Cingular Treo 680 Running PalmOS: First Image!!!

Nevermind PalmInfoCenter posted this hours ago, with a link to where it showed up in the Palm store. Meanwhile, I'd say lacking Bluetooth is bogus alright - since it's *in* the screenshot *you* posted.

Well I think it look sweet. Anything thinner and lighter is good in my books. I'd really like to see voice-dailing as standard and integrated - like other *lesser* and older phones out there.

Obviously the screen shot isn't of the real screen at the time of taking the picture (if it is a pic and not a render). You all know the agency adds the screen afterwards right? Anyway, when was the last time you saw My Treo at the top of the alphabetiaclly sorted Main Apps list?

However it looks ok, it is most probably still the same old and not-update-for-years PalmOS inside with "Copyrigth 2004" stuff inside. How convincing to the potentially new customers ;-( Is the camera still VGA? And finally - is it EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) finally compliant?

"mstein" asked: "when was the last time you saw My Treo at the top of the alphabetiaclly sorted Main Apps list?".

If you add the leading space you get such name very first (space ASCII code is lower than any letter or digit). They did this for all these 3 apps listend in the first row.

I hope the 680 is NOT a substitute for the suposed and long yerned for 750p because then there will be a lot of very sad palm OS lovers around the GSM globe.

Andrew --- do you have any information that there will be a 750p? Everything I hear is that there will NOT be one, and the 680 is the "next gen" GSM Palm OS device. They cannot get UMTS or HSPDA to work on the Palm OS . . . that means that there will be no 750p. Now, presumably, Access's next gen "Palm OS" (whatever they call it) will have UMTS and HSPDA capabilities, BUT Palm and Access have NOT agreed that Palm will use the next gen "Palm OS." Indeed, it is not outside the realm of possibilities at all that Palm will NOT use it. And EVEN IF Palm and Access reach an agreement, Access's OS will not be ready for prime-time for AT LEAST a year -- they have not even released it to developers yet.

Thus, I don't think you should get people's hopes up about a Palm OS 750 device. But if you have some information: share it.

By the way, you are welcome for the picture -- I do not mean to criticize you; in fact, I hope you are right. But from what we know today, the 680 is it for the Palm OS on GSM. 700+ appears to be reserved for 3G, and Palm OS 5 just doesn't have a 3G solution on GSM.

I wonder when Voice Dialing over bluetooth is going to be enabled on the Treo Devices. That is going to be the show stopper for me for upgrading. Andrew do you have any hunches?

Thanks for the tip Borszczuk.

I agree with some of the other comments here. The hardware looks great and is developing well...

...the Palm/Access/whatever software however seems to have innovated so much so quickly I can hardly keep up with all the great new usability and catch-up features they're doing.

Voice dialling isn't rocket science. It should have been in with 700p for *free*. I'm guessing the implementation, when/if it arrives for free (I know you can buy unintegrated offerings now) will enable voice dial but then, of course, not say the person's name using your voice tag if they call you. I can just see it. Cynical? Maybe. Without precendent? Not.

I read somewhere else that the Treo 680 will feature a simpler camera (0.3 Mp) and won't have an IR receiver.
It would be really disappointing that the Treo 750 wasn't real...

notice the lack of infared port and a bigger cover for the sd slot. Could it be full sized SDIO and not sdmini crap? why couldnt they get this right for the 750, who actually uses the IR anyways??? FOR GOD SAKES, GIVE ME WIFI!!!

Eduardo> I read somewhere else that the Treo 680 will feature a simpler camera (0.3 Mp) and won't have an IR receiver.

Where did you read this?
If this is true, the 680 will just be an "antennaless" 650, right!

No UMTS - no party!

Why should I buy a 680 if I already have a 650? I'll have to replace my SD-Cards with MiniSD, loose the IR-Port, get a smaller battery... And what do I gain??? HOOOOOORAY, it's smaller! So what?!

