upgraded from a 650, bluetooth worked great). Called Cingular, spent half an hour on the phone to be told that they didn't trouble shoot bluetooth, I need to call Palm; 45 min on the phone with Palm at a call center in India (and a thick accent) with somebody that just ran me through a standard hard-reset, and after this game for awhile, told me I need to trade it in. So then called Palm again the next day, and at first was told I was being transfered to tech support again, when I declined explaining I had been down that road, finally got to someone to authorize return (got it via phone call originally). I was told to wait 3-5 days for the shipping label, and I was told I could not take it to the local Cingular store. After a week, I called again. "Oh no, it takes "10" days to get the labels, oh but you could take it to the local store and trade it in....

Took it to the local store, got another phone. Bluetooth still didn't work. The "tech" in the store was no help (By this time I knew more than him). I tried to load my backup via my computer, this time it over-wrote everything on my computer and my contacts and calander were GONE! (I had made a backup just in case). Finally with hard resets, got the phone to load my data. The next day the phone lost contact with Cingular and never regained connection. I then called Cingular again, and the person I spoke then said she had no other ideas and that I needed to send it back.... She implied that some of the 680s were having problems and even advised me to get a 750 instead! Took out the SIM card, and seemlessly went back to my Treo 650.

The phone's internet was 3 times faster than my 650 (the first 680), and overall seemed faster than my 650. This is the only reson I am even giving it 2 stars. My advice, wait awhile (or wait for the iPhone).

I'm a gadget freak, so when I bought this device for my wife, I did so thinking I would be able to train her on how to use the device and maximize her efficiency with it. At first sight, the phone looked pretty good. The feel of the phone was good and it doesn't have that bulky antenna that plagues the previous version. It is light and feels good in the hand. I'm a windows guy so navigating the Palm OS menu system was fairly unfamiliar to me which took some learning. I didn't care for some of the navigation menus. Some settings were stuffed in odd places and it took us forever to find some simple settings that should have been pretty easy to find. Other than that, the phone seemed, at first, pretty good with a lot of features packed into the tiny device.

Now, after about 2 weeks of use, my wife called me one day and told me the phone wasn't working properly and she couldn't connect to the cingular network. When I got home, I took a look at the phone and sure enough, the phone was searching for network and never found the cingular network. I tried various options to try and bring it back to life but nothing intuitive worked, so we went to the local cingular store and after some convincing (since I bought it from amazon.com) they exchanged the phone for another one. This phone lasted the longest, about 3 weeks before doing the exact same thing. This was weird because the first phone was from amazon and this one was directly from a cingular store but both were doing the same thing. It would be unlikely that the phones were of the same "batch" and we were just unlucky. This second phone lasted all of 2 days and the same problem happened again. Getting very frustrated at this point, we again took the phone back to the store. Instead of outright giving us another one, we spent and hour in the store while the various people tried to fix it. The tried their SIM cards in it, tried rebooting it (like we hadn't done that before) and among other things, taking out the SD Card. Well low and behold, after taking out the SD Card and rebooting it, it connected back to the network. So we found our problem, or at least we thought we did at that time. It had something to do with when the phone accessed the SD Card it freaked out. They told us since we didn't get the SD Card from them we would have to get it replaced through the manufacturer, which we promptly did. After getting the replacement SD Card and putting it in the phone, it preceded to work for another week. Then it freaked again and stopped connecting to the network. So now we knew it wasn't the SD Card after all. We took the SD Card out, rebooted the phone, and it connected back up to the network, FOR ABOUT MINUTES!!! So by now we were fed up with the Treo 680 and went back to the cingular store for a exchange. We got the to trade it out for a BlackJack. I personally like the BlackJack much better because the navigation around the device is much more intuitive. I think my wife likes the BlackJack better as well and so far we havn't had any network connectivity problems.

Overall, if we had got a phone that worked I think I might have given a rating of 4 stars. Since we never got a decent phone out of 3 replacements, I just can't do that. 2 stars for a decent phone, if it worked.

I'll be brief in this post.

I do not own this device, but I am looking to buy one and get a contract with Cingular/AT&T. Obviously, if you have read reviews about the 680, you'll see that the battery life is just miserable. Well...

Palm put out an update that you can install on the 680 to get rid of the battery draining needlessly. Go here to install the update:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo/680cameraupdate.html

And to see that this update has actually worked, there is a great website called TreoCentral where people post about topics relating to the Treo, and they gave their feedback on if the patch worked:

http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=134840

So hopefully, we can have no more posts about the battery issue since it has been fixed.

I hope this post was of some help.

