You know, I pretty much have lived within the Palm OS 3.0 through 5.0 for several years now. And with the 680, I know I am right at home with several of the familiar screens of the Treo 680. That isn’t to say I haven’t noticed some changes. One little change is the lock screen. You know, when you hit the power key and you get the little white bar across the bottom. Well, its still there! But included is the present time on the bottom left and the date on the bottom right. A very welcome addition. Oh, its a small thing, yes, but its still nice. I have quit wearing a watch and rely upon my Treo for the time and that just got even more convenient. Of course, one of the biggest changes is the phone screen interface. As soon as you hit the phone button, you get the following screen: Here you can customize as I have by dropping in a picture I took of my wife this summer. This makes the “Wallpaper” function mean a little bit more than it used to in the 650 interface. Also there is now across the bottom a series of icons. The far left icon that looks like several little dots is in fact the dial pad. Next is your favorites screen. Just like on the 600 and 650, you can add application favorites to this section also should you choose. Just right of the phone icon you will find your contacts screen, and the far right icon gets you to your call log. I know this is a function that I will use often as I was constantly referring back to my call log in the 650. Putting it up front instead of holding the phone key down to access it will be a welcome change for me. Other than the call log and the new look, nothing else has really changed as far as functionality however.

The favorites however, have changed considerably. Gone are the pale blue “Buttons” and in their place are gray icons with blue highlights. This is a very slick looking interface and I LIKE it a lot! In fact I have owned the 680 only for a day and I am very comfortable with this change after using the 650 for a year ought to say something! This is one of those tiny changes that just make sense and its evident that someone is thinking about how people use these devices. Here again, this is still Palm OS 5, but its something you won’t find on a 650, or a 700P.

The Dial Pad works just like it always did! You can select the numbers right off the screen, or use your thumb to dial from the qwerty. No changes in any functionality here. The only slight change I have noticed is the Bluetooth icon. When activated, instead of the standard BlueTooth icon, you now see a stereo headset. When the BlueTooth is set to off, you see the bluetooth icon in a gray color. When its pairing with the your headset, it turns to blue and when it is connected and functioning, it changes altogether to the headset icon. Here again, this is a small change, but it is better defined than the old icon. I would look at the blue/white and was never sure if I was connected or not. Another small change is the active call screen. You won’t see the hang up icon at the bottom of the screen. Now to hang up, you must actually hit the “end call” button. Also, on an incoming call, you now have the option to “ignore call and send SMS”. No need for Shark MSG any more.
But probably the most welcome change to the new phone interface, at least for me, is the call log screen with access right from the main phone screen itself! For example, I am constantly getting a call from my Band’s Promotions Manager. When he calls me, I am oftentimes very busy and can’t answer him. So when I get around to calling him, I need to check my call log to see where he called me from. He has a home phone, an office phone, and a cell phone. This has simplified the process greatly to access this screen.

There are also some other changes! The old media icon is gone and in its place is a Pictures and Videos icon. Launching it, gives you a whole new look to precisely your pictures and videos. Now you can select “All Pictures and videos and view all media folders between your Palm and your card at once. Of course, you can still navigate to folders and launch just those folders! This is a big improvement over the old interface, however, if your needing more, I would still recommend Resco’s Viewer. However, if you just need simple photo navigation, this might be it! Now, instead of selecting slideshow, you can just launch a big green play button to start each picture to appear in sequence. You can still select pictures to email your buds, and also to access the Treo’s camera so you can jump right to the camera without hitting home and then navigating to it.

But there are other changes that users familiar with the 650 will find! No, the ignorant quicktour is still there! What a useless way to take up ROM on the Treo! But in addition to that is a “My Treo” icon. This one might hold some value past the first two days a person owns this device! The biggest reason why is you can update the list over the air! In addition to the User Guide, there is also a support screen. This screen is more like an FAQ, and the fact that it can be updated over the air is a very valuable addition, because this keeps it current and actually gives it value past a new user’s exploration.

One more major change to the 5.0 OS, is a voice recorder. This one is pretty nice actually! I haven’t explored it much yet, but I have made a recording or two on it. Voice quality is excellent and I have no qualms with it whatsoever. Out of the box, the default is for the third side button to launch this application. I can’t see me using this one, this often, so I now have that button launching the Web browser, but with that said, I used a freeware on the 650 called sound recorder every so often and liked it a lot, so I do see me using Palm’s built in version. In my playing with this feature, I recorded a little blurb and sent it via email to my laptop, and guess what? It didn’t recognized the file type! I haven’t investigated it yet, but I am hoping this isn’t some Palm proprietary file format that is only good when you send it to other Palm Owners!

So critics can say that the 680 is nothing more than a 650 in a slimmer case. Palm made some incremental improvements, but in some areas they might have gone backwards. To make the unit slimmer, they used a much smaller battery. I haven’t owned this thing long, but I can already tell that battery life is nothing as good as I had on the 650. Yet, I will maintain that the 680 is still a much better option than the Moto Q or the BlackJack. It has the ability to edit documents and also a touch screen.