I'm horrified! Just trashed my Windows Mobile Device in March after one year. WM is a horrible experience. Had to reinstall it at least once a month because it got so slow and crashed all the time. Reinstall like hardreset, not softreset. And everytime Outlook doubled my appointments and addresses. Couldn't stand it anymore, so I bought a Treo 650.

And now this: buy WM if you want UMTS! I'm throwing up right now!!!

I WANT MY 750p!!!!!!!!!!

H.

I hear you houston. We're pretty much screwed these days. Either use old warn out palmOS devices that still work (kinda), or use WinMob devices that have the latest features but don't work.

I'm thinking Symbian and the Nokia E61 might be the way until Palm pulls their head out of their ass. Hopefully I'll learn to like it, because the head out of the ass thing looks a long way off.

i am not a power user like most of you, i will upgrade my 650 to the 680 unless the screen is not the same high resolution.

Palm OS people should be happy!!! the 680 has regular SD not mini!!!!

hey comment # 11 go to this link and you can get wifi on a treo 650 its cool you can get the stuff for a tungsten t5 on a treo 650 and you can have a wifi card and not a wifi sled

http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/66/87/

instead of the 680, why not give us GSM phone users in asia an antenna-less 700p/nonCDMA? i believe a lot of us can afford that :-)

Hey Sean,

exactly my thought ;-) Let's see what happens with the specs of Treo 680 and then see if an E61 will work better. Still got a little time for that, though. Maybe, Palm will see that they disappointed their loyal customers and do something about it. But I doubt it.

H.

BTW: E61 is cheaper than a Treo, anyway ;-)

>I'm thinking Symbian and the Nokia E61 might be the
>way until Palm pulls their head out of their ass.
>Hopefully I'll learn to like it, because the head
>out of the ass thing looks a long way off.

I have a Treo 680, got it from a friend in the industry. Not sure if it is the same as what they are going to release since I got it early, but I will say that it DOES have Bluetooth, no infrared, and the camera is 1.7MP. It also has video and came with a 64 MB SD card. The OS is customized for Cingular but I am using it with TMobile. (And the My Treo app does show up first in the list ;-) )

Jon - I have indeed heard the same rumours about PalmOS' presumed inability to handle UMTS and HSPDA but this was quite a while ago and I have to assume that Palm/Access will have fixed this to provide a Treo 750p.

Insofar as the continued PalmOS support is concerned I can tell you that very senior Palm employees have _categorically_ confirmed to me that there will be 100% continued developments on PalmOS Treo smartphones. There is absolutely no question whatsoever about this.

Cheers, A.

The current palm OS, garnet, 5.4, is not a multi-tasking OS and therefore can't handle UMTS/HSPDA etc.
There is work between Palm and Access to build a new Palm OS based on linux that will multi-task and do UMTS etc. That OS is not ready yet. Yeah, sux.

The 680 will be the palm OS GSM phone until the new palm OS/linux is ready.

I could be cool with that as an upgrade to the 650 IF the 680 has:
- an increase in user accessible memory (should prevent the frequent crashes in the 650)
- better bluetooth (I know the 680 has it, but can it do stereo, voice dialing, etc) without add-ons.

Lola - thanks for the info regarding full size SD slot (hurray!). How much user memory does it have? Can you answer questions about voice dialing over bluetooth, stereo bluetooth headsets etc?
Do you like the 680?
Any info on when it will be available?

thanks!!

I think the 680 would be great if it is available at a cheap price.

My bad. My Treo 680 has 64 MB memory on the device and it came with a 124 MB SD card, normal size. The bluetooth version is 1.2 but I haven't invested in a headset yet...

lola, could you please tell me the screen resolution? thank you.

Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy!

Ok, my hubby and I are probably in the minority here, but an entry level Treo is just what we've been wishing for. We'd have ponied up the cash for a 750P if that was the only option available, but this is perfect for us.

As long as we can use the phone (via headset obviously) and Palm functions at the same time, we'd be way ahead of where we are now!

And if it's true that the 680 takes the full size SD card? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

The display res is 320 X 320, and it is 16 bit color.