The good news is they fixed a lot of the things about the Treo 650's interface that were clunky, and it seems to crash less, but the battery life is significantly less than the 650 in my experience -- so much so, that I wish I had never "upgraded" to the 680.

i purchased the palm 680 nov 30th in an effort to be able to buy a local sim card for my trip to India 2 weeks later - the guys at the Cingular store told me it would work anywhere in the world, and also got me an unlock code (if it doesn't take another sim card, why have an unlock code?!) but guess what - no you can only roam at $3./minute internationally (that's with taxes). I spoke on the phone for 90 minutes and my roaming bill alone is almost $300...the card slot cover is already coming off, and the battery issue listed below are truely annoying - but palm supposedly now has a software fix for it as of jan 21...it's too late to return the phone now that I'm back, or I would.

It was time to change my phone and I chose Treo because of its compatability with the Mac. My issues are :

1. Battery life is really short. Even if I don't use the phone the whole day and its just on stand by, I need to charge it everday.

2. PocketTunes. You have to convert your iTunes to mp3 format to be able to play on your phone or you have to buy the PocketTunes software to be able to play most file formats. Why can't they just all get along and set one standard? (I guess thats why theres the iPhone).

3. Camera is only 1.5 pixel. I know this is a phone not a camera but most phones now have at least 2 megapixels (nokia has 5).

4. REBATE: the 3 items above I can live with. I got the Treo because I need the calendar and phone book feature from my old Palm. I don't really need web access so pay per use is fine with me. I was told that inorder to get the Treo I had to sign up for the unlimited data plan of $49.99 and I can cancel this once I get the $100 rebate. I sent my rebate 2 days after getting the phone and guess what I would have already paid $100 of data plan and still no rebate. Lesson learned. I should have gotten the unlocked version, gotten my choice of color. I assume this is the same with all the other phones (Samsung Blackjack, Blackberry Pearl) which requires a data plan. So if you don't need web access, maybe it would be better to just buy the phone outright and not be tied to a 2 year agreement since you'll probably end up paying for the same amount. I paid $199 for the phone (does not include the $100 rebate so its really $299). The unlocked version is $399. I wonder if I sent the rebate via Priority Mail if that would have made processing faster? I got a text message 4 weeks after I mailed the rebate that they just received my rebate and in the process of "processing" it.

I traded in a Treo 650 for this phone welcoming the slimmer, lighter design. Unfortunately, the usual Palm reliability had me replacing it during week 1. (I had to replace the 600 twice and the 650 once in the first month I had each).

I was disappointed to find that there were hardly any real upgrades. No stereo bluetooth and the new battery life is a joke. This phone should come with a permanent cord rather than a battery, the battery life is that short. The 650 would last for days, this phone barely makes it through the day before needing to be recharged. And don't even think about using Cingular xpress for email as it will drain your battery even faster.

If you want to use this phone as a poor man's iPod you can, but not without some challenges. At least the 680 comes with an mp3 player installed. (That is one upgrade from the 650) Unfortunately you still have to use a clunky adapter to listen to stereo. You even have to use the clunky adapter to listen to mono sound from audio books. You would think the mono sound would play through the bluetooth headset, but no such luck. You have to connect the headset to the external port with the clunky adapter even to listen to mono books.

In gereral a good phone, but not a great phone.


I really wanted to love this phone. I am longtime Palm user and decided to try the Treo instead of carrying two devices. I use my Palm for just about everything: calendar, music, ereader, web, email, etc.

As noted by other reviewers, the battery life leaves a lot to be desired. It drains even when you turn EVERYTHING off. Thinking it was a bad battery, I bought another one. Same problem. I googled the problem and found this a common complaint. I found a posting that suggested a "soft reset," which entails removing the battery for a few minutes and then recharging. This resulted in a slight improvement, but nothing significant.

The touchscreen is either too sensitive or completely unresponsive. I've recalibrated the stylus too many times to count. Using the center button may or may not work. While in phone mode, I couldn't get it to stay the on-screen dial pad. Sigh.

I guess it's back to two devices.



This may be the first unhappy review I've written on Amazon...but here goes: I 'upgraded' to this phone recently from a Treo 650 that had speaker and audio problems (don't all Treo 650's suffer from that within a year's usage?). I loved my Treo 650 despite the well-known audio problems that arise, so I expected something equivalent to the 650 when I upgraded. But what I got was a 'smartphone' with quite a stupid battery life. I have decided that there is definitely some glitch in design (some online geeks suggest it might actually be the SIM card) that is causing power to run right out of the phone, in a sharp decline, even when its not in use and all possible extraneous functions are disabled and every "trick" Palm and other users suggest to extend battery performance is utilized. Add to this the fact that Palm's website's online user group is not active right now (so no users can visibly discuss this among themselves),and they have made it next to impossible to reach them to complain about this, you don't have to think too long to conclude that Palm knew this either beforehand or pretty quickly afterward, when they recently dumped this cheaper "smartphone" on the market recently. Sorry Palm, I loved you for the Treo 650 and was willing to live with some glitches, but a horrible battery life on the 680 is not something easy to tolerate. So all I can say is pretty "stupid" and wonder if this was your last hurrah before planning to exit the "smartphone" market? [Despite the prior reviews on this page that were so glowing, anyone who is doubtful of my complaint on battery life, or think that its isolated to just a defective phone here and there, I suggest that you please do a search on the internet before buying this phone, and read the numerous blogs out there on this very same complaint!)

P.S.: search under these words exactly on Amazon: "palm Treo 680 PDA Phone (Unlocked)" to read other reviews of this phone stating similar battery life complaints. Whether locked (meaning tied to any one company like Verizon or Cingular) or not, a Palm Treo 680 is still the same Palm product.



I passionately wanted this product after extensive reviews show it to be about the best Palm unit there is out there right now for the combination I need. But after Cingular changed my rate plan and tripled my monthly service charge without any notification early last year, then was quite rude on the phone as I cancelled my plan entirely (thank goodness THAT was possible), I would NEVER go with a Cingular plan ever again. ever. It's too bad. Why can't Cingular learn from some of the great service-models out there like LL Bean, the US postal service, and certain other service providers...? If your experience with Cingular is universally good, then go with this. otherwise, don't take the risk.

I bought this phone to replace a Treo 600. The 600 was a terrible phone. It had a buzz when used as a phone. This is a very good phone and great pda. There are hundreds of programs for it. I researched the 680 and the BlackJack. I have the Cingular 8125 as my work phone. I'm very pleased I went with the Treo. It is so much easier to use and can be used with one hand.

The windows phone I use at work requires the stylist to do most anything. You can easily use the keyboard on the 680 with one hand for text messages. There are a lot of programs for the Treo.

When I first got the phone it went into a constant loop after I tried to sync with my old Treo 600 software. Cingular wasn't much help. I got on Palm's website and went to the knowledge base found the problem and followed the easy instructions and I was back up and running.

The speakerphone is also good. I talked for 2 hours on it and the party I was talking told me it was very clear when I told her I was using the speakerphone and ask her how it sounded.

The only big negative I've found with the phone is the battery. I guess that is true with all the smart phones these days. The second negative would have to be the camera. It is improved over the 600, but still not near as good as most of the other camera phones. No more than I talk on the phone I can recharge it at night and I'm fine, but if someone talks all day long they should plan on having a second battery and charger.

Unless you need to watch streaming TV over the wireless network, need a better camera, or long battery life I think you will love the Treo 680. For Palm phone users you will like not having the antenna, but without getting it out of the old Treo cases is much harder.

This is a great pda, a very good phone, a fair camera, mp3 player and a pretty good video player. I bought some DVD software at palmgear and I slapped a DVD in my laptop and set the size I wanted it cut to for my SD card and created a movie. I loaded it on my SD card and it plays great on the 680.

This is a great device and for the money and would be very hard to beat. Where else can you get an mp3 player, video player, pda, phone and have hundreds of programs that are inexpensive to expand it's value? You can add a car navigation to that list if you buy the available bundle.

This is old Palm technology and very solid. For me it amazing to get so much for the price. The problems with the Treo 600 are fixed in this device. I much prefer it to my Windows based Cingular 8125.

It doesn't have the 3rd generation network of the Palm 700's, the Blackjack or Cingular 8525, but if you don't download alot of data or need streaming video, this should be the phone you compare everything else to.


PROS:
Crystal clear speaker (bye bye hissing noise)
Loud speaker phone and ringer
Great signal quality
Great integration with the PDA
Excellent Palm OS
OK camera
Nice keyboard

CONS:
Battery life

Perfect Smartphone!!! Both looks and over-all performance!!!

For those worried about the battery life - I think one of the most important things to do is properly condition the battery before use (or even after use, as in my case) ie. FULLY discharge and recharge at least twice (without using it in between). My phone performance (battery wise) seemed to improve remarkably after this. Trust me after conditioning your battery you'll not REGRET.

Unfortunately the conditioning of the battery is not mentioned anywhere and Palm should take complete responsibility for taking its consumers for granted.

Palm you can do a better job.


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.

If you need a smart phone, this is one of the best. It is light, easy to hold in the hand. Phone service through Cingular is very good. All of the Palm-based functions and software works fine on the phone. The text messaging and e-mail software works fine. I cannot find any downside to this phone.